[ExI] significant figures

[John Clark]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 10:02 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:



> >… has lied 16,241 times in the 3 years …
>
>
>
> *> News people often mix numbers having several significant digits to a
> subjective category. *
>

They didn't just pull that number out of the air, every single one of those
16,241 utterances can be specified, the only subjective part is in deciding
whether to call them "lies" or to use a euphemism like "misleading
statement".

> *It is analogous to saying “In the northern hemisphere it is cold 37.641
> percent of the time.” *
>

Misleading statements like "My opponent in this election Spike Jones has
said the northern hemisphere it is cold 37.641 percent of the time and I
have the quote to prove it!". Some would argue that wouldn't exactly be a
lie but.. well.. it wouldn't exactly demonstrate a strong urge to get at
the truth either.

John K Clark
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