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If this is your first Z-Pack, welcome - I'm Zach.

⬇️ Let’s get it

Oh, the lies you’ve been told

I know - you’re tired. There’s lots of chaos out there in the world.

So let me try and shed some ~light~ on this dark world (especially post-election vibes).

We’re going to go over a few things that (1) look really bad on the surface, but (2) have gone viral because they look so bad.

In reality, they’re just a deceptive graph or big number that needs context.

Target #1: autism.

Cue deceptive graph —

This is a pretty popular talking point for anti-vax people (derogatory). They don’t realize, though, that the “main reason autism diagnoses are increasing is that diagnoses are being given more liberally. Other mental problems are increasingly being moved into the autism category and the threshold for receiving a diagnoses is declining.”

For example, this explains 26.4% of the rise in autism in California between 1992-2005.

So no, you probably shouldn’t freak out about rising rates in autism. Panic is never a good response, in general, to anything, but you get the point.

This also reminds me of a joke from Pete Davidson: he talks about how his grandad definitely had autism but never got diagnosed, because people thought he just had a thing for collecting and organizing thousands and thousands of DVDs... lol.

So yes, we’re probably just finally diagnosing people AND stretching the definition a bit.

Target #2: Military spending

I’ll probably lose lots of y’all here, tbh…

People across the political spectrum get up in arms about the U.S.’s military spending. Many on the right think that we should basically ignore foreign policy and alliances since they’re “stealing” our money; many on the left also think kind of the same thing, but more so that the U.S. is an evil empire (lol) whose foreign policy has just ruined other countries.

Personally, I’m pretty passionate about how we should probably spend MORE on our military (I can explain a little bit on this later).

Advocates for less military spending love these kinds of silly videos from people Youtuber Johnny Harris, king of Lots-of-Words-But-Said-Nothing.

Just look at this silly little thumbnail:

MYSTERIOUS LOOK

BIG NUMBER

BE SCARED

Yes - the U.S. spends lots of money on our military. It is, indeed, a big number.

And they’ve spent more as time goes on.

BUT, this spending has become an increasingly smaller % of our total GDP (the value of all goods and services made in our country):

Moreover, there’s this chart below that shows how ~12% of all U.S. government spending goes to the military.

Before seeing this, maybe you thought it was something like 30-50%

As you can see, the U.S. is mainly a big insurance company:

So memes like these are pretty inaccurate:

But this doesn’t mean I think our government should just spend endlessly on the military — obviously, it should be done as prudently as possible.

But if I had to choose which concerns me more, either more spending on the military or not enough, I’d say, at this point, not enough.

Why? Because the battle between good (liberalism = human rights, democracy, private-public partnership) and evil (authoritarianism = dictators, no freedom of speech or democracy, less prosperity) is raging on. And surprise surprise - WE are the good guys.

I may write a silly little post on this later..

So for now, we’ve learned today that we shouldn’t panic about these autism rates or think that we’re getting our healthcare money taken by the military-industrial complex (which is not a real thing, btw).

Be careful out there, folks: context matters!!!

Still curious?

• This post on how to not be fooled by viral charts

Thanks for taking the Pack,

Zach

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