Quotes About Causation

Perhaps the biggest misconception some managers may run into is the belief that correlation proves causation. The fact that one variable is correlated to another does not necessarily mean that one variable causes the other. If church donations and liquor sales are correlated, it is not because of some collusion between clergy and the liquor industry. It is because both are affected by how well the economy is doing.

When we work backward from results to figure out why those things happened, we are susceptible to a variety of cognitive traps, like assuming causation when there is only a correlation, or cherry-picking data to confirm the narrative we prefer. We will pound a lot of square pegs into round holes to maintain the illusion of a tight relationship between our outcomes and our decisions.

Those who use 'Correlation is not the same as causation' as a magic incantation to dismiss all fact-using professions are fools holding a lit match in one hand and an open gas can in the other, screaming, 'One has nothing to do with the other!'

It is natural for lawyers to think in terms of liability formulas. When we learn law we often as if learning spells at Hogwarts. So, we are taught that negligence involves a duty, breach, causation and damage. We learn that we can resist these claims by asserting counteracting magic spells which themselves have their own formulas.

It is natural for lawyers to think in terms of liability formulas. When we learn law we often do so as if learning spells at Hogwarts. So, we are taught that negligence involves a duty, breach, causation and damage. We learn that we can resist these claims by asserting counteracting magic spells which themselves have their own formulas.

Fixing motives is like fixing blame-the further away from the act you get, the harder it is to single out one thing as having caused it.

Generations of Humeans have… been misled into offering analyses of causation and of natural law that have been far too weak because they had no basis for accepting the existence of either cause and effect or natural laws… Hume's scepticism about cause and effect and his agnosticism about the external world are of course jettisoned the moment he leaves his study.

Most psychiatrists assume that mental illnesses such as depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be treated by drugs. But most psychotherapy doesn't address the social causation of mental illness either.

It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.

human beings traditionally have great trouble in coping with the concept of random chance. People tend on the whole to want to assign occurrences of remarkable good or bad luck to agency, either human or superhuman. It is important to emphasize, however, that malevolent humans have been only one kind of agent to whom such causation has been attributed: the others include deities, non-human spirits that inhabit the terrestrial world, or the spirits of dead human ancestors.

Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

For example, if every time you eat popcorn, one hour later you fart so hard that it inflates your socks, you can reasonably assume popcorn makes you gassy.

Third, we are able to look at the causal skein of mental illness and unravel it, either by longitudinal studies—the same people over time—or experimental studies, which would get rid of third variables.

Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.

Call to mind the whole of Substance of which you have a very small portion, and the whole of time whereof a small hair's breadth has been determined for you, and of the chain of causation whereof you are how small a link.

There is no fire without some smoke.

These things did not happen simply because Reagan gave a speech or because Orwell wrote a book: the remainder of this book complicates the causation. It is worth starting with visions, though, because they establish hopes and fears. History then determines which prevail.

Systemic causation, because it is less obvious than direct causation, is more important to understand. A systemic cause may be one of a number of multiple causes. It may require some special conditions. It may be indirect, working through a network of more direct causes.

Responsible journalists need to discuss systemic causation.

The phenomenon of reflexivity is a form of systemic causation.

Systemic causation must be taught if the effects of global warming are to be seriously understood. The

Everything that we know is within our universe, and everything within our universe is moulded by the conditions of space, time, and causation.

post hoc ergo propter hoc…after this, therefore because of this.

Among the factors that play a part in the causation of neuroses and that have created the conditions under which the forces of the mind are pitted against one another, three emerge into prominence: a biological, a phylogenetic and a purely psychological factor.