One of the reasons I hate politicians and their associated minions is not that they are lying, cheating, self serving pieces of shit but rather that they offend one of my prime sensibilities. In my world the thing that has always mattered the most is data – anyone who resorts to narrative to push a point of view in the absence of data is worthless and has nothing to offer to any debate. Social policy in all its manifest forms is largely an evidence free zone. It doesn’t matter what area you examine be it health, education or urban planning there seems to be very little data to support any policy initiative other than it being driven by an underlying dogma.
Having returned from travelling I have noticed a host of peanuts fizzing at the bung about the apparent need to begin indefinitely holding 14 years old without charge in the wake of the terrible event in Sydney earlier this month. So it was time to go to the data and see if the hyper emotional rhetoric has any basis in fact. To do this I took some full year of close to full year figures that I could find for some causes of death locally and plotted them. The results are below.
Dont be deceived by the relative size of the bars, this data is plotted logarithmically – look at the numbers on the top of each bar. I had to do this because of the enormous disparity in the actual numbers. We have many societal ills in Australia ranging from the awful scourge of domestic violence to the inordinate number of people who are in such pain that they take their own lives. Terror is not one of them. The central issue here is that narrative is designed to confirm and inflame an existing bias, data is designed to be free of bias.
The relevance of this to trading or in fact any form of investing is obvious. What you think to be true may not actually be true, only the data can tell you what is true and what is merely a figment of your imagination.
129 Deaths due to domestic violence…!
Makes you wonder who is the more effective Terrorist…your odd ideological crackpot, or Mr. Average with unresolved problems.
What period of time are we talking with this graph? That’s a lot of suicides. And probably only counts the ones that were definitely suicide – not the many maybes.
Thats the national figure over a year.
So sad. There was a post on FB this morning “Suicide doesn’t take away the pain – it just moves it on to someone else”
I’m doing the Oxfam Trail walk next April and have just been looking at the fundraising stuff. It strikes me as bizarre that the folks in the developed nations are struggling with depression and suicide whilst there are others who are struggling to stay alive, get ahead and wouldn’t dream of killing themselves. A strange world we live in.
This cannot be over-emphasized it doesn’t matter your political leaning, your source of information or anything else, If the data does not back it up then it is destined for the rubbish bin. Unedited Data is king.
This applies to life death and everything in between.
JUST HAD TO SEND IT TO FACEBOOK THANKS CHRIS !!!!!!
Gotta perpetuate the fear and lies in order to justify the never ending war on terror & keep the brainnumbed public in a state of fear & on side i guess even if the data proves otherwise.
I’m of the opinion that 99% of the worlds leading Politicans are merely puppets for the Banking elites that make a killing out of playing both sides of wars.
And they’re calling for a shark cull too! Makes no sense. It is interesting how humans are so sensitive to some forms of loss of life, and yet insensitive to other forms.
If 9 full Jumbos (400 people in each) fell out of the sky today there would be an immediate grounding of fleets with investigations and an outpouring of grief. Yet around the world, the equivalent of 9 full Jumbos crash EVERY DAY on global roads. 9 full Jumbos every day – and we’re ok with that! It mustn’t be dramatic enough for the media I guess.
Thanks for the facts Chris.
In the end it seems like whatever buys the easy minority votes and brings in easy revenue for the thieves (Gov’t)
The data on the road toll is the same and how it is used to justify more speed safety cameras. Whilst every death on the road is indeed tragic and to be avoided. If you look at the road toll over the years and allow for the population explosion and increase in cars and car use on Aussie roads then the road toll has been dropping. But that data wouldn’t support the more cameras (revenue) agenda would it ?
As Chris pointed out the data is the key and to think for thyself 🙂
Selective data manipulation to fit the narrative creates huge work in checking the data and in loss of character when the truth is revealed.
Manipulation by selecting data, tampering with probabilities etc.
Of course the manipulators say all data has a human interaction bias anyway, so why not pick out their own bias. This is faulty logic. It goes from general to specific.
Sweeping Generalisation Fallacy
Explanation
A sweeping generalisation applies a general statement too broadly. If one takes a general rule, and applies it to a case to which, due to the specific features of the case, the rule does not apply, then one commits the sweeping generalisation fallacy. This fallacy is the reverse of a hasty generalisation, which infers a general rule from a specific case.
Gueess this applies to trading, where people infer a market falling means all stocks must be falling. Or an indicator works on an index so it must work on a specific stock. That is false because each stock is its own little market with different people and differing fundamentals and price actions.