r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/lachouse • 2d ago
Petah? Why is this plane used in so many arguments? Meme needing explanation
[removed] — view removed post
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u/RugbyKats 2d ago
This image shows how data can be misinterpreted if important information is not considered. It shows where planes were most often shot by enemy weapons. However, the data was taken from planes that actually returned from battle. When you realize that planes shot in the other areas were less likely to make it back, then you also realize that the data was skewed because it did not account for the planes that were downed.
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u/combination_bear 2d ago
For anyone interested in a nice deeper dive the opening chapter of Jordan Ellenberg's book, "how not to be wrong: the power of mathematical thinking", tells the history very nicely.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/PeaTasty9184 2d ago
No. The homophobe thinks that no trans person is passing. But the fact of the matter is he has 100% seen a trans person and not known they are trans because they are passing.
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u/signaeus 2d ago
I was headed to club in Tokyo ~15 years back and across the street from the one we were in line for, I saw some of the most gorgeous women I’ve ever seen in line for a different club and said to my buddy why we weren’t in line for that club.
That’s when he pointed out that that particular bar was for trans and to “look closer.”
I’m still disappointed that I had too much internal homophobia at the time to change which club I went to back then.
All that to say - there are trans women that have easily been some of the hottest women I’ve seen.
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u/PeaTasty9184 2d ago
It’s a big step to admit we’ve had unfair biases in the past. I’m in my mid forties and grew up in a very rural very white very anti-anything different area…I’m very aware I have a lot of learned negative bias for a lot of things. I’ll never be as non-racist and supportive of minorities as kids growing up today because I grew up in a world where it was just ok to say the n word or the f word amongst a bunch of white straight folks who’ve never really known a black person or an out gay person.
But every day I do my best to not be that guy who all those folks around me as a kid were, and I also try not to hold that against a lot of them (the older folks anyhow) because they never had the opportunity to see just how small the world is that I have been able to see. A little grace for ourselves and those around us to be an ally, I think.
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u/signaeus 1d ago
Totally get where you’re coming from, grew up in the south, so unraveling deeply hidden layers of homophobia I didn’t even knew existed was a big thing - Cause it was my subconscious protecting myself in a hostile environment that you got into a fight if someone said you were gay, because otherwise the alternative was 18 times worse.
That definitely led to moments later with weird ass shit - like realizing I was afraid of the color pink because someone might think I’m gay - which my subconscious immediately connects with an experience I had fighting 7 people against myself on the simple -accusation- of being gay because I was skinny.
So, yeah, there’s a lot of shit you’ll do to protect yourself that you mean no harm by to anyone else, but is patently harmful (and to yourself more than anyone else).
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u/UselessGojo123 2d ago
I really hope this was a joke. He didn’t say fiction because he wanted a book, he was replying to another tweet, and was saying the idea that a trans person can pass is fiction, ie made up. However this isn’t the case, he simply only see the people he thinks are trans, and doesn’t realize he’s seen passable trans people before, and because they pass, didn’t realize they’re trans.
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u/RugbyKats 2d ago
No, he’s saying that trans people are obvious and that none of them live as the opposite gender without being noticed. In his case, he has failed to consider the thousands of people who do live as the opposite gender (or pass) without being noticed.
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u/Spiritual_Bug6414 2d ago
You should prob elaborate on that cause as someone who’s not homophobic I don’t care either way, so specifically NOT wanting them in there seems kinda homophobic
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u/redeveraux 2d ago
To explain the actual answer, since everybody is talking about survivorship bias but nobody is explaining the connection to trans people, what this reply is saying is that plenty of trans people pass, but transphobes wouldn't know that because a trans person who passes just looks like, well, a cis person. So transphobes see a minority of trans people who don't pass and assume that they represent the whole group
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u/MornGreycastle 2d ago
There's also a touch of Bayesian statistics, which is to say transphobes also see cisgendered people who do not perfectly match their view of a cis person and assume that cisgendered person is trans. This is a false positive. Whenever you are dealing with something that is rare and you get a positive, you need to check a second time to be certain.
For example, if there is a rare disease that one in ten thousand people get, then you can not successfully detect that disease with just one test. You have to run the test multiple times to make sure you are not getting either a false positive or false negative.
In the case of transgender people that are 1.14% of the US population, the best policy is to mind your own fucking business. Transphobes need to stop harassing trans AND cis people. Transphobes definitely need to stop killing people over the issue.
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u/TribblesBestFriend 2d ago
You started your argument and I was thinking that : trans aren’t in books because they die
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u/davi1521 2d ago
in WWII, the American air Force wanted to figure out a way to make it's planes tougher, so they started looking at where the bullet holes were on the planes coming back and reinforcing those areas.
it didn't help.
then somebody realized that it's the spots where there were no bullet holes that needed reinforcement because the planes that got hit there were the ones not coming back.
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u/NeverMore_613 2d ago
It feels obvious that you should reinforce the areas around the engines and cockpit, no? Given that if you lose your engines and/or pilot the plane is pretty much useless except for as a quickly-falling metal box?
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u/HeadPay32 2d ago
Dude can't tell all the trans people who do pass
It's survivorship bias, which is what the picture is for
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u/lucas10125 2d ago
There might even be trans people on this sub 😲
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u/Revolutionary-Meat14 2d ago
Impossible, one of the side effects of transitioning is understanding every joke perfectly.
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u/UnoficialHampsterMan 2d ago
Hi, exotic animal store owner here, that image is an example of something known as “survivor bias”. The exact defenition of it is “a type of sample selection bias that occurs when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group.” So think “if I can do it, everybody can”. Like a medical student passing with flying colors thinking everybody else can since they did.
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u/Yroche 2d ago
The plane is an example of survivorship bias. When planes make it back from a dogfight, the engineers see that the plane was hit mostly in the atras where the red dots are. It would then follow that they should put armor where the plane was hit the most. This os incorrect, and the best thing to do would be to put armor in the places where the plane was hit the least, as the planes that were hit there never made it back to begin with.
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u/Revolutionary-Meat14 2d ago
I would argue that saying no trans person passes is more of a toupee fallacy, survivorship bias is more for when a statistical sample, that was properly collected, is biased because of some feature of the data. Toupee fallacies are for personal observations. That being said, I understand that the WW2 plane diagram is a better punchline for the joke.
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u/EOEtoast 2d ago
All of the red dots are from where returning planes were shot. This led to the engineers adding extra protection to these spots, as this is where they thought the most commonly hit places were. In reality, every spot was hit just as often, it's just that the spots with no bullet holes were places where the plane didn't come back
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u/DeepDot7458 2d ago
People that don’t understand it like just like to use it as against any argument they don’t like.
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u/PeterExplainsTheJoke-ModTeam 2d ago
This joke has already been posted recently. Rule 2.