05-05-2024, 07:48 PM
I am not a complete loser, but I have had problems my entire life. I assume that I am somewhere on the autism spectrum. My life has been an almost constant series of social blunders and failures. Part of that is an inability to read the room. Right now I am deeply frustrated about how people are processing data as it relates to the whole feral cat problem. I clearly should just give up because generally speaking people don't WANT to understand.
The table above is the one I have seen again and again and people just eat it up. The engineering nerd in me demands to know what environment this data applies to because if it is true for the north slope of Alaska then it is definitely not true for Florida and if it is true for Florida then it is not true for Alaska. If I believed that the original author of the data was competent then I would have to conclude that they were lying to me by the mere omission of the needed background information. Much more likely is that the statement (cats reproduce THIS fast), the data used to bolster the statement, and/or the messenger delivering the statement just don't meet the standards to be taken seriously no matter how much they tug at the heartstrings.
The graph above does not spell out the problem well. Look at the bottom line. We have been debating this topic on Punaweb alone for 10 years already and there are not 12,000,000 cats in Hawaii!
The table above is the one I have seen again and again and people just eat it up. The engineering nerd in me demands to know what environment this data applies to because if it is true for the north slope of Alaska then it is definitely not true for Florida and if it is true for Florida then it is not true for Alaska. If I believed that the original author of the data was competent then I would have to conclude that they were lying to me by the mere omission of the needed background information. Much more likely is that the statement (cats reproduce THIS fast), the data used to bolster the statement, and/or the messenger delivering the statement just don't meet the standards to be taken seriously no matter how much they tug at the heartstrings.
The graph above does not spell out the problem well. Look at the bottom line. We have been debating this topic on Punaweb alone for 10 years already and there are not 12,000,000 cats in Hawaii!