Robert Rapier on the Use of Data
From Energy Analyst Robert Rapier:
I never cease to be amazed by people who flatly reject data that are crystal clear.
I once had a guy get huffy because he insisted that gasoline prices at the end of Obama’s second term were $4.00 a gallon, and Trump brought them down. I showed him the data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) — a division of the Department of Energy — that gasoline prices had fallen below $2.00 a gallon during Obama’s last year in office.
Instead of admitting he was wrong when confronted with the data, he got very nasty with personal insults, and claimed that the data was falsified. He said “I know what I remember, and all you have is your data.”
Then last week a guy called me a “poor mislead person” for showing — again with the data — that President Trump’s claim that he refilled an empty Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) was false. The highest-ever level for the SPR took place when Obama was in office, and it actually declined when Trump was in office. So Trump didn’t inherit a mostly empty SPR as he claimed, nor did he fill it. See the graphic below.
People like this make up a substantial portion of the population. They reject data in favor of their beliefs. That’s how they can maintain that Biden wasn’t legitimately elected. Data means nothing to them, so you will never convince them with data. It’s all about their beliefs.
Yes. It is for this reason that someone said the other day, “We need to understand that 25% of this country is gone, and that, in particular, it’s not coming back.”
It’s a hard pill to swallow, knowing that if you’re sitting next to someone on an airplane, there’s a solid chance that his beliefs are not informed by any sort of reason, but simply his desires.
