No Bull Information by Gamble John;

Author:Gamble, John;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781630471774
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing

Be extremely careful before assuming cause and effect.

Cause and effect is one of the first things a human being learns. A baby cries and its mother (or father) feeds S.H.It.55 Both the baby and the feeder quickly see a cause/effect relationship. Hunger creates an unpleasant feeling that produces the crying. The crying is interpreted as a sign of hunger that is dealt with by feeding after which the crying subsides. What could be simpler? I’m not a developmental psychologist, but I wonder if we oversimplify even this most basic human action. Babies cry immediately after birth often in connection with starting to breathe. But is crying an inborn response to hunger, or is it learned or taught, or both?

Here’s the central point about cause and effect. We see many examples where it appears to be absolutely clear. You stub your toe on a chair leg, it hurts like hell and turns black and blue. That cause/effect is not very complicated. The toe was forced to bend in a way it was not designed to bend; perhaps the inner workings of the toe were damaged. Your body instantly warned you with pain, perhaps excruciating pain. We’re supposed to learn from this and that’s fine for toe health. But it is not good for NBI if the bruised toe syndrome (BTS) causes us to accept cause/effect assumptions in other areas where they are much less certain.

The mass media often help to create oversimplified notions of cause and effect. Literally56 as I write this, CNN is reporting on a study in a top medical journal that concluded that men over 40 who have sex more often have fewer heart attacks. The newsreaders have fun with the story and that’s fine. But—even with sex—we have to question cause and effect. Does more frequent sex protect against heart attacks, or is it more complicated than that? If a man (the study dealt only with men) is in extremely poor health anyway, he probably is low on a sexual activity scale. Could it be that men who exercise, eat a proper diet, and are not overweight have sex more often? What is the real cause?

There is a huge difference between association and causation. If we look at SAT scores of black, white, and yellow Americans57 we find that the average scores of Asians are highest, followed by whites, with blacks coming in last. No one with half a brain and one eye open believes “blackness” causes lower SAT scores. This is just one example of how we have to be careful with cause and effect.

The dog lovers among my readers are angry that it has been many pages since a reference to my dog, Belle. Belle was quite a clean dog, but she did not like to be bathed. However, like most dogs, she loved to please human beings, especially those who cared for her. Thus it is easy to draw an incorrect conclusion about cause/effect. Here is the sequence:

• Belle is given a bath.

• The bath ends.

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