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It's why they tried to get rid of it
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2025
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Memes
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Shark attacks cause ice cream sales
Are you suggesting there's a common cause for pluto and autism?
No, the opposite; it's a classic example showing that correlation doesn't necessitate causation. I was just playing with the phrasing to imply the humorous inverse that there is a casual link.
I thought my joke was very clear, I understand what you were saying.
Ah hell, that's how I first read it then I second guessed myself on the irony later!
Right, but ice cream sales and shark attacks have a shared cause, and it's the weather. Humans both get in the ocean where they are shark-accessible more often and also buy more ice cream when it's hot out.
Basically causation is X->Y. But there are other relationships between X and Y, and in the case of ice cream sales and shark attacks it's W->X and W->Y (one doesn't cause the other, but they are caused by the same thing). It's also possible for two things to correlate without any connection whatsoever, because sometimes things just happen to move in the same directions at the same times for a while.
People have trouble dealing with that, and much magical thinking arises from X and Y happening together being believed to necessarily mean X and Y are connected in some fashion because humans are very good at building patterns even when they don't exist.
That's literally where the vaccines cause autism thing started from - kids start showing clear signs of autism at about the same age they get several vaccines. The guy who originally proposed it with a deeply flawed study was only specifically claiming it was the combined MMR and not all vaccines generically and produced his study in an attempt to sell a separate MMR series that could be spaced out (rather than being one shot with all three) which would allegedly prevent the effect, because he would directly profit from his vaccine series being used instead of the combined MMR.
Whether there is another cause that is common to both events is irrelevant to the example. The example is to demonstrate the fact that while A and B are correlated, neither A causes B nor B causes A are true predicates. Just like the discovery of Pluto and autism diagnosis are correlated to start around the same year, there's no evidence of the casual link where discovering Pluto causes autism diagnosis or autism diagnosis causes Pluto discovery.