Babylon 5: The illusion of Truth

[Makeitstop]

I love and hate this episode. It's enjoyable, and a bit exaggerated, but it is also frustrating and far more believable than it should be.

One thing that occurs to me when watching this review right after the last one is that they probably should have hired Lyta. Ensuring that both parties are acting in good faith is why commercial telepaths are a thing. It's how psi corp pays the bills (as far as the public knows), a fairly normal part of life in the mid 23rd century. If he refuses, preferring to go home empty handed after all the effort it took to get to the station, you know he's up to no good.

Sure, he could object to Lyta for not being part of psi corp, but then, that's a pretty weak argument. Psi corp rules don't apply to Lyta (or any alien telepath on the station) so they don't actually need to ask for his permission, or even let him know he's being scanned. The only reason he even has the chance to object is because they are being honest and ethical.

[hammerofglass]

That would be really easy to get around, though. You lie to the guy doing the interviews. So when he tells them everything is on the up and up he's being perfectly honest.

[Aotrs Commander]

Between this episode and Spider-Man and not a few other episodes of stuff with similar premises - and ESPECIALLY the modern trend of desperate attention-grabbing from news bodies - it is perhaps not surprising that I tend to react with instinctive negativity to journalist characters (unless they are the literal protagonists lke Clark, Kara or Pete) and a general tendancy to avoid news generally?

(Hell, I only maginally trust the BBC as a news outlet as, at one point, they did not have a particular axe to grind via making profit off their news and in thoery were required to be neutral; these days even that I take with a strong pinch of salt.)


Remember, children and adults, statistics are the biggest liars of all. They will tell you the truth, but only a very specific truth; as Chuck alluded to in his anecdote, you can so easily use them to lie just by not saying what their context is (i.e. from where, when and even how they were obtained).

The most obvious recent example (of two I can think of, but the other is by definition political...) is pandemic casualties. At least in the UK, they were always reported as "deaths within 28 days of being tested positive for COVID" which is DISTINCTLY not the same as being "caused by COVID" since it means someone who got COVID, only had a mild case and got over it and then was run over by a bus counts the same as someone who died because it. But the latter number is a) a harder number to work out and b) is worse at scaring the public[1] - which of course, some (most? all?) outlets want, since that might grant you more views. (They also, notably, always omitted thing like comparitive casulaties for other things, like flu or traffic accidents.) Always be wary of any statistic that is presented in isolation with no substantiation.


This has been your "No-One Cares, Aotrs Commander" public service rant for the day. We now return you to your regular forum discussion...



[1]Whether or not you consider scaring the public to be a beneficial thing or not is another question.
(In my opinion, frankly, the public are already prone hysteria whipped up by EXACTLY this kind of misleading distortion of the truth - it is, after all, not a direct lie. People are stupid as a collective, but that doesn't mean you should exacerbate the problem.)

[McAvoy]

That would be really easy to get around, though. You lie to the guy doing the interviews. So when he tells them everything is on the up and up he's being perfectly honest.

You mean by lying about having Lyta nearby?

Nah. Makeitstop has a point. Which is why she wasn't used. It would kill the episode. She would know this guy is a shady scumbag looking to make a name for himself.

Sometimes I wish the writers would do a ten second scene to explain something like that. Like Sheridan saying he wished Lyta was here but she is off helping some client. And that's it.

[Makeitstop]

That would be really easy to get around, though. You lie to the guy doing the interviews. So when he tells them everything is on the up and up he's being perfectly honest.

You mean by lying about having Lyta nearby?

I think Hammerofglass is suggesting ISN could have lied to the reporter they sent. But that would require that they know B5 has one or more telepaths they can utilize, and that they have a crew they can send who are all naïve enough to believe that this is going to be even remotely fair, accurate and honest, despite the way they've done this so far.

It might have been interesting if they sent someone who genuinely believed their reporting was fair, and that if B5 really wasn't an enemy of earth that it really would come across. Only the lens he sees things through leads him to jump to conclusions which reinforce his own biases, so that even though he is twisting things, he can say sincerely that he is being fair and pursuing the truth. Still a bit of a stretch, but would have been an interesting twist.

Nah. Makeitstop has a point. Which is why she wasn't used. It would kill the episode. She would know this guy is a shady scumbag looking to make a name for himself.

Sometimes I wish the writers would do a ten second scene to explain something like that. Like Sheridan saying he wished Lyta was here but she is off helping some client. And that's it.

The more I think about it, the more silly it seems for them to essentially lay her off after the shadow war. I mean, they are constantly dealing with shady characters in order to stay operational, and the threat of infiltrators and saboteurs from earth is very real. Not to mention that the psi corp could send someone in plain clothes and they'd never know without another telepath there on defense.

I think they would have needed a more permanent reason to limit her usefulness. Suppose her massively increased telepathic power is harder to control with the precision needed for these kinds of tasks. Maybe she accidentally scans someone a little too hard and causes permanent harm. Suddenly routine lie detector work isn't worth the risk, and even if she wanted to try, no one would submit to the scan, which in turn would force her to push through their resistance and increase the risk. If that were the case, she'd still be an amazing strategic asset, and they could justify her use in an emergency, or as a counter to someone like Bester, but they couldn't just casually scan everyone that might be a little dishonest.

[McAvoy]

I got what you are saying. The only thing is that unlike a hungry reporter willing to find any shots that can be used to cut for a manufactured narrative, a more honest reporter with better intentions may not do that. Like the scenes showing Lando on mute yelling at Sheridan when in actuality it's just Lando complaining about the temperature in his quarters.

On Lyta I never understood why she wasn't put on as a full member for Babylon 5. They needed her a counter to PSI Corp at the very least. She could have been some part of the Rangers.

[Riedquat]

The most obvious recent example (of two I can think of, but the other is by definition political...) is pandemic casualties. At least in the UK, they were always reported as "deaths within 28 days of being tested positive for COVID" which is DISTINCTLY not the same as being "caused by COVID" since it means someone who got COVID, only had a mild case and got over it and then was run over by a bus counts the same as someone who died because it. But the latter number is a) a harder number to work out and b) is worse at scaring the public[1] - which of course, some (most? all?) outlets want, since that might grant you more views. (They also, notably, always omitted thing like comparitive casulaties for other things, like flu or traffic accidents.) Always be wary of any statistic that is presented in isolation with no substantiation.

Arguably off-topic, but that 28 days / bus comparison being used as a reason for suspicion is more of a manipulation tool than the actual claim. "Deaths within 28 days of a positive test" will be a pretty good approximation to the actual numbers. The chances of dropping dead from something else within that time are pretty slim. It being listed as a cause of death on the death certificate is only a different approximation. So bringing it up is just raising unjust fear of the story, when the number of people who get hit by a bus is almost certainly statistically insignificant.

There are probably estimates of the uncertainties involved in determining deaths this way but I wouldn't expect a news report to go in to them.

[Archanubis]

I love and hate this episode. It's enjoyable, and a bit exaggerated, but it is also frustrating and far more believable than it should be.

The reason for the latter is probably because most of us are living through a period of time where something like this is actually happening...

[Aotrs Commander]

Arguably off-topic, but that 28 days / bus comparison being used as a reason for suspicion is more of a manipulation tool than the actual claim. "Deaths within 28 days of a positive test" will be a pretty good approximation to the actual numbers. The chances of dropping dead from something else within that time are pretty slim. It being listed as a cause of death on the death certificate is only a different approximation. So bringing it up is just raising unjust fear of the story, when the number of people who get hit by a bus is almost certainly statistically insignificant.

There are probably estimates of the uncertainties involved in determining deaths this way but I wouldn't expect a news report to go in to them.

Compared to literally all other causes of death for people that did not have COVID? That is not statistically insignificant.

Anecdotally, sufficient people died during that period that I either knew or were family of people I knew that I genuinely lost count. (Ten? Twelve?) Not a single one of those was COVID (though at least two were exascerabated by lockdown). Statistics of small numbers apply of course, but my point is I don't know what the comparitive non-COVID death toll from all other causes of death was... Because the news sources didn't tell me.

(Both of my sisters were on the front lines in the hospitals, so let me be clear, I was well aware of the seriousness of the situation; but that doesn't excuse contextless statistics.)

But ultimately, I just picked that as a conveniant example of how easy it is to mislead (or outright lie) with statistics if there is no context.

(I am reminded of a joke aside in the Munchkin's Guide to Power Gaming where it said of system tham use a percentile dice as a means of achieving a "false sense of scientific credibility," clearly a jab at the D100-based Rolemaster system that presented itself as fairly realistic[1]; but it's a sentiment worth remembering.)

So when something quotes a statistic at me, I want to see the working - especially when someone quoting the statistic has or might have an ulterior motive. (And news is all about fighting for views these days, is it not? Even the BBC is no longer considered as neutral as it was, and they at least had the minimal reason they were nominally a public service.)

My point stands - there is a reason the phrase "lies, damned lies and statistics" exists.

We're living in a very dangerous world, where the internet and media can make all sorts of unsubstantiated claims to support whoever's agenda; because they know people don't like to have think to hard about it; so when they see something that matches what they want to hear, they won't think about it too much. Now more than ever, one needs to remember not to take anything important (and really, not even always things that are not important) at face value and to check corroborating sources. (I can't and won't debate it here, but I will strongly gesture with both point-y fingers towards the other obvious ongoing example of unsubtantited statistics and what happens when not asking questions gets taken to extremes and nod emphatically. But let's just say this episode of B5 was terrifying prophetic.)

Always do your research, even if that is just checking which supermarket has the cheapest Mars bars or whatever.



[1]I love Rolemaster, but in thirty years of play, I've seen more statistical implausibilities in that game than any other system combinbed...

[Frustration]

I'm not sure if a telepath would actually be able to warn of a person who believes 'Truth' is created rather than discovered.