Washington Post
Okay, so nowadays we have a whole lot of data at our fingertips. We have statistics online for just about anything we want. That doesn’t make it any easier for us to make the correct decisions. Because there are a whole bunch of people out there pushing their interpretation of the data at us, and if we’re not careful we end up listening to what we want to hear and missing important information because it might be uncomfortable.
And it is very rare that reality slaps us in the face and we find out what fools we’ve been.
Google Searches
“How many black police officers killed white suspects?”
On the first two pages of hits, there is only one article that actually addresses the question. Does this mean there is no information? No. The Google search algorithms are tuned to the people who play the Search Engine Optimization game the best, followed distantly by the number of people making that specific search. Just because one slant on an argument comes up stronger in a Google Search doesn’t mean anything.
Verity by Popularity: Facebook Views
You’ve heard about “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Facts are only facts, and they can be twisted and interpreted many ways. So a lot of experienced communicators push their interpretation out to a lot of people on Facebook. It doesn’t mean they have the best slant on the evidence. Just because something catchy had 12 million views on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s a popular idea, or that it’s even true. How many people looked at it and disagreed?
Police Violence: Chicken or the Egg?
The movement to put all American police forces under Federal supervision stirred up a swirl of protest. Of course it did. Local demagogues would no longer be able to play their private games with carefully selected data in their own bailiwicks, giving them control. The introduction of a Federal database on incidents of police violence would mean that everyone had the same data to work with. Then people with their heads on straight could make their own choices of what to think.
Just an Example
Vanity Fair came up with the statistics that when police searched white drivers after a traffic stop, they were twice as likely to find contraband as with black or hispanic drivers. Are whites twice as likely to be breaking the law? No, it probably means that the police were more likely to search white drivers with good cause, and had poorer (i.e. racist) reasons for searching those of colour. Probably. Who knows?
Garbage in…?
All the data available on police violence at the moment is fragmented, collected from multiple sources by diverse means, and used by absolutely everyone to promote knee-jerk reactions for a myriad of causes. Thus, from a scientific or logical prospective, all that data is garbage. And you know what they say about putting garbage into a system. What comes out will be pure politics.
I would suggest that racism in any country’s police forces is more a symptom than a cause. Data is hard to come by. Black officers in the States are killing black people, too, but, like “dog bites man,” it doesn’t make interesting news. So nobody looks it up on Google. So it doesn’t exist.
And Then Reality Strikes
The most interesting point that came out of the Houston shootings this week was the role played by the pretend warriors. I hadn’t realized that there were hundreds of these self-proclaimed saviours out there wandering the streets with AK-47s, ready to Defend Freedom. But if you think about it, what does one of these dreamers do when the shooting starts?
If he’s got any brains he runs, of course. Figure it out. He has a bunch of people that look exactly like him shooting at a bunch of easily identified uniformed policemen. Who are the cops likely to shoot? His best bet is to get out of there fast.
The most important thing the inexperienced warrior finds out in his first fight is how quickly all the planning goes adrift. These guys listened to the propaganda on their favourite news sources and pictured themselves on the front line, shoulder-to-shoulder with the cops, helping out and saving the day. Reality came along, and they found themselves in no-man’s-land with both sides shooting at them.
I hope Donald Trump is proud of them.