Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Information Is Power (1)
*test post*
https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?formkey=dE9tdnY3a29XNG51VkQwd2Y5dHA3UUE6MQ
Hallo! This is actually just a group project for a class we have in college.
Did you know that most of the things we fear is statistically full of bullshit?
According to most people, driving drunk is an incredibly dangerous pastime - even though Malcolm Gladwell proved empirically that this it's more dangerous to walk drunk than it is to drive - a fatal accident only occurs once every 200++ million miles of driving - once in around 528 years of straight driving.
Why does the media love to do this? What's up with scaring people? It's not like it's halloween ALL THE TIME.
The first answer is simple : money. lots of people can make money by hedging on the fear that mass scale propaganda can cause. Think about bird flu - that shit barely killed 10 people (!!!!) and yet a level two international pandemic was issued by the world health organization. Fosheez.
The second answer is less obvious : news people run out of stuff to report. Sometimes, we need a global scare in order for the news people to just be HAPPY. Think about it - would news sell as well without DEATH SEX APOCALYPSE? Didn't think so.
Lastly, news is blown up even for altruistic reasons - the awareness of a topic : for instance, the 33 chilean miners who were trapped underground for a pee-drinking long time. They even promised that they wouldn't cannibalize each other when it came to it (LIARS). But then again, it's a story that has a lot of human capital strength, and is something that media has capitalized on.
There are a lot of things in this world that is statistically full of shit, but we believe these things because we as humans are brilliant. We have the unique characteristic of being SO SMART (compared to monkeys and stupid goats and hillbillies) that we have the luxury of being stupid once in a while. But don't forget -
Information is power.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/embeddedform?formkey=dE9tdnY3a29XNG51VkQwd2Y5dHA3UUE6MQ
Hallo! This is actually just a group project for a class we have in college.
Did you know that most of the things we fear is statistically full of bullshit?
According to most people, driving drunk is an incredibly dangerous pastime - even though Malcolm Gladwell proved empirically that this it's more dangerous to walk drunk than it is to drive - a fatal accident only occurs once every 200++ million miles of driving - once in around 528 years of straight driving.
Why does the media love to do this? What's up with scaring people? It's not like it's halloween ALL THE TIME.
The first answer is simple : money. lots of people can make money by hedging on the fear that mass scale propaganda can cause. Think about bird flu - that shit barely killed 10 people (!!!!) and yet a level two international pandemic was issued by the world health organization. Fosheez.
The second answer is less obvious : news people run out of stuff to report. Sometimes, we need a global scare in order for the news people to just be HAPPY. Think about it - would news sell as well without DEATH SEX APOCALYPSE? Didn't think so.
Lastly, news is blown up even for altruistic reasons - the awareness of a topic : for instance, the 33 chilean miners who were trapped underground for a pee-drinking long time. They even promised that they wouldn't cannibalize each other when it came to it (LIARS). But then again, it's a story that has a lot of human capital strength, and is something that media has capitalized on.
There are a lot of things in this world that is statistically full of shit, but we believe these things because we as humans are brilliant. We have the unique characteristic of being SO SMART (compared to monkeys and stupid goats and hillbillies) that we have the luxury of being stupid once in a while. But don't forget -
Information is power.
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