| > A is correlated with B implies that A implies (causal) B or B implies (causal) A (note that this is false, with a plethora of different types of counter example). I think it's even worse: implies: - strongly suggest the truth or existence of (something not expressly stated) - (of a fact or occurrence) suggest (something) as a logical consequence. Unless your "implies (causal)" is a reference to a domain specific variation of the word (which laymen won't know anyways), your false conclusion is actually incorrect. After googling, this seems to be the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau... >> In casual use, the word "implies" loosely means suggests rather than requires. However, in logic, the technical use of the word "implies" means "is a sufficient condition for".[3] This is the meaning intended by statisticians when they say causation is not certain. Indeed, p implies q has the technical meaning of the material conditional: if p then q symbolized as p → q. That is "if circumstance p is true, then q follows." In this sense, it is always correct to say "Correlation does not imply causation." > This is probably the most commonly exploited false implication by hucksters, and, perhaps more importantly, is a very common source of false beliefs with no malicious intent at all. True, but then it's extremely easy to find large quantities of people on the internet who speak as if (I infer this from the surrounding text of their statement) correlation rules out the possibility of causation. I would love to know the magnitude of confusion/harm the (typically unrealized) ambiguity and other issues of the English language causes in the world, especially considering how causality links so many things together (often in ways beyond our awareness). |