Mistaking an anecdote for a larger trend has been, is and will continue to be a fatal error in building public policy. When intentionally transforming a few anecdotes or stories, true or not, into a trend you have an evil strategy. Only metrics or numbers can bring a genuine trend to light and numbers cannot lie. Numbers, however, with the help of humans can mislead and the internet is the master of institutionalizing misdirection.

The misuse of anecdote and even accurate stories has become a popular bipartisan vice in 2025. One can do far more harm with one compelling story or anecdote drawing a false general conclusion than tens of thousands of dollars of advertising. Story is a powerful force that transforms people when it is told.  Story can be a vaccine, palliative medicine, or a poison.  Stories have traditionally been used for medicine in the spiritual dimension. However toxic stories and anecdotes can be cancerous to society because while you can dispute the facts, you cannot erase the feeling state even after the error is revealed and the discredited feeling continues to impact the unwary, duplicitous, or simply misinformed. Today’s tragedies are the product of manufactured realities supported by the commercial interests of the internet. 

A Modest Proposal for Good

We caution that your  “Sense of Good” may no longer be “good” for the times in which you are living . Internet algorithms are constantly pandering to your most recent feeling states and without that awareness you must always in matters of public policy test your feelings with rationale thought and hard evidence. Always feeling and rationality should be a single unified process in true internal negotiation.  When we are right in our feelings we can be very right, but when we are wrong those feelings can be very, very wrong.  Public policy is alway a community based product that must be told in data as well as anchored in story. The data can be valid if it is based on disciplined numbers immunized from the pandered stereotyped energies of the internet. And the numbers are only capable of showing you a static snapshot of an evolving trend line in the larger emergent story that could contradicted at any moment by the black swans of history.  Hijacking anecdotes or even a true stories and dressing them as trend lines for government use can be a crime.  The public story supported by legitimate data can be very good and it is the only good way to run a government. So make good decisions.