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What Does Data Tell Us?
Why the human brain prefers meaningless stand-alone numbers to context-rich information
We’re going to begin with a simple illustration of a universal fact: the human brain has evolved to rely on anecdote and is utterly useless when it comes to attempting to reason from context-rich information. Take a look at the two statements below, each of which says precisely the same thing but in different ways:
Eating bacon increases your risk of cancer by 39%.
Eating 100g of fried bacon every day raises your lifetime risk of bowel cancer from 0.031% to 0.043%.
Which is more immediately compelling and scary? Obviously the first presentation. Yet they are in fact using identical data. The reason the first presentation scares us is because our brains aren’t evolved to deal with numbers or mathematical contextualization. We’re hardwired to respond to simple ideas, and the first presentation is a simple idea.
That’s why the mass media always gives us context-free numbers instead of useful data. You think you’re getting news, but what you’re actually getting is sensationalism. Media organizations all know that our brains have very little interest in reality; conversely, we’re absolutely addicted to sensation.
Therefore the media, both traditional and social, relies entirely on generating…
