Two positives make a negative

What is two plus two? If you use the mathematical terms, the answer is four. But we are not mathematicians, we like our language to be vague. We tend to use the word “plus” more like putting things together. It really depends on what those two are. And it depends on what you mean by putting them together. If you put the number 2 right next to another number 2, you might get 22. If you put 2 hydrogen atoms next to two oxygen atoms, you might get a tiny explosion and end up with a water molecule and a free oxygen radical. If you put two men together with two women, it might be a double date.

One way we commonly put two things together is when we say two different causes affect an outcome. The combination here is really important. For example, everyone knows that your health depends on how much you eat and how much you exercise. But the effects are not additive. If you exercise, and don't change your food intake, you will grow thinner. If you exercise a lot and don't each much, then you will lose muscles. If you don't exercise and increase food intake, you will get fat. However, if you exercise and increase food intake (reasonably), you will probably gain muscles. So the question is does exercise cause you to gain muscles or lose them? The answer is, it depends on how much you eat. Life is filled with such examples where something is good or not is determined by something else that is happening or not.

To add to the confusion, the yardsticks that we use are simplistic, and do not take these complexities in account. A typical measure for obesity is BMI – higher your weight for a given height, higher your BMI. The taller you are for the same weight, smaller your BMI. It is weight divided by height squared. Higher BMI usually means obesity. I said usually because the measure is simplistic. Here is an example. My friend was starting to put on weight. At 5'9" he was flabby and weighed 165 pound. That made his BMI = 26. His doctor warned against the weight gain and he seriously started exercising, and controlled his diet. After a while, he started liking what he saw in the mirror and decided to improve it. So he did a lot of weight training, with proteins. He built a fabulous body - almost no fat and bulging muscles. But the problem was that the amount of muscles he gained outweighed the fat he lost. He now weighs 170 pounds. His BMI is now larger - 26.5. If you did not look at him and simply looked at the two BMI numbers, you would say his health has deteriorated. But in reality he is fitter than ever.

This is what can happen when you have simplistic measure - you can have two positives (fat loss + muscle gain) appear as a negative (increased BMI). The word “appear” is very important. The appearance is only in the numbers. If you looked at his real appearance, it is a classic before and after case. But you are not his friend, you don't know him, the only information you get about him is from the BMI numbers. You can see him through a very narrow vision, like seeing through some special glasses. To make matters worse the glasses are curved - so they distort the picture. Two positives appear to make a negative.

Now imagine instead of my friends, a society. Almost any developing country might do. Let's say we know for a fact that the number of rapes that took place actually went down from say 1000 a year to 800 a year (let's assume the population was constant). Now as the rapes reduced, there was something else happening in the society - the taboos were breaking down, women were stronger and more independent, and their belief in the justice system improved - all very good things. As a result, more and more women came forward and were willing to report the heinous crime. Let's say the percentage increased drastically from 40% to 60%. Add the two good things together – decreased number of rapes, and higher reporting – and you will see the number of reported rapes going up from 400 to 480! That’s a 20% rise! Despite the fact that actual rapes dropped by 20% and reporting improved by 50%! What is happening here? And maybe if the police were more diligent, you will see convicted rapists going up from 200 to 300! That's a 50% increase in rapists! Oh my! What is the society coming to? Where are we going wrong?

Societies that are in transition often appear to have these "problems". But most of the times, these appearance are only on paper. Imagine hearing the following news: the proportion of marriages that end in divorce has gone up from 5% to 15%. Now is this bad in itself? A society that goes from rigid model of working husband and a housewife towards equality is going on the right path. A woman who is suffering abuse of a husband does not need to put up with him, because she can support herself, now can decide to end the suffering and opt for the lesser evil. Also the stigma that was once associated with divorce is reduced, or no longer there. We can look at the numbers and say, that maybe 10% marriages that did not end in divorce earlier, the parties involved suffered through because the alternatives were even worse. It is like suffering gangrene, because amputation was not an option.

Another example: you read that the number of people going to a psychiatrist to be treated for depression has increased from mere 1% to 6% in the last ten years. Does this mean we are more stressed as a society? Well, it might mean that more people are aware that the problem exists, that a solution exists, and more people can afford to use the solution, and it also may mean that the stigma associated with going to a psychiatrist has gone down significantly. All these are good factors, leading to a conclusion that is exactly opposite of the reality. The stress may not have increased, in fact the effect of the same stress has decreased because more of the worst affected people are seeking help.

There are countless other examples. More people wearing glasses does not mean the eyesight of humanity has worsened, it means exactly the opposite, more people are seeing things better now. But the theme is common, more people start accepting something as a problem, rather than hiding it, and more people solving the problem – these two good factors together makes the statistics to appear as the problem has increased.