This is just embarrassing. The claim in the book about an absence of correlation implying an absence of causation is correct. The car thing is not a counterexample, simply because pushing on the gas pedal does not cause the speed to increase, obviously. For example, the car might be switched off. There is confusion about the concept of cause here.
Further embarrassment arises when the author talks about the lead book author’s credentials. Does he not even know who Kahneman is? It’s bad and irrelevant enough to dwell on what you think are an author’s qualifications, but at least find out something about him first.
- A Nobel Prize in Economics.
- Whose book has almost 20,000 reviews with an
average of almost 5 stars.
- Whose book was winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012
and then ...
got most of the findings undermined by this blog analysis:
One of the examples given on Twitter that I found enlightening (not an expert so I hope I'm interpreting this correctly): if you have a homeostatic system, you would specifically expect to find less correlation between the components than between causally unrelated quantities (e.g. when the correlation between the position of a chicken's body the position of the same chicken's head is lower than the correlation between the position of the chicken's body and a different chicken's head: https://imgur.com/gallery/vgcxL)
> I’m sure that my above post is unfair in the sense that these three people spent several years working hard on a book, and I’m basing my entire reaction on some combination of the title, a technical error that someone found, and an interview where one of the authors was maybe a bit too relaxed. These three pieces of information are in no way a summary of the actual book!
And here we see System 1 in action, helping write a reaction to a book not even read yet.
I would argue that in the driving example, there is in fact correlation, but the data set (a single drive) is insufficient to detect it. If you analyzed the data from a thousand different drives over the same road, the correlation between speed and gas pedal pressure would indeed become apparent. Perhaps the book's authors might better have said that if causation exists, there must exist a set of measurements that can reveal the corresponding correlation.
Or are there cases where causation exists, but no amount of data will reveal correlation?
I was inspired to go into psychology after reading Malcom Gladwell, Freakonomics, et al. Net-net the degree was disapointing. In some ways an intuitive sense of people is superior to what the field's been able to discover. 'Noise' is a good descriptor.
[+] [-] leephillips|4 years ago|reply
Further embarrassment arises when the author talks about the lead book author’s credentials. Does he not even know who Kahneman is? It’s bad and irrelevant enough to dwell on what you think are an author’s qualifications, but at least find out something about him first.
[+] [-] belter|4 years ago|reply
- A Nobel Prize in Economics. - Whose book has almost 20,000 reviews with an average of almost 5 stars. - Whose book was winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012
and then ...
got most of the findings undermined by this blog analysis:
"Reconstruction of a Train Wreck: How Priming Research Went off the Rails" https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
and then...
commented as himself in the same blog https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-...
stating and I quote : "I accept the basic conclusions of this blog..."
You mean that one ?
In case you are thinking anybody could create an account under his name ...I provide you with an additional reference: https://retractionwatch.com/2017/02/20/placed-much-faith-und...
Lets just accept most of Academy nowadays is not far from a total joke.
[+] [-] msteffen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoahTheDuke|4 years ago|reply
> I’m sure that my above post is unfair in the sense that these three people spent several years working hard on a book, and I’m basing my entire reaction on some combination of the title, a technical error that someone found, and an interview where one of the authors was maybe a bit too relaxed. These three pieces of information are in no way a summary of the actual book!
And here we see System 1 in action, helping write a reaction to a book not even read yet.
[+] [-] vannevar|4 years ago|reply
Or are there cases where causation exists, but no amount of data will reveal correlation?
[+] [-] jlizzle30|4 years ago|reply
Thank god I transferred into CS.