Like dreams, statistics are a form of wish fulfillment.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that statistics can be manipulated to reflect desired outcomes, similar to how dreams represent our wishes.
Jean Baudrillard's quote implies that just as dreams can be a manifestation of our desires and aspirations, statistics can be crafted or interpreted in ways that fulfill our hopes or ideals. This perspective invites critical thinking about the validity and objectivity of statistical representations, encouraging us to recognize that they may not always reflect the truth, but rather a constructed narrative that aligns with what we wish to believe.
In practice
During a discussion on how data can be misleading in marketing.
The war was won on both sides: by the Vietnamese on the ground, by the Americans in the electronic mental space. And if the one side won an ideological and political victory, the other made Apocalypse Now and that has gone right around the world.
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
This false distance is present everywhere: in spy films, in Godard, in modern advertising, which uses it continually as a cultural allusion. It is not really clear in the end whether this 'cool' smile is the smile of humour or that of commercial complicity. This is also the case with pop, and its smile ultimately encapsulates all its ambiguity: it is not the smile of critical distance, but the smile of collusion
There is nothing funny about Halloween. This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.
the neighborhood is nothing but a protective zone- remodeling, disinfection, a snobbish and hygenic design- but above all in a figurative sense: it is a machine for making emptiness.
Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. In other countries, the business of laughing is left to the viewers. Here, their laughter is put on the screen, integrated into the show. It is the screen that is laughing and having a good time. You are simply left alone with your consternation.
I am the harvest of man's stupidity. I am the fruit of the holocaust. I prayed like you to survive, but look at me now. It is over for us who are dead, but you must struggle, and will carry the memories all your life. People back home will wonder why you can't forget.
No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems.
The truth of Zen is the truth of life, and life means to live, to move, to act, not merely to reflect.
All individuals in all cultures use the same thirty basic moral categories, concepts, or principles, and all individuals in all cultures go through the same order or sequence of gross stage development, though they vary in rate and terminal point of development.
No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue.
All you may know of heaven or hell is within your own self.
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