3 ms·

I didn't read an argument for causation in the article, did I miss something? The title just states a fact: states with Faster Internet have smarter people. The

I didn't read an argument for causation in the article, did I miss something? The title just states a fact: states with Faster Internet have smarter people. The biggest assumption I saw was that higher ACT scores = smarter. The author even speculated that investment in infrastructure as a value may be causing both.

graeme 12y ago
It's in the very first paragraph: "Despite several doomsday claims that the Internet is breeding a generation of morons, new analysis suggests the opposite may be true." An uncontrolled correlation does NOT suggest the opposite is true. The rest of the article is better though, and allows for various causes.
pidg 12y ago
Isn't there causation implied in that title anyway? Compare it with "States with smarter people have faster internet". The smart people were there first.
- schme 12y ago
  I don't think it is implied. I can't come up with a sentence with the same information and zero implications.
  - graeme 12y ago
    This got downvoted, but I believe the comment is correct. Technically, as stated, the headline does not imply causation. It's like saying "cities with declining crime have declining rates of microsoft internet explorer usage". That's probably true for most cities. The way I phrased it does not imply causation. What's the difference between the two sentences? The first one presents a situation where causation seems plausible to us, so we infer it automatically. Whereas, causation seems implausible between crime and IE, so we don't read my sentence as implying causation. Our brains are wired to automatically see causation if it seems plausible and there's a correlation. I teach the LSAT, and this is one of the topics tested. Normally, the testmakers go to great lengths to disguise what they're doing. But on causation/correlation questions, they just present the correlation. They know we're so bad at it that the question will fool people without any other special tricks.

graeme 12y ago

It's in the very first paragraph: "Despite several doomsday claims that the Internet is breeding a generation of morons, new analysis suggests the opposite may be true." An uncontrolled correlation does NOT suggest the opposite is true. The rest of the article is better though, and allows for various causes.

pidg 12y ago

Isn't there causation implied in that title anyway? Compare it with "States with smarter people have faster internet". The smart people were there first.

schme 12y ago
I don't think it is implied. I can't come up with a sentence with the same information and zero implications.
- graeme 12y ago
  This got downvoted, but I believe the comment is correct. Technically, as stated, the headline does not imply causation. It's like saying "cities with declining crime have declining rates of microsoft internet explorer usage". That's probably true for most cities. The way I phrased it does not imply causation. What's the difference between the two sentences? The first one presents a situation where causation seems plausible to us, so we infer it automatically. Whereas, causation seems implausible between crime and IE, so we don't read my sentence as implying causation. Our brains are wired to automatically see causation if it seems plausible and there's a correlation. I teach the LSAT, and this is one of the topics tested. Normally, the testmakers go to great lengths to disguise what they're doing. But on causation/correlation questions, they just present the correlation. They know we're so bad at it that the question will fool people without any other special tricks.