photo cred: my dad We’re living through an epidemic of loneliness and everybody knows it, except for one small group: people who have actually looked at the data. Much of what appears to be a loneliness epidemic is, in fact, a well-intentioned misunderstanding. However, there is a real epidemic out there—one that is far stranger and more sinister. I’ll get to its causes and cures in a moment, but first: When people think they’re documenting a concerning trend, they often get a little loosey-goosey with the facts. I don’t think anyone does this on purpose—no one is getting rich selling anti-loneliness pills (yet). But it means that claims about the loneliness epidemic are often tainted by two statistical sins that tend to go undetected. First, someone will present one actual data point showing how many people feel lonely today, they’ll imply a data point from the past where people were less lonely, and then they’ll conclude, based on the trendline that they just made up, that something very bad has happened.…