There is a common philosophical retort which in short translates “Correlation does not equal Causation”. It’s philosophically true, but seldom applicable. Correlation often points to causation. I’m no Philosopher, but a more helpful statement might be “The amalgamation of Correlations would almost certainly point to Causation”.
A short time ago I put up a couple of provocative posts on Facebook to get some discussion going. The first one was blaming feminism for the high suicide rate among young men, using this article from YouGov for my position. The second was on climate change. I used an article from Forbes Magazine to discuss why it is still a debate. If you like, you can find them on my timeline – around the middle of November ’16.
In both of these posts, I quite likely got shot down. The ensuing threads were interesting, anyway. What was common to both posts was that I was going against popular opinion or widely held belief. The difference between them was that the first one on feminism being the root cause of young male suicide, I used ‘correlation equals causation’ to make my argument. The second on climate change and why it is still debated, I used ‘correlation does not equal causation’.
I did these two posts knowing both of them were hot button issues, but as someone in the UK, the climate change question is widely accepted as being the fault of humans. It is still hotly debated in the United States. It was George Bernard Shaw who said the UK and the US were a people separated by a common language… Well, I would say it’s a lot more than that, but I suppose it could ultimately be attributed to a linguistical problem… Anyway, with the feminism blaming post, it is more the suicide rate of young men that is the hot topic – Not many blame feminism for this sad statistic, despite the glaringly obvious correlation.
It is interesting to observe how we can use conflicting methods to form our opinions. Are we often guilty of making things fit with our belief? Well, Sam Harris co-authored a fascinating study on liberals in America: Neural correlates of maintaining one’s political beliefs in the face of counterevidence. Going by this study it is clear we really like what we believe, and we don’t like our beliefs challenged.
In this video by David Wood, he explores how we can willfully turn up our skepticism to drown out the sound of rational thought, and in the same way turn down our skepticism when someone mentions something we like; like Aliens..
We all have Skeptometers, and we adjust them to suit our presuppositions. In fact, David Wood didn’t invent the Skeptometer (Although that contraption in his hand could be the prototype). Richard Dawkins, in The God Delusion, spoke of being skeptical on a scale. He places himself as a 6 on a scale of 1 to 7. I find this absolutely fascinating as there is also a correlation which can be tied in with this which I will get to in a bit. Putting himself as a 6 on a 7 scale means he is 85% unsure of God’s existence and 15% sure. It’s sad that most of whom he has influenced in their thinking don’t know this as they haven’t read The God Delusion, but he has managed to make them 100% sure God doesn’t exist – or at least that is what they will tell you. Perhaps that’s not the case – maybe it’s that they don’t think and they believe Dawkins is some kind of soothsayer.. Anyhow, the fascinating correlation – Well, his placing on his scale means his belief versus his unbelief puts him directly in line with the percentage of National Academy of Science members regarding belief and non-belief. 15% of this elite group believe in Intelligent Design and given the increasing popularity of ID, that’s a number set to increase. It’s impossible to tell which direction the correlation is going, though. I think it’s probably just a funny coincidence.
I feel it is ironic when people define themselves as Skeptics. I’m skeptical about a great many things, like aliens for example, but I don’t define myself as a skeptic. It’s every bit as ironic as the term ‘Atheist’, as it still points to a held position on the lofty speculation, thus equating lofty speculation true.
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2016/05/13/low-young-masculinity-britain/
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39589
Andy Macaskill 