(Irrelevant?) Correlations...

[phyllo]

In this thread, I’m talking about divorce and margarine.

If you are asked to determine if there is a causal relationship between the two, what are your starting assumptions, if any?

[James_S_Saint]

@Flannel Jesus

@phyllo

@phyllo

An open mind would consider any statement as having a 50% chance of being true, at least initially.

I’m not talking about the probability of some set of statements.
I’m talking about a way of approaching a statement and determining whether it is true or false without a bias. That requires dropping preconceived ideas.

You are talking about a set of statements. ‘Consider any statement as having a 50% chance’ is you talking about a set of statements. Namely, the set of All statements.

You are the one proclaiming multiple statements combined as being not simply true or false. The OP isn’t, nor has phyllo. “The set of all statements” is YOUR strawman, no one else’s.

[Flannel_Jesus]

@James S Saint

@Flannel Jesus

No, not all true/false questions start out with 50/50 probability.

example:
I state:
A dwarf just broke into your house and stole your keys: 50/50?

You respond, true to form, ‘Yes, 50/50’.

For you to proclaim that it isn’t 50/50, you have to presume that you know something about the truth of that statement first, don’t you?

Do you know who said it?
Do you understand what was meant by “dwarf”?
Was your house unguarded for a long time?
Were your keys in your house to be stolen?

You instinctively assess those things pretty quickly and thus often mislead yourself into biased mis-judgment. People can easily take advantage of you because of your willingness to presume so readily.

“That is silly. No one would do that.”
— exactly what a con artist looks for.

Until you think about the real situation, you cannot assess any probability to favor anything.

This whole post reads like, ‘If I make a semantic argument about dwarves, I could maybe make a dent in your argument.’
I’m not really the type to buy that line of argument. I have arguments in good faith. When I use ‘dwarves’ as an example, I’m not meaning anything confusing or unintuitive; I’m not planning on pulling any tricks by making ‘dwarves’ out to mean something you couldn’t have expected it to mean. I’m not interested in that low type of arguing. I’m not engaging in it.

[James_S_Saint]

@Flannel Jesus

This whole post reads like, ‘If I make a semantic argument about dwarves, I could maybe make a dent in your argument.’
I’m not really the type to buy that line of argument. I have arguments in good faith. When I use ‘dwarves’ as an example, I’m not meaning anything confusing or unintuitive; I’m not planning on pulling any tricks by making ‘dwarves’ out to mean something you couldn’t have expected it to mean. I’m not interested in that low type of arguing. I’m not engaging in it.

YOU are not the one making the statement (in your example). You always presume that you already know so very much more about the certainty of things before you even think about them. You are extremely presumptuous/biased.

[Flannel_Jesus]

@phyllo

In this thread, I’m talking about divorce and margarine.

If you are asked to determine if there is a causal relationship between the two, what are your starting assumptions, if any?

I actually wouldn’t be surprised if there were a causal relationship between the two. Not divorce in Main specifically and margarine consumption in the entire US, mind you, but divorce in the US and margarine consumption in the US. It doesn’t sound too absurd to me to think that maybe recently divorced men and women switch from butter to margarine to save money, as I expect divorce is generally followed by financial hardships for one or both parties.

And, it might be that Main’s divorce rate varies with the general US divorce rate (possibly divorce rate increasing or decreasing due to changing social/cultural landscape which is shared by Main and the US in general), in which case the divorce rate in Main would be causally linked to margarine consumption.

So I don’t start out with a very strong prior against a causal relationship between the two.

But I would start out with a strong prior against ‘There’s a strong causal relationship between divorces in main and margarine consumption in the US, but not a strong causal relationship between divorces in the US in general and margarine consumption in the US.’

[skakos]

In a sense everything is interrelated in the cosmos. So it would impossible to have an event which does NOT affect another event, no matter what event that might be.

[James_S_Saint]

@skakos

In a sense everything is interrelated in the cosmos. So it would impossible to have an event which does NOT affect another event, no matter what event that might be.

How would you go about proving that?

[skakos]

What part exactly needs proving?
That everything is interrelated?
Which things are NOT according to your opinion?

[Amorphos]

as with earthquake aftershock formulas, these in the op and link are further evidence that patterns are being made utility of and indirectly. it tells us that nature uses maths.

all things are both in the same place and equally distant, hence there is an universal connectivity.

• not the same as god or any such thing though.

[skakos]

@Amorphos

as with earthquake aftershock formulas, these in the op and link are further evidence that patterns are being made utility of and indirectly. it tells us that nature uses maths.

all things are both in the same place and equally distant, hence there is an universal connectivity.

• not the same as god or any such thing though.

Depends on how you define God. The One of Parmenides surely looks a lot like Him…