The archie cartoon isn't that big of a deal. Why are the newspapers freaking out? I mean, Snagglepuss was the biggest queen in cartoon land. Seriously, didn't everyone realize he was gay?
I was doing my daily newspaper reading and in the Chicago Sun or Tribune (I don’t recall which one), this guy was very upset about the fact that the comic strip Archie has a gay character. Since gays only make up 6% of the population (he rejected 10% and said the smaller number seemed more likely so I’ll take his number on faith, even though the Centers for Disease Control showed that a staggering 10% of married, self-described heterosexual men had engaged in sex with another male in the past 12 months despite being in a relationship with a woman … seriously, read the copy of the study WebMD has posted on their site), he demanded to know why “they” have to appear everywhere; isn’t “anywhere safe”?
Now, I don’t even care about the topic per se. I’m a privileged , rich, white, Christian guy who lives in the Midwest and pretty much can do anything I want as long as I continue to pay my taxes and avoid breaking the law. What I care about is the inability of most people to do basic math functions. He called 6% a “tiny, tiny minority”. Seriously?
Okay … 6% translates into 1 out of 16.67 people. (You just have to take 1 and divide it by 6 to perform the inversion!)
Still don’t get it? Let’s put it into terms you can understand:
- It is estimated that the average person really knows about 250 people (not recognizes, but knows – who they are, where they work, what they do, etc.) That means that the average person knows 15 gay people, they just don’t realize it. (Case in point: Some of the gay people they know are married to the opposite sex according to the CDC study.)
- Your child’s elementary school class probably has around 30 kids unless you go to a private school. That means that your child (if not your child themselves) have at least 2 gay classmates in every class.
- When you walk into Wal-Mart Super Center, if there are 200 people in the store at any given time, 12 of them are gay. That is just how the math works.
Seriously, guys. This isn’t difficult. Just invert the question like Charlie Munger taught us. Ask, “what do my assumptions mean in a real-world context?” and you can see if they are rational or not. In this case, the notion that it is a political agenda to make a comic character reflect the broader world is absurd. It is the broader world. Thinking it’s not is just denial.
No wonder it is so easy to make money. Most people don’t think using numbers and statistics, meaning it’s like we are dueling and they are using a cardboard sword and I’m using a stealth bomber. The schools are failing! This has to be fixed.
