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Comment by ebbv | Hacker News Reader

My problem with Rosling is that he furthers one of the problems with our modern discourse; the assumption that a given dataset inevitably leads to one conclusion. It's not true. I wish it were but it isn't.

The same statistics about mass incarceration of African American males in the US that leads me to conclude that we have an issue of systemic racism leads far right people to conclude that African American males have an inherent tendency toward criminality. I would call that a gross misrepresentation of the data, but it is what happens.

Rosling, in my mind, is guilty of misrepresenting some data, and I'm sure in his mind my conclusions based on the same data are equally ill informed.

But Rosling tends, for me, not to make convincing arguments. He tends to throw up some graphs and say "Look! It's obvious we should do what I say!!"

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Have you lived in central Africa? I have, for a decade. I saw first hand the catastrophic consequences of misguided "help".

You are responding about subtleties ("misrepresenting 'some' data") when the problem he's going after -- misguided feel-good intervention by the under informed, is more harmful than helpful -- is very real and bigger than any given issue.

You are down in the weeds debating this or that fact, instead, come up a level and help explain to others that understanding precedes helping -- which it sounds like you agree with, and is a more important point.

I find that people tend to look for a singular cause; a trail of evidence that leads to only one correct conclusion. It's an attitude exploited by crime dramas, TV shows, literature, etc.

Reality, of course, is far more complex, and I think Rosling is trying to play to those biases in human nature in order to influence people. Pointing to one inherent "truth" in the data is far more effective in convincing people than "it's complicated".

> Pointing to one inherent "truth" in the data is far more effective in convincing people than "it's complicated".

Yep and this is my biggest problem with populist "thinkers" like Gladwell and Rosling. They actually encourage the opposite of thinking; providing ready made simplistic conclusions for their audience.

Sure, but that's just human nature, and even if it weren't, there isn't enough time for everyone to understand everything. A civilization at our level of sophistication requires specialization. I think the best you can hope for is intellectual honesty from these guys.

And you concluding that insane incarceration rates are predominantly due to racism is called critical thinking?

> Rosling, in my mind, is guilty of misrepresenting some data

Examples?

His famous TED talk against doing anything about climate change (a position which I think he later rescinded?) and instead focusing those funds on health and poverty reduction instead is littered with it, and based on a false assumption to begin with; that there is a pile of money that is already set aside and we're all in charge of directing it.

The reality is far more complicated. We aren't taking money away from fighting Malaria when we raise taxes on gas guzzling cars, to give just one example.

You're disagreeing with his policy position. But where did he misrepresent data?

I just explained that. He misrepresents the data by presenting it as an either or (either we fight climate change OR we fight poverty) when it isn't. That misrepresentation distorts how you interpret all the data in his talk.

I'm not interested in nit picking back and forth. Go defend Rosling to someone else.

I have no idea who Rosling is. That's just not what "misrepresent data" means.

But that's not a data misrepresentation. It's a paradigm misrepresentation.

In which TED talk did he advocate against doing anything about climate change?

Have you conflated Bjorn Lomborg and Hans Rosling?

>His famous TED talk against doing anything about climate change

Could you link that talk?

> leads far right people to conclude that African American males have an inherent tendency toward criminality.

I think you're being uncharitable. Conservatives wouldn't claim that African American males have inherent criminality. That would be unbelievably racist on its own. They instead say that African American males are simply more likely to commit crimes, which seems statistically true, if a tad misleading.

Of course, you are both probably wrong and the true underlying cause is actually economic disparity, which would encompass both interpretations. People who are more poor simply commit more crimes out of desperation, and African Americans are poorer due to historical reasons stemming from racism.

i believe he said "far right". this could be interpreted as anything from tea party to neo nazis and fascists depending on what "far" means. However i wouldn't take it to be directed to all "Conservatives".

Could be. "Far right" has many different meanings depending on who you ask.

No, folks on the right like to look at some other stats to broaden our understanding. A favorite statistic on the right is the number of African American adult males who grow up in low income situations without a father who then commit crimes as an adult. This same increase happens with every other race who is in a low income situation without a father in the house.

Try not to throw dirt on others when making a point as people filter the point through the shade you cast.

Because a substantial portion of these fathers are incarcerated due to issues with our criminal justice system?

If the right were indeed looking more broadly I would expect them to be advocates for justice system reform instead of "law and order."

Some of them. But I would image the great bulk of them are incarcerated because they committed crimes.

The US has a lot of laws. People break them all the time. This doesn't frequently result in jail time.

Incarceration is determined by a combination of sentencing guidelines, public policy, access to adequate defence, policing, etc.

These factors actively shape our prison population. The War on Drugs, Three Strikes, etc have resulted in the US having the largest prison population (both in total and per capita) in the entire world. This is pretty objectively broken.

On top of this, we have a system that is stacked against certain groups and turn a blind eye to the fact that it perpetuates the cycle with broken homes and damaged communities.

When you look at the fact that we have more people locked up than any other nation and a growing prison population I'm not sure how a thoughtful answer can be more laws and Stricter enforcement.

My favorite example here is marijuana trafficking, for which there is still a generation of people in prison, yet is now becoming an industry that YC is investing in (http://blog.ycombinator.com/meadow-yc-w15-ubered-over-a-doct...).

Some people, when they disrupt legal regulations to create an industry, go to jail and don't come back.

i think we're more concerned with how it's more profitable to be fatherless on welfare and the high rate of out of wedlock births also encouraged by the current welfare rules. Their is a fairly large chunk of Republicans that are "rule of law" instead, and that makes quite a bit of difference. The problems with the justice system are the end not the root of the problem. Sadly, one justice problem which kills families is more prominent in Democratic lead cities: civil asset forfeiture. Philadelphia being the prime example.

I think culture also plays a role in explaining crime stats, not just poverty. Low income asian areas experience far fewer crime levels than corresponding low income black areas.

Look at the statistics on fatherless homes and you'll see it even across race or culture as a future prediction of trouble.

And fatherless homes by race?

EDIT: I wonder how closely that tracks marijuana use, and how much fatherless homes are caused by incarceration.

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