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I was thinking about anecdotes recently. As we all know, calling something an anecdote in a political debate usually isn't positive, it's implying it's one case with 0 statistical significance. And for the most part, this holds up, you can't make policy on a single story, and you need the stats.

But I've also been thinking about human perception of the numbers of statistics. Without the emotional attachment to perceive what those numbers really mean, the statistic can often become meaningless. For example, sometimes the number is so large that humans can't perceive it easily, and thus can downplay it more easily. Also, say there's a stat that says a given percentage of the population are in some bad situation or had some bad thing happen to them. That stat can easily lose power if opponents of the results simply write it off as people who deserved what happened or caused it themselves, things that can't really be easily disproven with stats as there's so many different people and stories under that statistic.

I'm just thinking, politics these days might have a lot more empathy if a sampling of people's stories were shown alongside the raw statistics. It would carry a lot more weight as well. I dunno, just a thought I've had.

politics these days might have a lot more empathy if a sampling of people’s stories were shown alongside the raw statistics

Goodness no. The issues that are currently the most flush with anecdotes – immigration, law and order, gun control, and feminism, to name a few – are also the ones where the level of dialogue has degraded to people shitting on each other over Twitter. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Fair enough mare, I didn't consider how people get tangled up into anecdotes over the actual evidence.

I'm just concerned that there's also a lot of cases of people losing touch with empathy for other folks when they see the news and whatnot, and it's concerning. You can't think of a proper worldview if your axioms of ethics are twisted.

Anecdotes aren't always bad obviously. I recommend J D Vance's viral memoir Hillbilly Elegy for an example of anecdotes at their best. He dedicates most of the introductory chapter to stressing that the purpose of his observations is not to advance a policy agenda or supplant statistics or arguments by experts, but to provide an empathetic view of an oft-forgotten part of American society.

The problem is that most people aren't as articulate or generous as Vance.

Statistics can be misinterpreted or maliciously applied just as easily as anecdotes, but they are at least more difficult to abuse as a rhetorical tool.

I'll give that a read at some point, thanks. It does sound very interesting.

I do think there's some cases where statistics and raw facts are used to push a policy that benefits a group while lacking empathy for the effects of policy on people. While scientific racism is discredited now, sadly it wasn't viewed as pseudoscience at their peak, and the people promoting it did plenty of research that occasionally stands the test of time but is understood to have been misinterpreted to support the ideal.

But even if it was all true, a lot of the policies proposed completely lacked empathy for the people affected. Eugenics being the extreme example there to make the point.

And I see some shades of that now in modern discourse. People who respond to the statistic of black people committing more crime with "why not get rid of the black people". If you abandon care for your fellow man as they don't fit a certain criteria, you can easily reach such a conclusion.

One is an anecdote, million is a statistic or survey.

I recently wrote a book review on "The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker" by Steven Greenhouse. I think the gist of the review is relevant here.

In my review I discuss how each chapter of the book focuses on a single story. The person in the story is a "victim" of economic circumstances the result of which is that they suffer "tough times." One worker, an undocumented alien, suffers at the hand of her New York employer who underpays and overworks her. Another is a factory worker who's company is bought and sold multiple times as the each owner tries to make an unprofitable plant profitable. The 'solution' eventually reached is to continue to pay the current workforce the prevailing union wage, but to have a new wage structure for new hires. The plan worker laments the change and even though he won't lose any of his income because of it, laments that he doesn't know how he will send his kids to college. This and about a dozen other similar stories illustrate and personalize the "tough times" of the American worker. These are anecdotes and you, the reader, are supposed to feel bad for the oppressed workers who endure the situations.

Along the way are some statistics. But not many. Most of the writing is anecdotal. No attempt is made to analyze the stories. The writer never points out that the undocumented worker put herself in the situation she put herself by crossing the border illegally. The factory worker is never reminded that his wages are not going down or that it is not his automatic right to send his children to college. In other words, the purpose of the anecdotes is not to analyze the situation but to tug at the heart strings of the reader. And it does that very well indeed.

The book finishes with a chapter on solutions. More unionization, a higher minimum wage, amnesty for the undocumented workers, are suggested along with the usual litany of solutions one would expect from a left leaning writer. But no where does the author actually analyze the size and scope of the problem, how the solutions would actually solve the problems if they are, or why the problems are problems in the first place.

Aristotle spoke of persuasion as possible from three directions. You can persuade a person by getting them to think your analysis is the correct one -- usually by taking them through the steps. You can persuade a person by showing them you are to believed because you have superior knowledge, training, etc (you are an expert). Or you can persuade a person by getting them to feel for the "victim" and to assign praise or blame upon somebody. Of the three Aristotle thought the last was like "warping a ruler".

Yet, if you listen to most news shows they are full of anecdotes. Do we really need to know the story of the mother who's son has just been shot? That she feels bad? Do we really need an interview with her to empathize? What is the point of interviewing a person in grief if not to give a cathartic experience to the viewers? Does the interview really bring the solution to the problem any closer or make it any clearer?

But to empathize is to feel what the other feels. And if we are feeling, even in a small degree, what the other is suffering isn't it a normal thing to grab the first "solution" one sees to relieve the pain? In other words, when we suffer we are much more likely to grab whatever solution we can to reduce the suffering? Even if it may not be the right one.

The Romans thought a good rhetorician would be a person who spoke with "wisdom and eloquence." Often anecdotes provide eloquent pictures of the problem, but without the wisdom of sound reasoning and analysis we are just as likely to do harm in response to those pictures than good when we reach for the first "solution" we may find.

AJ