What's a true fact that is so misleading it's borderline misinformation?
What would be some fact that, while true, could be told in a context or way that is misinfomating or make the other person draw incorrect conclusions?
The introduction of seatbelt legislation lead to an increase in nonfatal vehicular injuries
Similarly, the introduction of metal helmets for soldiers corresponded with an increase of head injuries.
Body armor in the second Gulf war contributed greatly to an increased rate of amputations on soldiers.
Ah, survivor bias. Reminds me of analysis of damage to bombers in WW2. Data showed most damage was done to the wings and body of planes. The tail, cockpit and engines were rarely damaged. They responded by reinforcing those areas that were frequently damaged.
However they were only observing bombers that made it back to base and so data on planes that were shot down was missing. Luckily someone did eventually realise this and so the research could be used as evidence that strikes to the areas rarely recorded indicated a downed plane.
When metal helmets were introduced in the middle of WW1, head injuries went up!
test
Test back
I don't know if this counts, since it's only a "true fact" if you are fine with carefully chosen words and the omission of crucial information...
But the 13-50 stat is dangerously misleading.
You know,
Black people make up 13% of the population, but 50% of the violent crime.
Black people in America do, in fact, make up 50% of the murder arrests according to FBI crime statistics
That much is true.
But certain people tend to use this fact to assert that police officers are far more likely to be killed by black people than by white people. Therefore, the stats that show them brutalizing black people at a higher rate -- since they fall short of that 50% number -- are evidence that they hold back around black people to avoid appearing racist.
The users of this stat heavily imply black people are more violent and murder-prone, and hence a greater threat. The argument also carries with it an implied benefit to eugenics or a return to slavery (to anyone paying attention.)
But no one using this stat ever explores potential causes for the arrest rate disparity, instead letting their viewers assume it comes from "black culture" (if they are closeted racists) or "bad genes" (if they are open racists).
There's no attention paid to the fact that black people make up over half of overturned wrongful convictions
There's no attention paid to the stats further down in that same FBI crime stats table that make it clear that black people make up 25% of the nation's drug arrests, despite making up close to 13% of the US's total drug users. Their population's rate of drug use is within a margin of error of white people's rate of drug use. It should be strange that a small portion of the perpetrators of drug crimes make up such an outsized portion of the total drug arrests in this country. But the disparity doesn't even get a mention.
There's no attention paid to the fact that more than half of US murders go unsolved, meaning even assuming impartial sentencing and prosecution, we would only know black people committed 50% OF 50% of the murders -- 25%. And in a country where 98% of the land is owned by white people and the public defender system is in shambles? Which demographic do you think would be able to afford the best defense, avoiding conviction even when guilty, and ending up overrepresented in the "unsolved murder" category? If only 50% of murders end in a conviction, that means every murderer who walks into a courtroom has a solid chance at getting away with it. Even more solid if the murderer belongs to the richest race. The murder arrest rate by race winds up just being a measure of which demographics can afford the best lawyers, rather than any proportional representation of each demographic's tendencies.
They mention none of that. The people hawking this statistic intentionally lead their viewers to assume, "arrested for murder" is equivalent to "guilty of murder." And that 50% of the murder arrests is equivalent to 50% of the total murders. The entire demographic is assumed to be more dangerous.
I've seen similar stuff multiple times, often with misquoted statistics. What many miss is that context is as important as stats.
Excellent explanation, thanks.
My pleasure.
The thing about this is that the kind of people who quote statistics like that typically don't have an interest in all of that. They start with a racist assertion, then search for anything that appears to corroborate. They have no interest in actually understanding the statistic, they only care about it insofar as they believe it justifies their racism.
That, or they know it doesn't and they're purposely arguing in bad faith.
Yeah... that's a pretty reasonable conclusion. It's hard to just state outright though, when I live with the exact sort of person described in your comment.
It's interesting: the people who are fine with calling an entire race murderous seem to take great umbrage at being considered "racist."
It's the r-word to them -- a slur used to invalidate their concerns and diminish the importance of their well-being.
That their concerns ought to be invalidated -- since they are the racist result of racist fear-mongering -- is never well-received.
This guy facts.
The real bottom line is that when you create an underclass of people whose neighborhoods get firebombed or bulldozed when they get too affluent (see e.g. "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa and Auburn Avenue (formerly "the richest Negro street in the world") in Atanta, respectively) and had generations of absent fathers due to persecution for things like "vagrancy", of course they're going to stop giving a shit about laws that bind but do not protect them! It's entirely rational that people systematically excluded from being able to get ahead while acting within the law, and whose behaviors are deliberately criminalized in order to target them, would end up committing crimes at higher rates than the people benefiting from their oppression did. In other words, even if it's true that they actually commit crimes at higher rates (as opposed to being accused at higher rates or being less likely to avoid conviction, as you pointed out, which just make the statistical bias even worse by compounding on top), even that is disingenous because it ignores that the disparity is caused by classism and institutional racism, not anything intrinsic to their race itself. The fiction that it's somehow their own fault is like a society-wide version of "stop hitting yourself."
Oh 100% this. The main accomplishment of Tulsa and Auburn was keeping black people impoverished, and...
“About 60 [academic] papers show that a very common result of greater inequality is more violence, usually measured by homicide rates,” says Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level and co-founder of the Equality Trust. - source
For as long as society insists on high inequality with one race forcefully held at the bottom, no rational person can expect that race to be peaceful.
It's just... I have a hard time bringing this concept to the table in a debate with people who believe "personal responsibility" can somehow magically indemnify society against its impact on people.
In fact, I am generally speechless when debating such people. It's such an alien worldview to me. How can personal responsibility actually make society irrelevant? And since when?
The kinds of people who spout the 13-50 argument basically believe NOTHING society does can increase or decrease murder (except, when convenient, being "too soft on children" or "soft on crime.")
Omfg, thank you so much for this. I find it repulsive that pos 9gaggers post 50/13 as a mantra to every post that includes black people, but no one would really want to understand from where those numbers come up😡
The real bottom line is that when you create an underclass of people whose neighborhoods get firebombed or bulldozed when they get too affluent (see e.g. "Black Wall Street" in Tulsa and Auburn Avenue (formerly "the richest Negro street in the world") in Atanta, respectively) and had generations of absent fathers due to persecution for things like "vagrancy", of course they're going to stop giving a shit about laws that bind but do not protect them! It's entirely rational that people systematically excluded from being able to get ahead while acting within the law, and whose behaviors are deliberately criminalized in order to target them, would end up committing crimes at higher rates than the people benefiting from their oppression did. In other words, even if it's true that they actually commit crimes at higher rates (as opposed to being accused at higher rates or being less likely to avoid conviction, as you pointed out, which just make the statistical bias even worse by compounding on top), even that is disingenous because it ignores that the disparity is caused by classism and institutional racism, not anything intrinsic to their race itself. The fiction that it's somehow their own fault is like a society-wide version of "stop hitting yourself."
Light roasted coffee has more caffeine than dark roasted coffee.
Technically, per bean, more of the caffeine is cooked out of the dark roast. However, other things are also roasted out of a dark roast to the point that the individual beans are also lighter and smaller. When brewing coffee, usually you either weigh your dose of beans out, or you use a scoop for some consistency. Either method will result in more dark roast beans ultimately making it into the brew than would with a (larger, heavier) light roast.
Typically, this more than cancels out the reduced caffeine content per bean, so a brew of dark roast coffee still typically has more caffeine in it.
If I remember correctly, dark roast was also originally devised to hide bad-quality coffee beans. Nowadays it is often implied that darker roasts are better, which actually isn't necessarily the case.
Implied where? All the coffee snobs I know drink lighter roasts and derogatorily call dark roasts “supermarket coffee”
Dark roasts have a more consistent taste/flavor and it has a longer shelf life, so it's easier to know what you're getting. If you want to taste the variety of flavors coffee can have, you'll go for fresher lighter roasts.
Yup, I had to explain this to so many people when I sold coffee. Nobody believed me at all. I explained that dark roast had more of the caffeine cooked out of it.
Oh shit I've repeated this to people and confidently claimed I can "feel" the difference with light roasts. Brains are stupid.
This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!
This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!
This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!
James Hoffman did a great video on this, and yes, kinda. It's complicated.
This is actually very interesting and I had no idea. Thanks!
Thank you for laying it out like this. I'd often heard that about light roasts, but had never noticed any difference in my caffeine response when I switch roasts. At any rate I've always preferred dark for the flavor, but it's good to know I'm not sacrificing any buzz for it!
I remember looking this up and the difference is around 1%, so if you're worried about caffeine intake you're better off leaving a mouthful in the bottom of your cup than changing beans.
I've honestly never thought of that. Guess that's why I've not been able to feel a real difference in my morning coffee when I use different roasts. I always thought "well it can't be losing that much caffeine because it doesn't feel any different than my medium or light roasts."
new comment
As ice cream sales in the United States increase, so do deaths in in developed parts of Africa.
I use this fact to explain to students how true information can be used to mislead people into drawing wild, deranged conclusions.
The commonality in these events is the rise in temperature during the summer. But if you leave that out, there's an absurd argument to be made about how purchasing ice cream is inherently evil.
I don't think it's an amazing example of what OP is talking about, but as an example, I like how simple and easy to follow it is. Great for junior high level kids.
According to a new study published by the University of Berchul, eating ice cream can make you be in risk of drowning.
Is this related to correlation is not causation?
Correlation at least tries to imply they're related. As lottery sales go up in your household so does credit card debt. Not always a cause but they're related
You're looking for spurious correlations which is when numbers have no business even being used in a comparison
yes
Not exactly. What you're looking for is coincidence.
So there's some "incorrect" assumptions you have made about the North American summer, and weather in Africa. In the North American summer, only North Africa experiences summer with you guys. The rest of the continent is blanketed in rains (West, Central and East Africa) or are in outright winter (Southern Africa). So our temperatures do come down in your winter. Your coldest months are our hottest months for most of the continent (except for North Africa). So saying the developed parts of Africa
In equally unrelated news, there's also a direct correlation between ice cream sales and shark attacks. We have to steal all the ice cream before more people get eaten!
Dihydrogen Monoxide, commonly used in laundry detergent and other cleaning supplies, is also present in Subway sandwiches
FACT: 100% of people that consume Dihydrogen Monoxide die.
Wrong, a mortality of 94.5% has been shown not even close to 100%.
They even put it into the water supply.
Evil!!
It can even be found in unborn babies!
Everyone who has died has ingested dihydrogen monoxide.
You are much more likely to die in a hospital than anywhere else.
Wait until you hear the fatality rate for hospice residents
I don't think this one is true, unless you mean it a different way than I'm interpreting it.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc1911892#:~:text=In%202003%2C%20a%20total%20of,%25)%20to%20534%2C714%20(20.8%25).
(This is the US)
Oh how I miss the before times.
Counterpoint: True Facts is a great series of humorous nature documentaries.
Imagine trying to move by riding a unicycle backwards and throwing up through a giant straw. That is how the nautilus do.
I'm so sorry but it's either/or & neither/nor. Gotta follow through with the negation.
That's very negative, however I must concur that it's a fact the correlative conjunctions were incorrectly placed to negate the possibilities.
Whether that fact is true or not is up to you.
True facts.
I can't trust you on this because you are using the words 'true fact'.
What about "alternative facts"?
Facts are just objective statements, which can be either true or false, but whichever they are it is objective and not dependant on the observer.
I mean, it's a semantic argument, and semantics is subjective, but that's probably how the people who say 'true fact' are defining fact.
That's a true fact!
I see your “True Facts” and raise you Kellyanne Conway.
Natural language is inherently imprecise.
Boom, pedants shook.
Who called the tautology police?
When people say a politician "raised taxes." More often than not it's a tax that does not apply to 99.99% of the population and they raised it from 0.000001% to 0.000002%
But boy do those campaign ads look good
Similarly, when a politician says they cut taxes, middle class tax cuts are almost always intend to "sunset". That is, eventually, those tax cuts are designed to reverse themselves over time.
Maybe in the US. Most tax cuts that happen in Canada at least don't tend to have an expiry. Although new governments do tend to reverse previous government's tax policy. Although it tends to apply to tax policy across the board.
And sooooooo many voting Americans hear this and vote Republican.
When you think about data it actually gets really scary really quick. I have a Master's in Data Analytics.
First, data is "collected."
And that's just collecting the data, the first step in the process of collecting data, extracting information, and creating knowledge.
Next is "cleaning" the data.
So then, after the data is put through many unknown processes, you're left with a set of data to analyze.
Then you have outside forces, and this might be scariest of all.
All media outlets were predicting a landslide victory for Clinton. But then, as we all know I’m sure, the unbelievable happened: Trump won the electoral college. Why didn’t the data predict that?
Nate Silver was singing a different tune, though. I remember an interview he gave a month out from the election where he noted significant softness in support for Clinton. There were also a lot of undecideds who might swing elections in key states. That is, of course, exactly what happened. When the Comey letter was leaked by Congress, it likely cost Clinton the election. Her poll numbers dropped from +7% to +3%, well within the advantage that the Electoral College gives to Republicans.
On Election Day, the 538 model was about 3:1 in favor of Clinton. That sounds highly in favor of Clinton, and it is. But it still leaves plenty of room for a Trump win. And lo and behold, she lost.
One other thing polls didn't really capture was voter enthusiasm or maybe not enough people was paying attention to it. Just because you answered Hilary when asked who would you vote for, it didn't mean you went out on Election day to vote. A combination of lack of enthusiasm for Hilary, coupled with news constantly reporting that it will be a landslide kept many Democrat voters home.
I believe that's why there's such a huge push for "get out the vote" campaigns in 2020 by the Democrats. Generally, the more people voting means better chances for a Democrat win, given general (non-electoral) election results.
That's interesting, I did not think the letter had that big of an impact.
For me it was Bernie. I remember a lot of us on Reddit were all about Bernie.
Iirc, Bernie had a lot of steam and it seemed like again Clinton was going to be pushed aside for a grass-roots candidate (just like with Barak years earlier).
And Bernie said he was not going to give up the race, because even if he didn't win the votes he could still be voted in at the national convention.
And as the DNC neared, things were looking great. Clinton was giving paid speeches to wall street and Bernie was tearing her whole campaign apart because he was saying, give money back to people and she was saying keep things the way they were.
And then, among mounting pressure, two weeks before the convention he concieded out of nowhere. At least that's what it seemed like to us.
Then emails leaked that showed the Democratic Party had colluded with Clinton to get Bernie out of the race!
We couldn't believe it. We were devestated. So some people went to the DNC and were making a big stir, demanding that Bernie get back on the ballot.
And it all came to a waterfall moment when Sarah Silverman was on stage. And people were chanting Bernie and she lost it and told everybody to shut up and said the Bernie supporters were stupid.
And that was it. The only thing that came out of it was somebody got fired, but there was no regard or representation for us in the Democratic Party anymore.
They didn't care about what we wanted, and they were just as crooked as they had always told us the Republicans were.
For me it was a massive dissolutionment, and drove me to Trump. Since he was saying we need to take our economy back from the 1%.
Do you have a source for the outlets changing their poll results? I did a search myself but couldn't find anything. I find that very interesting and wanted to read more!
It was in an article on Hacker News around that time. It was super interesting, but I can't find it atm, I'll look around tomorrow.
Oh yeah. I might say some wrong stuff since I'm quite ignorant but. Statistics is messy and I tend to avoid including too much stats in my projects, although sometimes I accidentally end up blindly doing so and believing them also drawing inaccurate conclusions. Physical stats are even messier because not everybody has the competence to accurately understand what they mean, or sometimes we just don't understand the world enough. Environmental science data is an example of that. I rely on other people's analyses cause I can't read them. I don't know much about politics.
One of my favorite Brian Regan bits kinda fits, maybe?
"In 1939, Germany invaded Poland. One thing led to another and the United States of America dropped two atomic bombs on the sovereign nation of Japan."
Clumsy. Did they at least pick them up on the way out?
I love Brian Regan, but I haven't heard this bit. What's it from?
it's from World War II
People use to say that you cant lie with statistics, but is a common practice to use statistics to lie.
We can take the infamous 41% suicide rate for trans people. Transphobes throw that out like a killing move implying that trans people are inherently unhappy and being trans is a mental illness (which is not true).
The reality is that the suicide rate is so high because of transphobia, kids getting thrown out of home, homelessness, unable to find a job, staying at the closet to avoid social consecuences, etc.
Trans people who live in more open and accepting environments are way less likely to be depressed and commit suicide. In progresive areas where trans people are more accepted the suicide rate is nowhere near 41%.
Yeah that statistic is brutal. Like I wish more people understood it’s like saying: “we bully the shit out of people who seem depressed, we aggressively stigmatize antidepressant use, X% of people with depression will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. We should ban antidepressants and treat depressed people worse.”
Its so frustrating when I see other minorities use that argument because their suicide statistics are also typically higher! That's the nature of oppression.
Man, I can't believe we live at a time where being trans is more dangerous than having cancer...
"Numbers don't lie" is true in the same sense as "guns don't kill"...
Numbers don't lie, but people lie using number all the time.
It depends on how you define "lie" really. A true stat is always true, but a person can draw misleading conclusions from it if they aren't trained and especially if they also are looking for a certain conclusion.
Hey vis4valentine, you should correct "wish" to "which" in your comment. That typo could cause readers to understand the sentence completely inverted.
I learned that stats is all about lies lol
The average human has less than 2 arms.
And half a penis.
On average, humans have just under 3 inches of penis.
One testicle, and one boob
Average arm has less than one human
Haha, that's even weirder sounding.
ceiling(AvgArms)
You can see the moon from The Great Wall of China.
But the opposite is not true! At least, not with the naked eye.
The frequency with which I keep hearing this misconception repeated in popular media is boggling. Hell, I feel like I just heard it again recently in the new Star Trek.
Women have smaller brains than men.
I mean, yes. Women as a population are physically smaller than men as a population.
Women have smaller fingers than men. Smaller eyes. Smaller lungs. There is no "gotcha" that smaller skeletal frames with smaller skulls contain, by volume, a smaller organ.
Doesnt mean every man's brain is larger than every woman's brain either.
Doesn't mean men are smarter than women.
It's just a statistic, that while true, doesn't imply what some people think it does.
There's actually some historical context for this untrue way of thinking.
France, 1873 Paul Broca, a French physician, decides to weigh some brains. And women's brains weighed less than men's brains. This is part of his research into crainiometry in which the size of the brain is used to understand a mesure of intelligence. Bigger brain weight = more smart.
We now recognize crainiometry as a pesudoscience.
Then another French academic Gustav Le Bon uses Broca's research to further engain that not only are women's brains small causing them to have the big dumb, women are in fact more similar to gorillas in brain size. Thus, women are uncivilized, akin to children, and MUST be under the care and control of men who are CLEARLY more intelligent with their big brains and, naturally, should control and run society.
Broca did not take overall body size or age of the specimens into account when originally weighing the brains. The male specimens were younger and larger to the female specimens who were smaller and older. Brains tend to shrink as we age.
So, not only was this flawed science, based in flawed measurements, thay have been readily disproved, we're still struggling to undo this as a belief.
History rant over.
Many years ago I worked as an analyst at a small VC firm. My boss, who was a raging misogynist prick and liked to date College freshmen, LOVED this fact (and any other Manosphere bullshit he could find about women being inferior to men). He was such an unbelievable stereotype, he could have stepped out of a sitcom.
Yeah I mean, neanderthals had bigger brains than humans, and they were no smarter than we are (as far as we know.)
Also a blue whale's brain is four times the size of a human brain and they don't even know how to drive.
It's just more impressive that even with a bigger brain he is still a bumbling buffoon.
It's my pet hypothesis that people are drawn to the comfort of sitcom-level characters because they're so basic and predictable, even when they're terrible. Real life is so complicated that black-and-white thinking blasted by people like that is just so low-energy to consume.
Men have bigger balls is another missunderstood fact.
Gonna need a source on that claim
Each year, Dihydrogen Monoxide is a known causative component in many thousands of deaths and is a major contributor to millions upon millions of dollars in damage to property and the environment. Some of the known perils of Dihydrogen Monoxide are:
Death due to accidental inhalation of DHMO, even in small quantities.
Prolonged exposure to solid DHMO causes severe tissue damage.
Excessive ingestion produces a number of unpleasant though not typically life-threatening side-effects.
DHMO is a major component of acid rain.
Gaseous DHMO can cause severe burns.
Contributes to soil erosion.
Leads to corrosion and oxidation of many metals.
Contamination of electrical systems often causes short-circuits.
Exposure decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes.
Found in biopsies of pre-cancerous tumors and lesions.
Given to vicious dogs involved in recent deadly attacks.
Often associated with killer cyclones in the U.S. Midwest and elsewhere, and in hurricanes including deadly storms in Florida, New Orleans and other areas of the southeastern U.S.
Thermal variations in DHMO are a suspected contributor to the El Nino weather effect.
The large percent of traffic accidents that take place within 5 miles of home. Most people only cover a fairly small radius on a day to day basis so it makes sense if there is an accident, it’s close to home and not 80 miles away… just on average of how far how often you drive. Makes it seem like neighbourhoods are more dangerous than highways or something.
Another factor is that people feel more comfortable driving their local roads and get used to usual traffic patterns, which could mean that they're not as alert if something's different.
Eg you're almost home, in your neighborhood, and there's a stop sign that almost never has anyone else there, so you might not look too much just roll through, the one time someone's actually there.
This is such a good example for how statistics are often misinterpreted without any fault of the statistics itself.
It reminds me of when they looked at fighter jets to decide which parts to reinforce. So they examined which parts had the most bullet holes and came up with this statistic:
If some of you don't knew about this yet, I let you decide why this effect is called "survivorship bias". :D
There needs to be more education about how statistics need to be looked at in the correct context.
There are better examples of survivorship bias, but simce this one deals with war and comes with an easy to understand picture, people rarely remember the other examples so only this one ever gets posted.
that is actually an interesting way to think about it
"Vending machines are more deadly than sharks".
While it's true that (at least for some years) more people are killed by vending machine accidents than shark attacks, your personal risk depends on what you do. If you're a vending machine factory worker who never goes into the ocean, you're far more likely to be killed by a vending machine than a shark. But if you live in a part of the world that doesn't have vending machines and you swim in the ocean every day, the reverse is true.
However sharks have a huge PR issue and Spielberg regrets how Jaws is a big source of that
Newer cars are designed to crush more and easier than older cars.
I feel like crumple is a more accurate word here
For anyone curious about this, it's a safety feature. The front of a car is called the "crumple zone" — it's designed to crumple up in an impact, which absorbs a lot of the energy and means the cabin (the place where humans are) will experience significantly lower forces.
More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crumple_zone
People on HRT have a significantly higher mortality rate than people not on HRT
In a similar vein, people on puberty blockers have a higher mortality rate.
(Because those medications are used in combination with other treatments to help treat certain cancers.)
I don’t get it… I dumb.
HRT is short for Hormone Replacement Therapy, a treatment many transgender people use to feel more aligned with their gender identity. It's been proven to increase mental health, and has a low regret rate. However, it is correlated with higher mortality because trans people overall have a higher mortality rate and HRT is primarily used by trans people.
A more extreme example of the same thing would be "People on chemotherapy have a higher chance of dying from cancer than people not on chemotherapy." It's true, but only because people without cancer don't tend to enter chemotherapy.
This one is great, I absolutely believe that conservatives would (and I'm sure do) pass it around like some profound statement.
Switching from a 5mpg truck to a 10mpg truck does more for the environment than switching from 40mpg car to a 55mpg car.
How is that misleading, isn't it true?
More outrageous sounding, switching from a 5 mpg truck to a 10 mpg truck saves more gas than switching from a 50 mpg car to a 100 mpg car
This is why the rest of the world uses l/100km (liters per 100 kilometers), the comparison is linear and thus comparable between different vehicles in a simple manner.
The difference between 10 and 20g is easy to see as a lot bigger than the difference between 2.5 to 1.82g. 15 is a much bigger number than 5, but that 15 is relative to the initial mpg rating
In fact going from 5mpg to 10mpg is better than going from 10mpg to 100mpg, a 10g saving vs a 9g saving......the more you know
Environmental damage from emissions doesn't care about relative efficiency, 15 free miles is objectively more than 5 free miles.
The ask was
What would be some fact that, while true, could be told in a context or way that is misinfomating or make the other person draw incorrect conclusions?
And this is why l/100km is a better unit
Thunderstorms & lightning strikes can severely affect "cloud" computing!
Well yeah, where do you think the lightning is??
Of the ~100 billion humans who have ever lived, about 8 billion (8%) are still alive today. Therefore, your chance of dying is 92%, not 100%.
Wouldn't that be the chance of any randomly selected person being dead?
Classic, but very illustrative
People reading this, aren't you just a ray of sunshine with your 92% survival rate?
Are you assuming that everyone currently alive is immortal? You may be in for some disappointment.
“I’ll call you back as soon as I can”
Working at Lowe’s I’ve learned that I need to tell people “and that might be hours from now this job is hectic”
Add "As soon as possible" to that list as well.
Boss wants something ASAP and it probably means ithey want it very soon and not when you're free
Some customers get so upset when I explain to them that I have a queue of other customers that I'm helping.
Like they're offended, as if I don't care about my job. Pisses me off, because while you're complaining about my lack of work ethic I'm the guy at work while we're understaffed because other people have decided not to work. I'm the guy who showed up, and I'm overloaded, and people read it as I'm lazy because it takes me a long time to get back to them.
Centrifugal force does not exist
"A laughable claim, Mister Bond, perpetuated by overzealous teachers of science. Simply construct Newton's laws into a rotating system and you will see a centrifugal force term appear as plain as day." https://xkcd.com/123/
Do you seriously expect me to do this while strapped to a centrifuge?
It doesn't exist in an inertial frame of reference. In a non-inertial frame it's a perfectly valid force
It does, it’s just called a different thing. Centripetal force is exactly the same thing as what most people assume centrifugal force means.
Nice try, QI elf!
I'll finally know all the answers in the next episode of No Such Thing As A Fish!
human and chimp DNA is 98.8 percent the same
I don't know the exact number, but, come on! Look at those guys! They are basically hairy humans with a slightly less complex system of communication.
Yep but the point is the 1.2% represent millions of gene pairs and the ones we share are not always present or expressed in the same way. So just sharing genes doesn't necessarily mean were the same or they do the same thing.
Yeah chimps are one of our very few (very very) distant cousins left. But i think they rip more faces off than us
Still interested in how similar cow or earthworm DNA is. I'd be unsurprised to find they're also quite high.
Pigs (98%) and bananas (60%) are often quoted examples. Not sure about worms
https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-other-animals/
Those who took the covid vaccine have a mortality death rate of 9.172/1000 in the USA.
2023 USA death rate is 9.172/1000 so I guess that lines up.
This is minor one, but annoys me how comnmon this is: light is made out of litle packets of energy called photons.
Here is a good video on the topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=SDtAh9IwG-I (Too lazy didn't watch: Light is an electromagnetc wave and is is not quantized. Only the interactions between atoms and light are quantized)
I was under the impression that electromagnetic radiation is both a wave and a particle, and it's known as the "wave particle duality".
Waves only collapse into particles during an interaction with other particles.
The electrons are very much moving, even if at an incredibly slow pace of ~1cm/s. It's just that they push the electrons ahead of them which puch the ones in front of then, etc. which makes electricity so fast.
It is however somewhat true for AC because there the electrons just get pushed back and forth 50/60 times per second, making them more or less stay in place
In DC they actually are moving, but it's something like a few millimeters per hour on average
Well they do move, but just incredibly slowly.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/350612/speed-of-electrons-in-a-wire
To be fair, electrical engineers make a living by ignoring Maxwell's equations and the real behavior of electricity (the analogy of electrons pushing each other to transmit energy is also wrong, just less wrong). At RF you can't ignore them, and RF engineering is often known as black magic.
"Light propagates like a wave and interacts like a particle"
huh, I thought quantization of light(or energy really) came from Heisenberg's uncertainty principle
Since the invention of seatbelts there have been a larger number of serious injuries from car accidents.
This sounds like seatbelts are causing serious injury but in fact, these serious injuries used to be deaths. That statistics is never mentioned causing it to be misleading, just like they never mention how many bugles are in the car when an accident happens
Several (attempted) murderers have owned copies of The Catcher in the Rye.
I own a copy of The Catcher in the Rye.
There is a greater than 5% chance that your death will be someone’s fault.
If you believe in God, it's a 100% chance
What about the other 5% though?!
Non-preventable deaths are about 95%.
If you have a complicated health issue or emergency, the legislative branch of government dictates your potential treatment.
(Most reputable practitioners will temper their recommendations based upon the professional risk involved.)
Sometimes the best doctors have poor outcome rates.
Because they are often taking on the hardest cases.
50% of doctors graduated in the bottom half of their medical school.
This is maybe true in the US. Don't forget that people from all over the world are on here.
Still holds true either way. If the doctor is or is not at great risk of legal consequences, it will greatly impact your care. I have a complicated case with lots of small spinal damage that all adds up to partial disability. All reputable neurosurgeons here spend five minutes reading the radiology summary from a MRI and walk away from anything that is not easy like my case. It is just too much legal liability to take on hard cases. If you live in a region where it is safer for the doctor to treat difficult cases with impunity, you will likely get better, or at least more, care. In the real world, the legal system plays a major role in medical treatments. No one is throwing away or risking their entire career on your case. Skipping context, your healthcare really is determined by Judges either way. Learning this the hard way sucks.
Every year, traffic congestion wastes billions of gallons of gas.
explanation, since this one might be more confusing than most:
Traffic congestion does indeed waste gas. However, any place worth driving to is going to have congestion--driving without congestion is easy, fast, and comfortable, so people generally won't take other options until roads become congested. Thus, congestion actually reduces gas usage overall, because it is only once areas become congested that people stop driving places.
Trying to avoid congestion, on the other hand, usually involves expanding roads, something which increases driving, and makes other forms of transportation less useful/comfortable, thus increasing gas usage overall.
In places where more storks live, you also have more babies.
After the Corona lockdowns there was an increase in infections with the common cold. Researches tried to explain how this is connected to the immune system and a lot of people now assume you have to "train" your immune system with exposure to pathogens. Or that your immune system falls out of training (like a muscle) if you stop exposing it to pathogens regularly. A potentially dangerous misunderstanding.
People often draw false conclusions from reduced information about a fact. For example: Babies who are kept in one position for hours each day over weeks or months show developmental delay. For some reason this information got shortened so much that a lot of people (in Germany at least) now assume baby seats are hurting babies backs.
The infamous FBI crime statistics are probably the big one
Which are you referring to? Some like murder are pretty reliable.
Half of all murders go unsolved. So even if you assume the group making up 50% of the murder arrests is impossible to wrongfully convict, they would still only make up 25% of the murders that occurred because a whole 50% of the murders are a mystery.
And it would be insane to assume murder arrests are a perfect representative sample for all of the murders that occur in the entire United States.
Some demographics have more money and are more likely to be able to hire their own lawyers and get away with murder, even if they're guilty. Other demographics have less money and are more often forced to rely on a broken public defender system.
It's no coincidence that black people, one of the poorer demographics, are found in over 50% of exonerations for wrongful convictions despite being a much smaller portion of the US population.
The current top-rated comment in this thread explains what they meant very well if you're actually curious.
Despite being only 13% of the population...
Despite being only 13% of the population...
This thread has a lot of potential, great for dining table debates
Every single rapist and murderer was found to have dihydrogen monoxide inside their body at the time they committed their crimes, and your friends and family may be using it recreationally without you knowing
I don't think something you need to survive can be called being taken 'recreationally'.
There are people who consume flavored crystal DHMO recreationally. Children even!
A lie
Nice try, QI elf!
Is that world wide or in a specific country?
Nice try, QI elf!
You've triple posted this comment...
You can't drink too much water.
So.... Not a true fact? The prompt was for true facts that are misleading out of context.
What you cited is just a common misconception, right?
Yep. My bad. Didn't quite understand the question at first read. 🤭
By definition, too much of anything is bad. That's why it's too much, rather than a lot.
Wearing your seatbelt increases your chances of dying from cancer.
This one is great! Made me think way too much
How?
You'll live longer.
If you die from cancer you can't die from a car wreck.
It increases your chance of drowning, but not for the reason people usually think.