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.
Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.
Crime is a product of social excess.
what cannot be saved when fate takes, patience her injury a mockery makes
In a world full of danger, to be a potentially seeable object is to be constantly exposed to danger. Self-consciousness, then, may be the apprehensive awareness of oneself as potentially exposed to danger by the simple fact of being visible to others. The obvious defence against such a danger is to make oneself invisible in one way or another.
In the end, we are not the roles we play. We are the light that animates every soul in the dance we call life.
What God requires of us he himself works in us, or it is not done. He that commands faith, holiness, and love, creates them by the power of his grace going along with his word, that he may have all the praise.
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