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nydwracu comments on Open Thread, November 23-30, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Demonstrating causality would be doing more work than is necessary. To argue against the hypothesis that the values of A, B, C, ... are all increasing, you don't need to show that an increase in the value of A leads to decreases in any of B, C, ...; you just need to demonstrate that the value of at least one of A, B, C, ... is not increasing.
(To avert the negative connotations the above paragraph would likely otherwise have: no, I don't think the decline of lynching caused those various ills.)
(parentheticals added).
You were originally arguing that some weighted sum of A, B, C... was increasing. NancyLebovitz was pointing out that A has clearly decreased, and so for the sum to increase on average, there has to be a correlation between A decreasing and B, C, ... increasing. Then she asked if you thought this correlation was causal.
In response, you punted and changed the argument to:
which was a really nice tautological argument.
So while showing causality is "more work than is necessary" for disproving the straw-Whiggery of your previous comment, it doesn't mean anything for the point NancyLebovitz was raising.