... by redefining the words people use you can manipulate the way they think.
Warning TL;DR ahead.
You made a lot of good points and I want to address that one with a real-world example.
An example comes from the US 2020 election, which, as you probably know was hotly contested. One side promulgated that there was significant cheating and offered up the now infamous “one in a quadrillion” defense. The message, that repeatedly went out to millions of people was that, given the early lead by one candidate, in some states, the chances of that candidate losing the state was less than one in a quadrillion, or 1 in
1,000,000,000,000,000. By extension; that is, having occurred in multiple states, the odds of the event happening decrease to less than one in a quadrillion to the fourth power.
The message was not just carried all over the media; it actually appeared in an appeal/motion/brief to the SCOTUS – the highest court in the US. Here is the actual brief:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/163048/20201208132827887_TX-v-State-ExpedMot 2020-12-07 FINAL.pdf
So, how does this claim work? You can see the whole presentation in Appendix A, but generally, the idea is that given the vote tally with 93% of the vote in (candidate X ahead), the final outcome of candidate Y finishing ahead is so unlikely that there must be an investigation of impropriety (this example is for the state of Georgia).
Consider two situations.
In the first, we take all of the votes in the state of Georgia and put them in some large container. For illustration, assume each vote is represented by a coin (red for one party, blue for another party and green for 3rd party and write in votes – which make up a very small proportion of the total.
AT RANDOM, we draw 93% of the votes. In this case, “at random”, means that each time we draw a coin, every coin in the bin (or remaining in the bin) has an equal probability of being chosen. Under these conditions, and considering the number of votes, to find a big difference between the tallies at 93% counted versus at 100% counted, would, in fact, be reasonably represented by those extreme Z-scores.
In the second, we examine what actually happened. Georgia is a state in the US which is made of counties. These counties can reasonably be viewed historically (looking at the results of the last few elections) as predominately red, predominately blue, or mixed (sometimes called purple) – and to all sorts of degrees.
Counties are of varying sizes. Each county reports their own vote tally and at their own rate. They can also follow their own rules as to when mail-in votes are counted, other kinds of absentee ballots and so on. Because the counties can be so different in size, they are not all finished counting and reporting their votes at the same time; small counties generally finish earlier than large counties and staff size matters and a bunch of other factors. We watch all of this in real time as the chunks of tallies gets reported. The last 7% does not need to be representative of the first 7% or the first 93%.
Because the real world situation is in the second example and not the first example, the statistical claim is bogus. The reporting of vote tallies is not a random process; it is distinctly and easily understandable to NOT BE RANDOM – so long as we can agree on what the word ‘random’ means.
Like you, I also don’t know if it is getting better or worse, but when you water down the meaning of random processes and you combine the watering down with “alternative truths” and a declining standard of proof, you have something nefarious. Yes, I know, I am talking about the meaning of one word and its misuse is not the cause of the world’s problems, but I hope others see that the principle is there and it is not trivial.
I also note that such propaganda is not limited to politics and certainly not one side or the other; it is extant, whether it is the crazy conspiracy claim or the free energy machine. Dumb it down and repeat.
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