The 2020 Media, with an Incredible Way of Putting It


Posted On: Friday - March 6th 2020 1:01PM MST
In Topics: 
  General Stupidity  TV, aka Gov't Media  Humor  Media Stupidity

As promised just earlier today, we will present some stupidity that is SO stupid, that we're just gonna have to start over and re-calculate that best fit curve up top*. Sure, there are outliers, but the people in the video below are not out there lying - they are all just extremely stupid.

This is not your ordinary moved-the-decimal-point-wrong error or even ordinary innumeracy. This is an error of 6 orders of magnitude! Now, that can be done, if you try to do a quick calculation in your head and are dealing with large numbers such as the US national debt in dollars or the size of our galaxy in miles. However, these people are on TV - do they not have ANYBODY to check their work? (That's the even scarier part - perhaps they do.)

Wait, wait, ... "Don't tell us if you're ahead of us on the math." - TV Newsman Brian Williams.




See, now even if you're not good with numbers, results of calculations or even just qualitative results should be checked with DIMS - Does It Make Sense? That helps - a lot! In this case, could Mara Gay, member of the NY Times Editorial Board, no less, and the Newsman Mr. Williams have not thought just a bit, even as they were saying this (though better yet, when they first read the tweet)?:

"Hmmm, that's not all of Mr. Bloomberg's money, even..." I mean he's not sitting under a piece of newspaper on a grate outside the Bloomberg building or anything. "... so, that means any of these rich guys could give away just some of their money and make all Americans millionaires. But, wait, some of these guys ARE philanthropists and give away 1/2 of their money, but we're still NOT all millionaires or even close." Does it make sense that we have Socialist politicians wanting to tax the rich a whole lot, but even Mr. Yang never gave a number over $1,000 a month? I mean he's Chinese, so you know HE can do math right...?

Could you not check a division calculation with a multiplication? When you hear "327 million Americans" and then "500 million dollars" then doesn't it just scream out "oh, over a buck but not 2 bucks"? Oh, or break out a calculator or something.

Well, as both these elite Media folks at MSNBC put it, regarding this math tweet by Mekita Rivas: "It's an incredible way of putting it." These people are the elites and they have deigned to tell Americans what's good for us for years, yet they are complete idiots. Please remember this video when you want to believe one of these people on ANYTHING. If they are right, it's just by accident.

Oh, and yes, I would like my $1.53 in the form of a cashier's check please. Thanks, Mike!


PS: From the little bit I've read, Mr. (I guess, I dunno, WTF kind of name is Mekita?) Rivas was not serious. If this was indeed a trolling effort, it was spectacular, and it does motivate me to write a quick post about trolling.


* I noticed a while back that we need to redo that graphic at the top sometime, as we have very obviously not observed the peak as predicted on the x-axis.

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[UPDATE 10/20/23:]
Youtube took off the good version of the video. now, the best I got is someone's video off his phone of the TV set.
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Comments:
Moderator
Monday - March 9th 2020 8:46AM MST
PS: BC, I will definitely look for "Airframe". My parents had had Mr. Crichton's book "The Andromeda Strain" on their bookshelf when I was a kid. Even when old enough to read it, the size intimidated me. However, that'd be a pretty timely book to read now. OK, the disease in that novel was from aliens (I think), but maybe Coronavirus is being spread by aliens too ... illegal ones.

Thank you for the comments.
Moderator
Monday - March 9th 2020 8:43AM MST
PS: Yes, BC, the Gell-Mann effect was something mentioned a number of times by Steve Sailer and/or his commenters. Thank you for reminding me of the name used to describe this effect, which likely affects all of us.



BernCar
Monday - March 9th 2020 8:12AM MST
PS: Also, regarding the graphic at the top, I mentioned some time back that that peak about 2015 had to be just a local max.
BernCar
Monday - March 9th 2020 8:04AM MST
PS: As Daffy Duck would say (apologies to MBlanc46), "What a couple of 'maroons'!" And regarding your comment about remembering the morons in this video the next time you're inclined to believe the media: I think it was Michael Crichton who coined the term, "Gell-Man Amnesia Effect" after the physicist Murray Gell-Man who noted that he could read something in the newspaper about which he was informed, like physics, and he would recognize the newspaper account as pure BS. But then he turned the page and read another article outside his specialty and, without thinking of the previous inaccuracy, automatically lent credence to this second article because it was in the newspaper. As you have mentioned before, any media account about which you have personal knowledge is almost unrecognizable once reported.

Speaking of Michael Crichton, I've read a couple of his books and found them to be more than I had expected. I thought of you when I read a synopsis of his book, "Airframe". I'd never heard of that one, but it sounded like something right up your alley. Some of the critics found it to be a bit too technical, therefore dry, but sounds just about right for an engineer.
Jimbo
Sunday - March 8th 2020 11:43AM MST
PS: Archived short bio in comment by commmenter Hail:

https://www.unz.com/isteve/a-class-angle/#comment-3758441
Jimbo
Sunday - March 8th 2020 11:36AM MST
PS: No, it turns out Mekita Rivas really IS that stupid:

https://www.newsweek.com/brian-williams-mara-gay-nyt-bloomberg-math-wrong-1490953
Moderator
Saturday - March 7th 2020 8:59AM MST
PS: I am hopeful, Machine30, that even of MNSBS viewers, perhaps 90% of them would catch that error and chalk it up to... lessee... a MAGA-hat-wearing intern ...

OK, 50% ...

15 %??

I thought Okra was already assumed to be a women's daytime talk show idiot, but this lady is on the EDITORIAL BOARD .. of the ... OK, point taken.
Machine30
Saturday - March 7th 2020 8:38AM MST
PS that right there is an actual lol moment, except...90% of our “country’s” population gets their information from one msm source or another (didn’t Ophra claim a million blacks had been lynched?). It’s over Johnny!
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