list of common misconceptions

[unapologeticParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

Humans swallow an average of eight spiders a year while sleeping.

Yeah, 73% of statistics are made-up. This one is obvious. How the hell would you collect the data on swallowing spiders? Watch a random sample of people sleep for a year? For a week and multiply by 52? In the lab? How clean is your lab? In their homes? What constitutes an average home? Who would pay for such a study?

• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by  unapologetic.
• This reply was modified 9 months, 1 week ago by  unapologetic.

[UnseenParticipant]

Here’s another one I’ve heard multiple times that just a moment’s reflection will reveal as nonsense: “There are more people alive now than in all of the history of the human race.”

Take a look at anyone’s family tree and you’ll soon realize that you have far more deceased ancestors than than there are in their current generation. And their family tree only goes back so far, not to the source in Africa.

In fact, “According to a professor of populations at the Rockefeller and Columbia Universities in New York City, people alive today comprise only 6% of the total number of people who have ever been born, which is slightly over 106 billion people. The BBC News reports that there are 15 dead people for every person living…” (from a Brave browser Summarizer)

[unapologeticParticipant]

Unseen wrote:

“There are more people alive now than in all of the history of the human race.”

“…people alive today comprise only 6% of the total number of people who have ever been born, which is slightly over 106 billion people. The BBC News reports that there are 15 dead people for every person living…”

I consider that statement and all the stats bogus, because you can’t get a real count. How far back does the ‘human race’ go? How many generations ago was pre-human, or not us? And there are whole continents that never had a census till the 20th century. I have heard that India has repeatedly failed at an accurate count. (That statement may be bogus)

 

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