Conflation...

[exedir]

No, it isn't something you do more often when your old, I mean, you could, but you don't have to.

No, it is making things equivalent, the same or similar when they really aren't. However, this doesn't preclude some like characteristics such as time, place or participants being the same or similar but then the association breaks down.  So, the problem that arises in conflation is seeing something or impugning something that doesn't exist. Today's media, that is so condensed and concentrated, has event layered on top of event, stuff can get put together and associated in ways that are not consistent to the actual event itself.

One item that is getting conflated is the Oklahoma shooting of the Australian student, the Decatur school invasion and the Zimmerman case. Another will be the beating death of the WWII veteran in Spokane, Washington by two teenagers, both black. Four separate events that stand in general as a class of events, starting with the use of guns and violence, and having some sort of image as to the race and ethnicity of those involved both as perpetrators and victims.

In mathematics there is the study of sets. Sets that usually can be characterized by common values and then examined as to how they relate. And yes, conflation is one of the action of sets that be looked at.

The reason all of this is important as a major, new phenomenon, where sets can, and do play, a big part of what is found, and that is in Big Data. Big Data is the collection of very large, actually huge amounts, of digital data in machines, machines that then can manipulate all that it has, and can look for associations, without considering the cause and effect of the associations found. The result is empirical, that is, by example. And this empirical relationship can be dangerous in that what appears to be related, may not have any causal relationship at all, they just exist. But because they exist, they can be used, usually are, mostly as a way to sell or not to sell something to those found relationships.

But are they right?  Do the events really relate?  And, can anything be learned?

Sure, why not.

And that is why people can live on the grassy knoll and be quite comfortable in seeing something that isn't there.