cynar

Because statistics is a relative unknown to many people. Until people have a good grounding in statistics then they often have to rely on an appeal to authority.

In reality, statistics should be trusted based on source, method and importance.

A survey of preferred ice-cream flavours by an ice-cream company can be trusted easily, even if the wording and method are a bit loose. An analysis of a potentially billion dollar drug requires FAR more scrutiny, even from multiple reliable sources. Between these 2 extremes is a spectrum of trust.

Unfortunately, most people don't do well with shades of grey. If some statistics can't be trusted, then none can. It's all false news (until it happens to agree with their preconceived views).

While dyslexia is actually a cluster of related issues, a common one seems to be with dimensionality. Basically, the reader's brain assumes the objects are 3 dimensional. When the eyes make micro adjustments, the letters don't rotate, since they are 2D. The brain misinterprets this as them rotating, or moving. This is perceived as them flickering or moving, in the corner of your eye.

There are several ways to break this effect. I suspect the shape is intended to mess with and slightly overload the depth sense. Strong colours can also disrupt it. E.g. via a coloured filter or glasses.

Just to note, my knowledge/research on this was 20 years ago, so might be outdated now. The coloured filters (actually tinted reading glasses) did help a relative overcome dyslexia however.

Even a small amount of statistic abuse will break blind trust in them. Once that trust is gone, some people will reject all of them, rather than try and differentiate.

Low grade abuse of statistics and related methods is rampant in low grade media.

That's how most EU regulations are created. They take the best parts of the legislation of various members and combine them.

As for weapons, harmonisation is a thing. However, the exact use cases will vary for different countries. A tank that's optimal for Spain isn't necessarily the best for Germany. Neither country wants suboptimal equipment. What is easier to harmonise is ammo, a fact that NATO have been exploiting for a long while.

There are also the implications. Before now, military has been done on a per country basis. If they want to move as a block, they need individual countries to step up. It also allows countries to act independently if desired. A unified army is seen as a threat to the sovereignty of individual countries.

There are levels of abuse, some blatant, some subtle. Leading questions are obvious, when you have the question asked. Publishing bias is difficult to spot, even for trained scientists looking for it.

Learning about statistical methods isn't enough. People need to be taught how to weigh the data presented against the value of misleading them.

It's a subsection of logical reasoning, and needs to be taught as part of an integrated whole.

Soldiers fight together out of empathy, as much as orders.

The super tribe effect allows for nations and fandoms. If you've ever seen a hyped up group of football fans, you've seen super tribe empathy in action.

It also allows for mutual support. We support the weak because we know what it feels like to be weak. I have been helped by the empathy of others. I have chosen to let my empathy help others in turn.

Empathy ties us together. It allows us to reach FAR beyond what we could alone. Empathy is both the glue that holds society together and the oil that stops the whole construction seizing up.

That happened, until 10+ tribes got pissed off, got together, and wiped them out. Eventually those tribal groups grew into villages, towns and city states. Many tribes, united in a common purpose.

It's obviously the MAGA crowd. They've spent years complaining about electric vehicles. They've just escalated that to burning them out. The police need to go have a nice chat with the rolling coal types.

I would argue that empathy is one of the most critical advantages we have, as humans. It is fundamental to the super tribe effect. That allowed us to bypass the Dunbar limit and form societies larger than a tribe.

It's also not soft. Endurance hunting relies on it. When your prey flees into cover, you need to follow. You need to put yourself into its head, to figure out where it went. That is empathic.

Your life must be cold and distant without empathy.

Part of the problem is that statistics can be abused. It takes a reasonable amount of training to be able to differentiate between reliable statistics and potentially dodgy. Even worse, we are often presented with them, striped or context.

The best solution is to teach people how to both spot problems and seek reliable data. The proper meaning of "do your own research". Unfortunately, a significant chunk just give up with them and only trust their gut.

The article is missing any battery figures. From some other articles, it looks like it's charging at 1000kW or 1MW. 5 minutes of charging will give you 80KWh of power, at that rate. The car has an 85kWh battery, so that's basically empty to full in 5 minutes.