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ciphergoth comments on Open Thread, June 16-30, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Well, to go ahead and state the incredibly obvious: in cases where institution X is not equally well-established globally, one thing to look at is variations in X among different nations, geographic regions, populations, etc. (depending on the kind of thing X is). If Y remains equally stable across the board while X varies, that's evidence that X doesn't have much to do with Y.
Part of the problem is that changes in X might be aimed at keeping Y stable when some other factor Z varies. See Milton Friedman's Thermostat:
For example, it's hard to answer the question "do armies stop invasions?" by using correlations, because the rulers can adjust the strength of the army in response to the risk of getting invaded, so the resulting risk depends mostly on the risk tolerance of the rulers.