Danielle Navarro recently wrote an amazing blog post about this phenomenon. It’s long and detailed so my favourite kind. It even shows the code.
And I realise now that other people are different from me. So the essence is: people may struggle with exact percentages but generally they can put things in order from more rare to more common, sometimes people really don’t know and they guess which gives a big difference when the true answer is very close to 0% or 100%, and finally… I don’t know, I forgot.
I’ve been arguing against these kinds of idiots for about 2 decades now.
Moron 1 says ‘Oh there’s been a 75% decrease in this problem since they introduced these new rules (IE, draconian, invasive and in violation of basic human rights that just happened to affect a group they dislike)’
Me: Facts and figures please
Moron 2: It’s 75% like they said
Me: No the numbers those percentages are based upon are the facts and figures… that’s just a statistic derived from them.
Moron 1: Go look it up yourself, I’m not doing your research for you.
Me: You made the claim, you are responsible for providing the evidence… But since you don’t want too… I did, and I can understand why you didn’t want to provide them.
Me: There was a decrease in deaths from 4 to 1 over the previous year… and those 4 deaths happened because of 1 traffic collision that claimed all 4 lives… technically a 75% reduction in deaths. But the number incidents that happened actually increased from 64 to 73.
Moron 1: (silence)
Moron 2: (silence)
That’s a pretty accurate account of how these things go… claim a % refuse to provide the numbers… numbers actually show a difference that could almost be within a margin of error, or rely entirely on random outliers that massively skew the data and from a statistical point of view are so far from the avg that they are discounted.
It’s like when people claimed that femisism was causing a spike in divorce and pointed to a % rise in the 70’s… when the actual causes was women being able to achieve financial independence, because they didn’t need their husbands permission to get a mortgage, or a loan, or even a credit card… and were able to safely leave abusive marriages and become independent.
Same thing happened with a spike in left handed people being reported… after practices forcing lefties to use their right (by abusive means) was stopped.
In both cases… the avgs went along at the same rate, suddenly spiked and then carried on at a level rate again.
Same happening right now with autism diagnosis, sudden spike as it’s understood and diagnosed more easily… then levels even out once more.
You can apply this statistical logic to almost anything that the bigots claim to be ‘a sudden spike in (insert bigoted view here)’… attitudes change… suffers no longer hiding who they are and society as a whole being more open and tolerant of it. But the bigots always scream the loudest and they’re becoming emboldened to reveal their true selves more and more… If anyone needs to be back in the closest stewing over their own hatred… it’s those pieces of shit. But on the bright side, it makes them easier to spot and shun from civilised solciety.
I don’t disagree with your point at all, but I don’t think the divorce thing is separate from feminism. Women became financially independent because of feminism, and felt emboldened and worthwhile enough to leave abusive situations because of feminism.
It’s perhaps fairer to say that we can, at least partially, credit feminism with these things. It didn’t magically do it in the way that misogynists would like to think, but it’s definitely not unrelated.
Or they don’t really understand percentages.
Danielle Navarro recently wrote an amazing blog post about this phenomenon. It’s long and detailed so my favourite kind. It even shows the code.
And I realise now that other people are different from me. So the essence is: people may struggle with exact percentages but generally they can put things in order from more rare to more common, sometimes people really don’t know and they guess which gives a big difference when the true answer is very close to 0% or 100%, and finally… I don’t know, I forgot.
https://blog.djnavarro.net/posts/2025-09-21_probability-judgement/
Trump recently claimed he has lowered drug prices by 1500%. That’s mathematically impossible.
That’s also from the worst brain on the planet. I’m up for shitting on the British any day of the week but I think that comparison is going too far.
30% of USAmericans voted for that worst brain and many (most?) of them lap up such bs from him unquestionably.
I was backing up your claim…
They being the Anglosphere IMO (am definitely counting fellow Australians).
I’ve been arguing against these kinds of idiots for about 2 decades now.
Moron 1 says ‘Oh there’s been a 75% decrease in this problem since they introduced these new rules (IE, draconian, invasive and in violation of basic human rights that just happened to affect a group they dislike)’
Me: Facts and figures please
Moron 2: It’s 75% like they said
Me: No the numbers those percentages are based upon are the facts and figures… that’s just a statistic derived from them.
Moron 1: Go look it up yourself, I’m not doing your research for you.
Me: You made the claim, you are responsible for providing the evidence… But since you don’t want too… I did, and I can understand why you didn’t want to provide them.
Me: There was a decrease in deaths from 4 to 1 over the previous year… and those 4 deaths happened because of 1 traffic collision that claimed all 4 lives… technically a 75% reduction in deaths. But the number incidents that happened actually increased from 64 to 73.
Moron 1: (silence) Moron 2: (silence)
That’s a pretty accurate account of how these things go… claim a % refuse to provide the numbers… numbers actually show a difference that could almost be within a margin of error, or rely entirely on random outliers that massively skew the data and from a statistical point of view are so far from the avg that they are discounted.
It’s like when people claimed that femisism was causing a spike in divorce and pointed to a % rise in the 70’s… when the actual causes was women being able to achieve financial independence, because they didn’t need their husbands permission to get a mortgage, or a loan, or even a credit card… and were able to safely leave abusive marriages and become independent.
Same thing happened with a spike in left handed people being reported… after practices forcing lefties to use their right (by abusive means) was stopped.
In both cases… the avgs went along at the same rate, suddenly spiked and then carried on at a level rate again.
Same happening right now with autism diagnosis, sudden spike as it’s understood and diagnosed more easily… then levels even out once more.
You can apply this statistical logic to almost anything that the bigots claim to be ‘a sudden spike in (insert bigoted view here)’… attitudes change… suffers no longer hiding who they are and society as a whole being more open and tolerant of it. But the bigots always scream the loudest and they’re becoming emboldened to reveal their true selves more and more… If anyone needs to be back in the closest stewing over their own hatred… it’s those pieces of shit. But on the bright side, it makes them easier to spot and shun from civilised solciety.
I don’t disagree with your point at all, but I don’t think the divorce thing is separate from feminism. Women became financially independent because of feminism, and felt emboldened and worthwhile enough to leave abusive situations because of feminism.
It’s perhaps fairer to say that we can, at least partially, credit feminism with these things. It didn’t magically do it in the way that misogynists would like to think, but it’s definitely not unrelated.
This is such an interesting read. Thank you for posting it.
Thanks for the read!