alt Hacker NewsThe strength of the correlation might be the only useful single variable we can have in discussions like this.
I'm starting to think that "Correlation is not causation" is a kind of slippery slope toward a world where nobody can ever prove the cause of anything. At the same time, just about everything is at least a mild carcinogen including food, the sun, air particulates, etc. But knowing that everything causes cancer isn't useful information. Knowing the strength of the correlations of each of these things is actually useful.
Without correlation, what are we left with?
Replies
>Without correlation, what are we left with?
Mechanism. Testable causality. X causes cancer by doing y.
My retort is always:
Saying 'Correlation isn't causation' doesn't disprove causation.
>is a kind of slippery slope..
Yea..
A deer in a forest who heard the foot steps of a lion and thought "hey Correlation is not causation" would soon be a goner...
Establishing a correlation is only a starting point. After that there is an entire field of statistics called causal inference that is devoted to establishing causality using a variety of tools.
The strength of correlation is NOT the only useful metric and should not be mistaken for more rigorous statistical analysis regarding causality.