Statistically out of range

In college I took statistics.  I loved it.  Things just made sense, there was a logic to things. After college, I worked for the US Dept. of Labor doing auditing and compliance work related to discrimination.  Companies would send in their employment numbers, we would analyze them using statistics.  If their numbers were in the range of natural distribution, we would move on.  If we found a statistical anomaly, we would ask the company to explain the anomaly. 

I use this model in life.  People tell me their story. If their story falls within a range of natural distribution, I buy it.  If not, I ask the storyteller to explain the anomaly. 

When a storyteller tells me a story that falls outside of the range of natural distribution, I always pause, calculating in my mind. Unfortunately, this may have the consequence that it does not make me a great conversationalist. I don’t let the storyflow or allow the storyteller to move on, until I fix the anomaly in my mind. 

Turns out, there are A LOT of stories that fall outside the range of natural distribution. The majority of these stories are bullshit. 

This really messes with me.  Turns out there are some pretty amazingly wonderful people who have wonderful stories that fall within the natural range; however,  they have one particular part of their  story that is outside of the range. I tend to get stuck on this part. 

 Are they lying to me? Most of the time, no. Most of the time, they are lying to themselves. The quote, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” is very accurate. The quote is a lot more helpful, when we exchange the word “salary” to “life.  “It is difficult to get a person to understand something, when his life depends on his not understanding it.”  

People have an internal story of themselves, and in their story, they are wonderful and competent.  When they are faced with a  data point that does not fit within the range of them being wonderful and competent, they have to find an external force that is sabotaging them, in order to explain the anomaly. That is usually the part of their story that does not make sense. 

And that is where I stop listening and start prying. And this is where people become defensive, feel vulnerable and start not liking me. 

In my mind, I am doing it to help them. Most  people do not want to be helped in that way or are not ready. 

Anyways, this is a very long way to say that this is the area where I think Chatgpt is going to have the greatest impact. Chat Gpt is a natural language generator that uses statistics to generate language.  It generates sentences that have a very high statistical probability of making sense to humans.  Sometimes the sentences are not reality, but they nonetheless have a high probability of being reality. 

My hope is that in the long term, there may be less untruths and this may create more consistency and predictability.  In the short term, a lot of stuff that thrives on secrecy and on unchecked statistical impossibilities is going to collapse.  If the life of something or someone depended on unchecked statistical impossibilities, that may come to an end. This could be a really difficult situation for many.