Details are not for morons

 A psychologist friend of mine was saying how she loved graduate school but dreaded the mandatory course on Statistics, that is, until she learned of its practical importance. She illustrated her point with a little dialogue:

GUY: Let’s go to the Chinese restaurant in town. It’s kind of crowded but the food is good.

WOMAN: How crowded is it?

GUY: What do you mean?

WOMAN: What’s a lot of people?

GUY: I don’t know, a lot of people is a lot of people.

WOMAN: Well, is it always crowded?

GUY: Since it opened, it’s becoming crazy popular.

WOMAN: Okay, how big is the room?

GUY: Pretty big.

WOMAN: What’s that mean?

GUY: For the size, it's getting pretty crowded. 

WOMAN: You’re such a moron.

 The preceding dialogue was brought to you by someone who doesn’t know the value of details. It would have been helpful to know the size of the room, how many people were in it or the restaurant’s rate of growth so we could predict how crowded it would be on that day. Here’s another situation:

 We open on a baby giggling hysterically. We cut to other babies giggling, then we cut to kids laughing, teenagers laughing, young adults, middle-aged adults and then old people, all belly laughing. We cut to a super: “It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them.” The message is brought to us by Volkswagen. It’s a familiar message to the car category, and, for that matter, it could be for a comedy club, an amusement park, a game or a toothpaste that brings out your sparkling smile. It’s a grand statement, that life is best spent joyfully, and grand statements can potentially be very compelling because they get to the heart of life. But unless you have an unexpected message for that product, it needs proof, even the appearance of proof, to make it appear special. It needs detail.

 And what about our recent presidential race?  As voters, we were frustrated because one candidate offered no details and asked us to trust him, while the other candidate promised to be nothing like the other guy. Many of us felt it was moronic.

 If you were going to invest in a product, any product, you would undoubtedly want to show good judgment. Why would we leave out the thing that would make others feel good about a decision? No one wants to find out that they are vulnerable to manipulation, not even consumers.