After all nothing is more trustworthy than statistics. They should never be conflated with lies or damned lies.
You shouldn't trust your perception, and shouldn't trust statistics. You should question both.
My personal perception can be right as well as statistics the issue is when I use my own limited experience to generalize.
Why would these be in conflict unless you take your personal experience and draw a conclusion beyond that?
>After all nothing is more trustworthy than statistics. They should never be conflated with lies or damned lies.
Why can't I trust statistics if they are sometimes lies?
> It's pretty wild for a random HN user to label one of the top 10 most successful technology leaders of our time as "insane"
Here, let me go. I think it is insane that Elon Musk took so much ketamine that he kept peeing his pants and then kept telling people about it. I think it is insane he's been promising that FSD is <2 years away for the past decade.
Given two sets of data: The statistics and your anecdotal evidence.
The probability of anecdotal evidence being correct must be lower than than the anecdotal evidence being incorrect when it conflicts with the statistics since the statistics come from anecdotal evidence.
Therefore, all other things being equal, if you are presented with data that conflicts with your anecdotal evidence the data has the higher probability of being correct.
It's not a dig against math or statistics. It's a dig against the people using statistics. What do you do when, statistically, the majority of statistics you're given are lies, wrong, irrelevant, misleading, or out of context? You ground yourself in direct experience.
Even simple events are difficult to evaluate. One podcaster I've listened to for a decade had an issue on a flight. He bumped into a passenger in front of him and words were exchanged. Eventually he was deplaned by the pilot. In his telling of the story, it was completely outrageous and unwarranted. But obviously to others involved, he was completely in the wrong, enough to be deplaned.
So no, "direct experiences" are definitely filtered.
For another example, my daughters feel unsafe walking alone at night in my city's downtown area. Whereas I, walking at the same time in the same area, don't feel any danger at all. Every human experience is mediated by our past history.
Also by others who may have an agenda.
What's more likely. That a person is afraid of walking alone in your city at night because of a personal experience (like being the victim of a crime) or what they heard from other people?
What is the context or background for this statement? It's completely insane to think something like this