In the recent past I spoke about the two different kinds of "idiocracy" out there. Today I was thinking about how it can apply to the phrase "correlation does not imply causation".
One of the subplots in Idiocracy is that the people in the idiot future are dying of starvation because instead of watering plants with water, they're watering plants with an energy drink called "brawndo". In the movie, people outsource their understanding to catchphrases such as "brawndo has electrolytes, it has what plants crave" and they repeat those catchphrases mindlessly, assuming that there's an expert somewhere who knows what they're doing that claimed this. In the end of the movie, disaster is averted for society and also for the main character when it's shown that the farms are growing again now that the farms are being watered with water instead of brawndo.
I recently started to take issue with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" because of course correlation can imply causation. It might not mathematically prove causation, but all of science is based on people inferring potential causation based on correlation and using that implication as a starting point to see if you can prove it.
I think it matters a lot what people mean by "imply". I'm sure that in correlation and perhaps formal logic "imply" is an ironclad rule whereby A must always imply B or A does not imply B, but in human communications, implication is a fuzzier concept where something can imply something without that thing being true.
One important thing with respect to this discussion about the word imply is that we have 2 forms of "idiocracy" at the moment, one being the anti-intellectual populist version, but the other being the pseudo-intellectual elitist version. The latter may use phrases like "correlation does not imply causation" similarly to the former's "but brawndo has electrolytes" -- so in the movie, after they give the plants water instead of brawndo and plants start to grow, the anti-intellectuals may accept that, but the pseudo-intellectuals would start chanting "correlation does not imply causation" and even in the face of evidence of plants growing in fields that were dead previously choose to ignore it until some outsourced competent person (who doesn't exist in that universe anymore) claims the causation is now implied using a peer reviewed study (a process that pseudo-intellectuals will hold as sacrosanct without understanding what it means or the limitations of it as a medium). Alternatively, I can imagine "Brawndo is killing the plants? It looks like we've got a conspiracy theorist over here! I think that Brawndo would know not to water plants with something that would kill them!"
In some ways, the pseudo-intellectual elitist idiocracy is a cargo cult, where people act like smart people assuming that doing so will make them smart, when in reality they're just taking on the trappings of this group they want to be like without fully understanding what they're doing. In doing so, much like the euphemism treadmill takes gentle euphemism and sees them become the new slur, tools of intellectual rigor are used to attack what could be rigorous thought.
One of the subplots in Idiocracy is that the people in the idiot future are dying of starvation because instead of watering plants with water, they're watering plants with an energy drink called "brawndo". In the movie, people outsource their understanding to catchphrases such as "brawndo has electrolytes, it has what plants crave" and they repeat those catchphrases mindlessly, assuming that there's an expert somewhere who knows what they're doing that claimed this. In the end of the movie, disaster is averted for society and also for the main character when it's shown that the farms are growing again now that the farms are being watered with water instead of brawndo.
I recently started to take issue with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation" because of course correlation can imply causation. It might not mathematically prove causation, but all of science is based on people inferring potential causation based on correlation and using that implication as a starting point to see if you can prove it.
I think it matters a lot what people mean by "imply". I'm sure that in correlation and perhaps formal logic "imply" is an ironclad rule whereby A must always imply B or A does not imply B, but in human communications, implication is a fuzzier concept where something can imply something without that thing being true.
One important thing with respect to this discussion about the word imply is that we have 2 forms of "idiocracy" at the moment, one being the anti-intellectual populist version, but the other being the pseudo-intellectual elitist version. The latter may use phrases like "correlation does not imply causation" similarly to the former's "but brawndo has electrolytes" -- so in the movie, after they give the plants water instead of brawndo and plants start to grow, the anti-intellectuals may accept that, but the pseudo-intellectuals would start chanting "correlation does not imply causation" and even in the face of evidence of plants growing in fields that were dead previously choose to ignore it until some outsourced competent person (who doesn't exist in that universe anymore) claims the causation is now implied using a peer reviewed study (a process that pseudo-intellectuals will hold as sacrosanct without understanding what it means or the limitations of it as a medium). Alternatively, I can imagine "Brawndo is killing the plants? It looks like we've got a conspiracy theorist over here! I think that Brawndo would know not to water plants with something that would kill them!"
In some ways, the pseudo-intellectual elitist idiocracy is a cargo cult, where people act like smart people assuming that doing so will make them smart, when in reality they're just taking on the trappings of this group they want to be like without fully understanding what they're doing. In doing so, much like the euphemism treadmill takes gentle euphemism and sees them become the new slur, tools of intellectual rigor are used to attack what could be rigorous thought.
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It's a method of dismissing uncomfortable truths like men are auperior to women or that wife bots will replace women.