Sunday, April 19, 2020

Idiocracy as Innumeracy


I watch a lot of '60's TV reruns because it's my childhood and I'm nostalgic.  "Twilight Zone," "Lost in Space," etc.  A surprising number of TZ episodes involve space flight, and always mention "BIG" numbers like "30 million miles," which is said as if that puts one beyond the boundaries the solar system.  Of course, the Sun is 93 million miles from earth, so 30 million is nothing.  But on earth 30 million miles is huge, so....

5 million people tested is basically the population of Houston; not even the SMSA, just Houston within city limits.  Houston is the biggest city in Texas, but only 3rd or 4th largest in the country.  Even if you had tested all the residents of Houston (no where near), it wouldn't be a large number compared to the other 322 million residents of the country.  But it sounds big, doesn't it?  I heard Mike Pence throwing around similar numbers, as if we should all be impressed.  And I found myself thinking of those "Twilight Zone" episodes where the number of miles from earth wouldn't put the characters into the asteroid belt, much less so far away the planet could have two suns (that distance would be measured in light years, not miles).

We didn't generally grasp that, then; but surely we understand 5 million is at best a major city, not the populace of even 10% of the country.  The leadership of the country clearly hopes we don't.  I'm not sure Trump grasps that basic fact at all, though.  How else could he talk about saving billions of Americans?

My wife keeps asking why we haven't invoked the DPA (a hot topic on MTP this morning).  The answer is plain:  the people left in the White House are too stupid to know how.  They're all clearly as innumerate as Trump.  What other capacities are they lacking?
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