The Pelosi Premium « MInTheGap

The Pelosi Premium

6 Aug, 2008 News and Politics gasoline pelosi prices
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Part of being able to be free is knowing the truth about gas prices:

Hat Tip: SayAnything

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4 Comments so far »

IAMB said,

Wrote on August 7, 2008 @ 11:54 am

Funny. Too bad it’s a correlation = causation fallacy for one… and doesn’t actually reflect reality in that it’s far too simple and skips a few ups and downs. The detailed 72 month trend looks a little more like this: http://ridethisbike.com/upload.....799810.jpg.
MInTheGap said,

Wrote on August 7, 2008 @ 12:49 pm

@IAMB: Totally true. It’s like the whole “Bush brought the recession” in 2000– before he even became President. Simply because a person is in office when something bad happens doesn’t mean that they caused it.

I guess this graphic is to attempt to head off the fallacy in the other direction. Unfortunately, in modern political discourse people aren’t as concerned about the facts as they are their impression of the facts.

I was reading an article the other day (I’ll have to go find it again at some point) where the idea was put forth that negative comments (even after being proven false) tend to stick to a person. The idea was that a person could make a false accusation, and a rebuttal could be made, but over time the accusation would still be remembered because of the initial impression whereas the rebuttal may not.

An illustration of this is the “Obama is a Muslim” idea. It’s reinforced with his middle name. Obama certainly is not Muslim, regardless of what school he was brought up in, but polling data suggests that this falsehood has stuck to him.

Same thing with a political party or politician being blamed for something that is much more complex than the implication, and yet it sticks.

Thanks for the useful observation.
IAMB said,

Wrote on August 7, 2008 @ 9:10 pm

Definitely true, which is sorta sad. Funny that you and I can actually agree on something.
MInTheGap said,

Wrote on August 7, 2008 @ 10:10 pm

@IAMB: I’m sue that there are many more things that we agree on than either of us would like to admit.