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by kasey_junk 4423 days ago
Some of the answers to these questions are highly subjective, leading them to not be great examples of how wrong someone is.

For instance, the % of budget spent on defence by the US question only includes (I assume) the DoD discretionary budget and the Overseas Contingency Budget. It leaves out the VA, the State Dept. Homeland Security, the Justice Dept. , the National Intelligence Program, and the NSF, all of which have defence components.

So in that case it's not so much that someone is wrong if they pick the incorrect answer, it's just that the definition of defence spending is nuanced.

2 comments

Indeed.

Sites other than Wikipedia show different numbers as well. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258

Oh thats a good resource! Thanks
for the record I went through all the questions and it is a fun site.

nice work.

Thanks! I appreciate it :)
I agree. The defense spending question is a tricky one. The goal though is not to be right or wrong but to encourage people to think about these things.
I like the site for that, but the source for that particular question is a bar chart that really obfuscates how complicated the real answer is.