Correlation is usually not causation. But why not? • Hacker News Board

Re: Correlation is usually not causation. But why not?

#71

Post by mattfenwick » Tue, Sep 09, 2014, 1:47 AM UTC

api wrote: post #68

mattfenwick wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An alternative viewpoint: everything's easy after it's been done, but it's hard up until then. > after centuries of science as a profession, pretty much all the easy stuff has already been done. But with the benefit of all that has already been done, shouldn't we be able to do things now that were previously impossible? In other words, "easy in 2014" != "easy in 1200". > It's actually an argument for more cojones in…

I'm not sure... seems like what you say may hold for a while, but eventually you start hitting a more objective sort of hard: things that are hard for human beings to comprehend due to the limitations of our intelligence itself. Beyond that there's probably an even harder hard-- when you start actually running out of new things to discover. Can there really be an infinite number of physical laws, principles, and usef…

Sure, we can't rule out those possibilities ... but to me it just sounds like wild speculation.

Re: Correlation is usually not causation. But why not?

#72

Post by mgregory22 » Thu, Sep 11, 2014, 8:26 PM UTC

anon4 wrote: post #42

mgregory22 wrote: post #39

The difference between correlation and causation is merely conventional. Does the striking of a match cause it to ignite? There is no way to prove that it does, only the correlation between the striking and the ignition makes us say they're causal. Correlation is the only way to determine what's causal and what's not. On the other hand, if you want to look at it philosophically, then the only sensible definition of "…

What? Your comment is pure nonsense. Of course you can prove that striking a match causes it to ignite. There's a long chain of events, each of which trivially physically verifiable, which starts with you moving the match head while applying a given amount of pressure against the material lining the matchbox, which then, due to friction, flakes off (both head and lining), the two react together to produce a spark and…

Any fact that depends on observation is uncertain, no matter how small or trivial it may seem. This whole physical world could be an incredibly elaborate computer simulation. We can never know the true nature of our observations, so nothing we observe can ever prove anything.

Re: Correlation is usually not causation. But why not?

#73

Post by tmbb » Wed, Sep 17, 2014, 9:32 PM UTC

Hey Amarok, Image Occlusion addon author here. I'd like to meet you in person (can't reply to the comment in which you mentioned me). My email is in my profile.

Re: Correlation is usually not causation. But why not?

#74

Post by fizixer » Sat, Sep 20, 2014, 6:41 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #18

fizixer wrote: post #2

Disagree with the title. Correlation does imply casuation a lot of the times (especially for simple systems). But not always. Therefore, the caution is not to assume it apriori, but pursue further investigation to confirm or reject it. Even when it is rejected, a lot of those cases result in a third variable being the cause behind the correlated "effect" variables.

The problem with using "correlation does not imply causation" outside of a mathematical context is that in math, saying A implies B means that if condition A is true, then condition B is true. In common vernacular, implies means to suggest, hence the confusion.

12 days late but still:

I just realized "Correlation does imply casuation a lot of the times" is a completely meaningless statement that I made (if correlation is not because of causation even some of the times then that's simply 'correlation doesn't imply causation').

What I really had in mind (which I think is correct) is that 'correlation ends up being due to causation a lot of the times'.