Just the facts! Really?

How often do you hear someone say, "just give me the facts." Maybe you say that sometime, too? This is such a delusion!

There is no such thing as "just the facts." All facts have context and the context determines the meaning of the facts. Facts by themselves have no meaning that anyone can trust.


For instance, recently I saw the media announcing the results of a poll.
47% wanted a democratic congress
41% a republican
12% undecided.

Obviously, the media's liberal bias would want to present FACTS in a way that people would believe that the democrats will take the House if the election was held now.

Is that what these FACTS say? Is the conclusion drawn from these FACTS true? Unless we think about this in greater context, we might be subject to believing that this FACT means this conclusion. If so, we are DELUSIONAL. One definition of delusional means, "based on faulty judgment."

By the way, the point of this blog is not political, but to show how people misuse facts to create faulty judgment in others, who do not pay enough attention to see the fault. The political scene just offers so many great examples.

Let's examine the context for these facts. This is a national poll, but representatives are elected in local districts, 435 of them. It so happens that Democratic districts are dense and homogeneous. Basically, they are the big cities. Republican districts are rural America, more sparse and diverse politically.

Therefore, the % of people who prefer a democrat in Congress is higher in districts that elect democrats than the % of people who prefer republicans are in districts that elect republicans. For sake of this discussion, let's assume on average that the Democrats elected to Congress receive 65% of the votes in their district and the Republicans elected to congress receive 55%.

If the national poll says 47% prefer democrats and 41% prefer republicans, then the Republicans would win the House 255 to 180. For the Democrats to win the house the national poll would need to show 48.5% to 39.5%.

Now I may be off a bit on my assumptions but the FACTS show that when a Democrat wins a seat, they have a higher % of the vote than when a Republican wins (on average). Without this context, a national poll is delusional.

But, then again, most of the American public just go along with the FACTS, as if they are the truth.

Humans are simply long on bias and short on PONDERING ....

I guess it is easier that way!!