Today is February 1 and the Navigate the Chaos question to consider is “How often do you commit the fallacy of confusing association with causation?”
Those who navigate the chaos often work hard at understanding the concept: Correlation does not imply causation.
A brief explanation is that correlation is a measure of how closely related two things are; and just because two things correlate does not necessarily mean that one causes the other.
In The Guardian, Nathan Green wrote “Correlation is not causation means that just because two things correlate does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. As a seasonal example, just because people in the UK tend to spend more in the shops when it's cold and less when it's hot doesn't mean cold weather causes frenzied high-street spending. A more plausible explanation would be that cold weather tends to coincide with Christmas and the New Year sales.”
“Our preconceptions and suspicions about the way things work tempt us to make the leap from correlation to causation without any hard evidence.”
This happens quite frequently within higher education and the discussion between the selection of a college major and the potential for life-time earnings.
Examples include:
You need to major in business because employers value students with that major over all other disciplines. Employers actually care far more about skills, experiences, and accomplishments rather than one’s major.
Your salary is directly related to your level of happiness. The more money you make the happier you are. The research suggests otherwise as there are many factors involved with happiness.
The most important thing you can do for your career is pick the perfect major. Nothing else matters. There is no such thing as the perfect major.
Since engineering majors have the highest salaries upon graduation you need to select that as your major if you want to have a great career. But what if you do not like engineering? Or worse yet, perhaps you are good at it but simply do not enjoy it. Should you still pursue a career that makes you miserable?
Ralph Waldo Emerson noted "Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.”
As you go about your day, consider asking yourself if you commit the fallacy of confusing association with causation?