army1987 comments on Taking "correlation does not imply causation" back from the internet - Less Wrong

41 Post author: sixes_and_sevens 03 October 2012 12:18PM

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Comment author: RichardHughes 03 October 2012 03:18:15PM 11 points [-]

Disagree. Our target audience - humans - rarely if ever thinks of 'correlation' in terms of its mathematical definition and I suspect would be put off by an attempt to do so.

Comment author: [deleted] 04 October 2012 12:54:57AM 1 point [-]

The point still applies. What do you mean by “correlation” --formally or informally-- when one (or both) of the variables is constant across the population?

Comment author: RichardHughes 04 October 2012 05:41:33PM *  2 points [-]

The specific fake argument used is flawed because of that. When people make the correlation-causation error, how often are they doing it based off of a variable that's constant across the population? Do people ever really develop 'drinking water causes x' beliefs?

It's a valid point and very true, but I suspect that it isn't applicable to the issue at hand.