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The phrase "all else being equal" does not mean what you are presenting it as. It's only used to introduce a thought experiment where someone is trying to under
by mwfunk 10y ago
The phrase "all else being equal" does not mean what you are presenting it as. It's only used to introduce a thought experiment where someone is trying to understand the effect of one variable independently of all the other forces at work, and that person is warning the listener/reader that they are intentionally glossing over lots of other meaningful factors so that they can focus on the one factor they wish to understand.
It is not a statement by the speaker that all other things actually are equal, in fact it's usually an acknowledgement that they're not. If all else really was equal, nobody would ever start a sentence with that phrase.
- roel_v 10y agoWhat? No, it doesn't - it means 'when controlled for all variables except this one in our significance analysis'.
- mwfunk 10y agoThat's a more concise way of saying what I was trying to say. The person I was responding to appeared to think it was a statement that the other variables were insignificant, rather than controlled (at least that's how I interpreted their post).
- roel_v 10y agoOh ok, I got it the other way around - that gp meant a statistical concept and you just as a narrative.