The Causality Calamity
Many years ago, I heard of a valley where villagers cultivated their fields using short-handled hoes. All day long, they would work hunched over in the fields, their backs aching from bending down low to turn over the soil. Then, one year, a stranger came by from another area and suggested that if they use long-handled hoes, they could accomplish more, in less time, and with less back pain. The following spring, the villagers switched to long-handled hoes, and enjoyed the benefits, but that summer, the valley was hit with the worst drought in memory, and all of the crops withered. Disgusted, the villagers burned the long-handled hoes, concluding that the change in equipment had brought about the draught, and went back to using short-handled hoes.
We might think this a charming story about a quaint group of people, but how different are we really? What would we have done under those circumstances? How would we have responded if right after switching back to short handles, the rains returned, signaling the end of the drought? Would we be tempted to imagine a causal link between the way we cultivated our fields and the coming of the rain? We might know intellectually that correlation doesn’t imply causality, but when faced with coincidences of this nature, our minds want to connect the dots between the unrelated events.
Fear further amplifies our temptation to find connections between things, since we want to bring some predictability to our lives. When bad things happen, we try to explain why, and when good things happen, we want to be able to make them happen again. We wear our lucky hats to sporting events and believe that our plants will grow better if we talk to them. The world is such a confusing place that we try to put some order to it, and while the desire for this is understandable, it is dangerous to imagine causal connections where none exist. We get it wrong much of the time, and our conclusions have consequences.
Every day, we observe the world around us, examine what has come before, and decide what to do next. By drawing invalid conclusions based on assumptions, we make bad decisions, with the potential of harming ourselves and others. We fall prey to our confirmation biases, make judgments bases on our prejudices, and see whatever we want to see. If we fear for our health and believe 5G to be the cause of the pandemic, we might destroy cell phone towers, even if there is no scientific link between the two.
The remedy to this is to be brutally honest with ourselves about what we really know and what we are making up on top of it. Instead of making assumptions, we should look at the evidence, question its sources, examine the methodology, and limit our conclusions to those supported by the data. Knowing that correlation doesn’t imply causality is not enough. To make better choices, we must relive this principle every day.