10 ms·
So you're arguing that obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia cause long commutes? Or that some factor causes both? What might that be?
by jancona 15y ago
So you're arguing that obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia cause long commutes? Or that some factor causes both? What might that be?
I'm suspicious of this sort of research for lots of reasons, but concerns about the direction of causality is pretty low on my list in this case.
- bretthoerner 15y agoNo, he's saying just because they correlate doesn't mean they cause one another (in either direction) at all. But the articles claims otherwise.
- Dove 15y agoIt means precisely that A causes B, B causes A, C causes both A and B, or the correlation is a statistical fluke. It is intellectually important to be aware of all the options. But "correlation does not imply causation" can be too much of a reflex reaction. In this particular case, it's easy to imagine how a long commute could cause obesity, divorce, and neck pain; it's very hard to imagine how the causality could run the other way, or what a common cause might be. The rule could stand to be taken with a grain of common sense.
- puredemo 15y agoNo, it could also mean that types of people who A also tend to B, or types of people who C also tend to A and B, and so on. Correlation != causation.
- lurker19 15y agoIt is never wrong to refuse to attempt to have an insight. It is not right either. It is just boring. Correlation is a starting point, not an ending point.
- praptak 15y ago"it's very hard to imagine how the causality could run the other way, or what a common cause might be." On the contrary, a (mind that: possible) common cause is even suggested in the article itself: "Perhaps long-distance commuters tend to be poorer or less educated, both conditions that make divorce more common."
- jerf 15y ago"So you're arguing that obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia cause long commutes? Or that some factor causes both? What might that be?" Poor decision making skills. Excepting possibly neck pain (and even then I could work it in), that could underlie them all, and there's a certain amount of evidence to suggest things like willpower and discipline exist as at least statistically-distinct entities, even if you can't quite point at the willpower organ.
- etal 15y agoIt's probably being poor, which also correlates with worse working environments. Remember, "drive until you qualify."