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It means nothing. Causation can exist without correlation.

• dllthomas 13y ago
  "Causation can exist without correlation." True, but I'm pretty sure I didn't rely on an assumption that it couldn't. Too much correlation without any thing causing that correlation is unlikely. How unlikely depends on just how much correlation. When something is way more unlikely given X than Y, that is evidence for X over Y.
  • pavelrub 13y ago
    No. Correlation doesn't make causation more likely. This is something you have made up.
    • dllthomas 13y ago
      It's not something I've made up. It is a simple combination of Bayes' Theorem and thermodynamics. A strong correlation is a lower entropy system. The stronger the correlation, the more likely it is that there is some explanation for that correlation, even if we haven't found it yet.
      • pavelrub 13y ago
        This is hand waving based on dubious analogies. You keep repeating the same thing without providing any justification, proof or sense behind it, despite being given counterexamples and counterarguments. Please show me a mathematical derivation of this "simple" result, based on whatever statistical model you would like. We are not talking about the likelihood of an "explanation", we are talking about the likelihood of x causing y.