The Ones That Make It

A lot of you may be familiar with this particular graphic, but if you aren't, let me walk you through it.

World War II was - as with many other wars - fought by numbers. Statistical analysis was very important in the planning phases of most operations over a specific scale, and in the provision of weaponry and equipment. It was a war won as much by the production line and the numbers game there, as it was the actual combat.

As strategic bombing became more and more important, and the wave method of bombing in particular, many studies were done into this particularly high-attrition method of conducting warfare.

The graphic above is based on hypothetical data, and is the bullet spread observed on returning bombers.

It was theorised by those who made the decisions that - if that is where the bullets are hitting the plane, then we up-armour those bits of the plane, yes? I mean that's a good conclusion, given the data available. 

Enter Abraham Wald.

Wald was from Cluj in Transylvania - that's Austria-Hungary, now Romania to you. He was a mathematical genius who was prevented from gaining any position in a university due to Austria's institutional antisemitism - and when Hitler's Germany came calling in 1938 he and his family fled to America.

Wald took a look at the data and stated that the proposed action was bullshit, and when asked why, he pointed out the data that had been acquired.

Where were the hits to the cockpit? The engines? The leading edges of the wings? How is it possible that the (at the time) highly trained and competent Luftwaffe pilots weren't hitting those? The answer is simple, and if you haven't got it by this point, you'll want to kick yourself:

The data was taken only from the planes that made it back.

In an alternate timeline, Wald never made it out of Austria - either he didn't make it out before the Nazis showed up or he was refused entry into the US for whatever stupid reason. So nobody noticed this particular point, planes were built differently, they got shot down more, and the war slowly, steadily shifted toward a potentially different result.

That is an example of what we call Survivorship Bias.

If ten people go into a situation, they all try the same method to get out, and only one of them makes it - to that person, this method worked. Because this is the person that came back to tell the story of how their method did the job and saved their life in the situation in question.

When people talk about how something was tough, but they made it through okay - well, great, but how many people made it with them? When someone brings up the Blitz Spirit, and carrying on with a stiff upper lip - well the Blitz Spirit didn't work out for the 40,000 people that died and the hundreds of thousands that lost their homes and livelihoods in London alone. Just shutting up and putting up gets people killed, in a lot of situations. Just those that aren't affected tend to shrug their shoulders and say: well, not ME.

If you take a thousand people, at birth; and you provide one of those thousand people with the privileges and good fortunes of a stable part of a country, supportive parents with a significant income that will let them take risks and push them into better academic and professional circles; then they will almost certainly, at some point, talk at length about how they started with nothing and how with some hard work and some graft, ANYONE could do it.

There's a statistic that claims that as you age, you become more conservative. There's another statistic that claims that people who own horses live longer than people who don't. Both of these are probably true, but miss out on two key points: that the greater your income or wealth, the more conservative you lean - and the greater your income, the better healthcare you can afford, leading directly to an extended lifespan.

Whenever presented with statistics, always query where they are from, how they were gathered, what might have been missed. Query what they are being used to prove and how that proof could be reinforced by - for example - asking a smaller sample size, or asking customers of a specific site or store. You might not want to believe a publication if they claim that 80% of people on earth believe the Earth is flat, if the magazine is Flat Earth Monthly, and they asked 200 of their own readers.

Oh yeah, and - if the xenophobes and the antisemites had their way - there'd have been a lot more downed bombers.

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.

Navigating The News

It can be pretty hard to ascertain what is actually happening in the world on any given day. There's a reason why the news and social media alike both seem to be very overwhelming - frankly, they are designed that way. Got to keep the visibility up, or people will forget about you, right?

So it can all feel a little like this:

A certain amount of savvy is required to navigate the thousand howling voices all crying for your attention. Today I endeavour to pass onto you some of my advice, in regard to doing just that.

Things to look out for:

The headline is not the whole story.

Headlines are basically like WatchMojo videos - clickbait. They can be deliberately misleading, and will often present part of the story without context if it would prove to be more provocative or interesting. That is their entire point. So make sure that, when you see the headline, you don't immediately take that to be what is actually happening.

Have a little dig into it. Click through and read the article, if the news source is one of those that you don't object to giving clicks to - see The Daily Mail for an example of a news source that doesn't deserve your clicks. Maybe search the event in question in your search engine of choice, check out some alternative views. Which takes me neatly to my second point.

Every outlet has an angle - find multiple sources.

If you can - always, always confirm a story. Especially if it is just breaking. The need for news media to get on something the moment it starts to happen sometimes (often) overwrites the implied necessity to report accurately. Also, there are certain news organisations that have a specific agenda to push; for some of them, it will be obvious. For others, less so.

Even if a news organisation has a leaning which agrees with yours, do make sure to see how the other side are reporting. Even if half the world will know that an event has occurred, the majority will have heard about it from a different source, will have seen it from a different angle. Certain facts may only get presented by people who will benefit from them being known.

Factual reporting isn't repetition of statements. Factual reporting isn't opinion.

These two get bundled together because a lot of news stories seem to be a simple unquestioned repetition of a statement made by someone. That is effectively the same as allowing that individual to write an opinion piece and publishing it as if it is accurate reporting - unless somewhere in the article there is some degree of accuracy-checking or fact-finding.

This can often be a subtle way in which a news outlet can convey the agenda they wish to without seeming to be biased. The less obvious it is that the article is just regurgitating the opinions of the subject, the more likely it is that the subjects views align with the outlet. And of course, every news outlet also tends to have opinion pieces - it is considered good journalism to make it very obvious from the reading that it is such a thing.

News outlets and regular people alike alter the scale of a story.

The next time you see a news story stating "people are outraged", realise that they could be talking about half of the world's population, or they could be talking about six people on Twitter who have more than eighty followers each. Be wary of eyerolling at this new trend which has apparently taken over the entire world, when in actuality there's only about twenty people posting the same youtube video.

At the same time, downplaying something is a common trick - one that doesn't usually survive cross-referencing with other sources. The scale of that oil slick will probably be made obvious in one way or another, and if you take each source on balance, you will probably find your way to at least a close approximation.

We are more willing to believe news that aligns with our own personal bias.

It is a difficult thing to accept that a company that makes something you like, or a piece of media you enjoy, has done something wrong. It is also a difficult thing to accept that an individual or organisation that you dislike has done something right. That is on us. When we do our due diligence on the topic, we kind of have to put our hands up. Otherwise, we will spend our lives not caring much about facts and what actually happens, and instead just parrot opinions at each other like we are extras in Brave New World.

Examining our own built-in biases, asking why we have them - that is important to us as people. Not just in terms of understanding the news - in terms of our personal development. I'm sure most of us were unbearable dickheads at some point in our lives - imagine if we just stayed that person. Wouldn't it suck? So, don't let that happen. If your immediate response to an article is vehement repudiation because it features a movie you like or a politician you hate, take a breath, pull up a different source, and take a minute.

Don't be afraid to take a break.

Keeping up with the real-time collapse of our current society, or whatever is happening to it right now, is difficult. It's hard-wearing and anxiety-inducing. Don't do it all the time. Take time to unplug. Go do something else. Play a video game for a few hours. Watch movies. Spread your wings.

Don't be afraid to ask people you know.

Do you know people who seem to be on the pulse of things? Who seem to have a handle on what is going on? Talk to them about it. Find out their viewpoint. Hopefully you know a few people that fit in this bracket. If they are cool people, then they would rather you ask than pretend you know, and we should have gotten over our shame of not knowing a thing back in high school.

Of course, people you know and trust will have their own biases - but if they have done their due diligence, they will tell you about it. If they haven't, then their bias may well become obvious as you get to know their views on a particular topic.

I hope that this blog entry has been useful. It certainly helped me, to remind myself of my own rules and guidelines: check your sources, take a breath before you read on something you think will make you angry, and don't rely on a headline to tell you what the news is.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the world isn't actually coming to an end - but at least you will be better informed about it.

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.