Proofiness - Charles Seife [15]
Most people will be disappointed when they receive their refund checks in the mail. For example, George W. Bush made tax cuts a central thrust of his administration and always polished apples when describing them. A typical incident occurred at the end of his first term when he said, “The tax relief we passed, 11 million taxpayers this year will save $1,086 off their taxes.” (The White House quickly corrected the figures; Bush meant to say 111 million taxpayers and an average of $1,586 in savings.) As it happens, though, both figures were deceptive. The typical family didn’t see anywhere near $1,586 or $1,086 in tax breaks; most received less than $650. The reason was the same as the greedy-CEO example: a relatively small number of people received very large refunds, making the “average” very atypical. The rosy numbers coming out of the White House were technically true, but they were functionally lies—they were apple-polished to make them look much larger than they should.
Apple-polishing, cherry-picking, comparing apples to oranges—all the tricks of the fruit packer—present numbers in a misleading manner, distorting them to the point of falsehood. Potemkin numbers dress up nonsense in the guise of meaningful data. Disestimates stretch numbers beyond their breaking points, turning even valid measurements into lies. All of these techniques are forms of proofiness; all of them allow an unscrupulous person to make falsehoods look like numerical fact. And because we humans tend to think of numbers as representing absolute truth, we are hardwired to accept them without question.
Proofiness has such a hold over us because our minds are primed to accept mathematical falsehoods. Because of the way our brains work, certain kinds of numbers make them malfunction. As a result, we humans believe some absurd and embarrassing lies.
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Rorschach’s Demon
How easy it is to work over an undigested mass of data and emerge with a pattern, which at first glance, is so intricately put together that it is difficult to believe it is nothing more than the product of a man’s brain.
—Martin Gardner, Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science
Put down that credit card! Every time you make a purchase, you’re destroying your health and tottering one step closer to the grave. “Researchers Link Bad Debt to Bad Health,” blared the New York Times in 2000. Researchers at Ohio State had found that the deeper someone’s debt, the worse his health was—leading them to conclude that credit card debt “could be bad for physical health” as well as financial health. “This is part of the dark side of the economic boom,” said one of the scientists who studied the matter.
The newspapers are trying to convince us of a lot of silly things. Wearing red makes you perform better in sporting events. Smoking marijuana will make you schizophrenic. Left-handedness increases your risk of cancer. Heck, if you believe journalists, half of the objects in the world give you cancer—cell phones, baby bottles, microwaves, NutraSweet, power lines.15
Good news: you can take off your tinfoil beanie. Most of these ideas are every bit as stupid as they sound. They are all the products of a particular kind of proofiness, an unwanted side effect that stems from the way our minds work.
We humans are incredible at recognizing patterns. Nothing in the world—not even the most powerful computer—is as adept as we are at spotting subtle relationships between objects or events. Finding patterns is deeply ingrained in our minds; after all, our very survival as a species depended on it.
If you get sick after eating a bit of shellfish, your brain almost automatically makes the association: shellfish causes sickness. The aversion you probably feel next time you come across a shrimp cocktail is an atavistic defense mechanism—your brain, having made the association between shellfish and poison, is trying to keep you safe by preventing you from eating it again. It’s a pretty nifty trick;