The "Causation vs Correlation" error

Causation vs Correlation can be one form of confusion and poor thinking.

How many times have we seen these influences confused? Conspiracy theorists may point out that nations that have fluoridated water tend to have higher incidences of cancer in the populace. Does fluoridation cause cancer? What they fail to take in consideration though is the relative wealth of nations. Relatively wealthy nations tend to fluoridate their water system (which is done simply as a luxury since it tends to reduce tooth decay in water drinkers, but doesn't help the functioning of the water system itself). Likewise, relatively wealthy nations tend to have available treatments for diseases easily treated (unlike cancer), hence more people in these wealthier nations are more likely to live long enough to GET cancer.

At one time in our history, one out of eleven women would get breast cancer. Now, it's one woman in eight. But in light of the line of reasoning just touched on, we can see that this isn't necessarily a bad thing and can even be a GOOD thing since the average life span for women (we well as men) is always increasing in developed nations.

Measured IQ in women has also increased over the past 30 years or so, since it's been acceptable for women to attend collage or university. Yet, no one is suggesting that intelligence causes cancer even though the 'tie' is as tight or as loose as the fluoridation correlation.

The natives of the New Hebrides Islands used to believe that having lice MADE one healthy. Now, how could they come to this wacky conclusion? Because when people ran a fever, both their apparent health and their 'share' of lice 'went elsewhere'. Of course, we laugh at such illogic, but it would be a capital mistake to assume that their illogic is due to simple naivety. We relatively sophisticated folks don't even blink an eye when faced with similar contemporary feats of illogic. Some "experts" suggest that, even though 3% of all the earth's greenhouse gases is CO2, which accounts for 5% of the total greenhouse effect, and even though human activity is only supposed to have influenced CO2 abundance to some degree, and even though changing long-term climatology is the norm, its assumed (for some strange reason) that if humans stopped appreciably influencing the abundance of CO2 in our atmosphere, then this would somehow make the earth cooler. Not merely RELATIVELY cooler but ACTUALLY cooler. This thinking is as unsound as thinking that lice cause good health.

The common response of people who defend the "global warming" activism is the "green" version of Pascal's (defunct) Wager, which, among other things, can be called the Argument of Possible Dire Consequences fallacy. "Can we really afford to not act, even if our data may be swamped by error and our reasoning flawed? What if we just happen to be right and didn't act?"


I was once told by a graduate-degreed friend of mine that "they say that wearing hats causes baldness". He was rather dedicated to "they" and what "they" had to say until I pointed out that people of both sexes who found themselves going bald were probably more likely to wear hats.

I watched a show on TV the other day where the police were adamant about the "fact" that if a case is not solved within 72 hours, it's likely to go unsolved. No one was delving into possible degradation of physical evidence or migration of witnesses or "purps", but rather they were acting as if there was some magic influence from the 72 hours itself and in a rush to beat this mysterious influence. What they apparently failed to take into account is that it isn't just that a case unsolved within 72 hours is unlikely to be solved (so, hurry up), but rather that cases unlikely to be solved at all will be unlikely to be solved within 72 hours. (It's the backwards-thinking "hat" thing all over again).


It's common to think that if one is "average", then one is not "ahead of the curve" so to speak. Can "average" people feel that they are better off than most? Logically, yes you can. For example, according to the latest statistics, most men have a penis shorter than the average penis length. How can this be possible? Because the statistical average length is slightly higher than the statistical mean. ("Hugely" hung men skew the average higher. Penis length is limited in shortness, but, in theory, not in length.) So, if you have a penis of only average length, then apparently you're better off than most men!


Then there are the situations where "unlikelihood" is not considered in full context. Creationists often like to suggest that naturalistic effects are so "unlikely" that they are not plausible; ergo a "god" creator is a more likely "explanation". First, until someone can show that any existing 'god' creator can even possibly exist, it cannot be considered to be "more likely" than any other idea, and secondly, the likelihood of any particular event isn't equivalent to the likelihood of a process.

The chance of you getting dealt a particular 13-card bridge hand is about one in six billion, but it would be quite foolish to consider this "too unlikely" and therefore you didn't really get dealt that particular hand at all, (and no naturalist suggests that human existence was pre-ordained to occur).