(In this I am “lakitu”; this is in a philosophy chatroom around midnight overnight last night:)

{01:29:38 am} <lakitu> “your odds of being struck by lightning are 1 in a 1,000,000” – we’ve all heard these odds before, but I feel so strongly about the usefulness of real-life stats that I would ‘like to see – because it would be better – media teach the most helpful stats in Life – & put them in perspective with comparisons ‘like “(…), comparable to your odds of be


{01:29:38 am} <lakitu> ing struck by lightning” – & try to teach helpful things like protocols, best practices for dealing with these situations should they arise


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{01:36:23 am} <lakitu> e.g. instead of “building collapses, horror as everyone searches thru the rubble – day 6” – e.g. “car accidents affect 1 in 100 in the U.S. – here are the top 7 ways to prevent being the victim of a car accident: (…)”;


{01:36:31 am} <lakitu> (Wb fattratt)


{01:36:38 am} <fattratt> hi


{01:38:21 am} <lakitu> I think that would – almost necessarily – help more people more, to proportion our media to that ‘statisticality’ (oftenness) & importance of events – not that you do a terrible job now, but to consciously use this principle could help out editors & publishers.


{01:39:57 am} <lakitu> very sought-after for me is an alamanc of Life phenomena & their statistics – one of those very comprehensive reference works that does the best it can to estimate just every nook & cranny of Life. I think that would be one of the best reference-work reads for people


{01:41:57 am} <fattratt> I need to lie down for a bit.


{01:42:01 am} <lakitu> ok


{01:42:05 am} <lakitu> c u.


{01:43:20 am} <lakitu> everything from getting struck by lightning to getting abused by a spouse to winning the lottery to getting a hole in one in golf. what is Life ‘like? this would concentrate it together in one reference work pretty good.


{01:43:26 am} <lakitu> (sic)


{01:45:08 am} <lakitu> we maybe could teach some basic statistics in earlier mathematics education – maybe even high school; potentially.


{01:46:06 am} <lakitu> some teachers I know want algebra phased out of high-school education. maybe staatistics could occupy some of what used to be algebra.


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{01:48:19 am} <lakitu> it always helped me to learn that the odds of two events happening in a row are the multiplication of their odds: e.g. predicting a coin flip twice in a row is 1/2 * 1/2 = 1/4 (25% chance). predicting it correctly a 3rd time just multiplies it again, 1/4 * 1/2 = 1/8 (12.5% chance), etc.


{01:53:32 am} <lakitu> Bayes, of Bayeesian probability, was actually a Presbyterian minister, by the way. kind of like how Roger Bacon, one of empiricism’s earliest formulators, was a Franciscan Friar.


{01:58:54 am} <lakitu> but yes, statistics – in proportion to how helpful they are to know: likelihood * importance – could be a better governing principle for journalism than happenstance or worse, Twitter bots sowing discord & creating artificial waves of culture that we weren’t asking for


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{02:02:30 am} <lakitu> * importance * likelihood


{02:03:36 am} <Fixion> hey lakitu hows things?


{02:03:52 am} <lakitu> statistical & of their own importance.


{02:04:02 am} <Fixion> what questions can math not solve?


{02:04:53 am} <lakitu> not all questions are things to be solved . . .


{02:09:50 am} <lakitu> – or for example how often someone loses their dog, ways to prevent this, what to do if you lose your dog. that has such educational value that it’s ‘like a public service announcement – it’s that helpful– not that all journalism should be this sort of thing, but it really is helpful to proportion the content to the importance times the likelihood


{02:09:50 am} <lakitu> .


{02:15:40 am} <lakitu> we can still publish interviews & essays, & so on – these are great – but this is just one extra helpful format for articles by journalists.