3 ms·
> There is also no hardwired conflation of correlation with causation, it's just a general jumping to conclusions error. There is plenty of literature in the n
by funklute 5y ago
> There is also no hardwired conflation of correlation with causation, it's just a general jumping to conclusions error.
There is plenty of literature in the neuroscience and psychology fields that show we are biased towards finding patterns where there are none. Evolutionarily speaking, this is easy to understand. Better to run away one extra time, than getting eaten by a lion. The latter is less likely to pass on their genes.
> People mindlessly parroting anything is not a great success of anything, especially not of science communication.
I respectfully disagree. Appreciating the subtleties of causality is beyond what you can expect from most lay people. Even many of my machine learning colleagues can get tripped up by this stuff. So even if it is simplistic, I still think it is useful that people at least understand that causality is difficult.
- rosetremiere 5y agoIsn't "finding patterns where there are none" more akin to finding correlation in the first place, than to making the correlation->causation jump?
- funklute 5y agoWell, both really. But in practice, erroneously identifying correlations doesn't tend to be quite so big a problem as conflating correlation with causation. The former is easy to address with strict data recording, whereas the latter is more of a conceptual thing, and requires some deeper thinking that often goes against intuition.
- nathias 5y agoExcess pattern recognition isn't conflating correlation for causation.
- funklute 5y agoNo, but conflating correlation for causation _is_ excess pattern recognition.
- nathias 5y agonot at all, pattern recognition has to do with raw data, correlation/causation about highly conceptual interpretation of the data
- funklute 5y ago> pattern recognition has to do with raw data This statement makes no sense at all. Pattern recognition applies to any data. That's not even contested terminology. (besides, just redefine your processed data to be your new raw data, and you're back to square one...and in many cases it wouldn't even be clear how to precisely define unprocessed data)
- nathias 5y agoOk, what I meant to say it's a much more fundamental mechanism of cognition that has to do with processing perceptual information, while the other is a conceptual, logical mistake.
- funklute 5y agoOk. But no matter what terminology you want to use, it is still the case that there is plenty of literature that shows we are biased towards conflating correlation with causation. That is fact, not opinion. If you want to criticise the evidence in the literature, then fair enough I guess...that's beyond me to defend.