
Anecdotes Aren't Data - MarkMc
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/focal-point-harvard-professor-steven-pinker-says-the-truth-lies-in-the-data/
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hhs
I’m surprised there’s no mention of how anecdotes and rhetoric fit into
storytelling. I’ve found that good, empirically-based historians tend to weave
in facts and data through stories.

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Bostonian
"His Republican predecessor created a massive new federal department and
launched two destructive wars to protect Americans against a hazard,
terrorism, that most years kills fewer people than bee stings and lightning
strikes."

This is glib. Perhaps some of GW Bush's policies prevented a large scale
attack such as 9/11 from recurring. Many terrorist plots have been foiled
since then.

~~~
eesmith
And perhaps this rock keeps tigers away -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw)
.

A lot of the 'terrorist plots' the government has found seem more contrived
than meaningful. Eg, cases where if the government had done nothing, then it
seems likely that nothing still would have happened.

Certainly we know that funding was taken away from monitoring and
investigating white supremacist terrorism networks in the US in order to look
for external ones connected to Moslem. And we know that more people and damage
has occurred from white supremacist terrorism.

So, from an equally specious argument, perhaps some of GW Bush's policies lead
to more deaths from terrorism.

