I have a philosophy degree, and I can say with some confidence that I understand that particular catchphrase pretty profoundly. Not everyone who happens to disagree with you is merely an ignorant barbarian in need of enlightenment.
See Karl Popper's theory of critical rationalism to answer your questions about causation.
I noticed the same thing. I couldn't help but read his response in Trump's voice. "I'm very very smart, believe me. I went to a tremendous school and learned yuge words. No one knows causation better than me let me tell you."
What can I tell you, I think trying to use things you don't understand to show how much smarter you are, is the ultimate intellectual dishonesty. I think the world would be a better place (or at least more humble) if people were called out for such behaviours. You don't agree?
EDIT: Just to clarify, I agree with my comment not being respectful or make me look great, but I think it was substantial. If you want to be rigorous in science, you should know the answer to that question.
What was the substance? You said you were throwing a wrench into the cogs of a brain that only mindlessly repeated things. OP wasn't mindlessly repeating, but bringing up a valid point, albeit not going into as much detail as I'd like. You accused someone of not knowing what they were talking about and using phrases they didn't fully understand, and I didn't see any evidence that that was the case.
> What was the substance? You said you were throwing a wrench into the cogs of a brain that only mindlessly repeated things. OP wasn't mindlessly repeating, but bringing up a valid point, albeit not going into as much detail as I'd like.
Ah fair enough. So there's often repeated phrase that "correlation doesn't imply causality". That's because often times people make the fallacy of going "A and B always happen together, therefore A must imply B!" (or the other way around). This is obviously wrong. So some people have learned that whenever someone says "A and B always happen together, so maybe one implies the other...?", they can shout CORRELATION DOESN'T IMPLY CAUSALITY and shut down the conversation.
But the truth is that these people for the most part don't understand that phrase very well, right? Because you take conclusions in your life, right? Science has learned many things about the universe, right? So SOMETHING must imply causality. _If it isn't correlation, what is it?_ Think about it, everything in life is correlation. If you open your hand and the stone drops, did the stone drop _because_ you opened your hand? How can you ever know? All you know is that two events "opening hand" and "stone dropping" are correlated, how can we know if one implies the other? But of course we know, don't we? ;-) I think this is a substantive observation :P
> You accused someone of not knowing what they were talking about and using phrases they didn't fully understand, and I didn't see any evidence that that was the case.
Well, he didn't know the answer to the question I posed before. His answer was "I am very very educated, you go read some books." To me that's plenty of evidence he doesn't know the answer. In fact, I would say telling someone "correlation doesn't imply causality" is strong circumstancial evidence to that effect :P
EDIT: If you say that saying "correlation doesn't imply causality" is bringing up a valid point, it must be the first time you see that phrase, am I right? Go on reddit and in every single conversation you'll see someone throwing that around as an excuse to not having to dig further.
Hahaha neither! I actually thought you were looking to understand what I meant. If I came across as condescending I guess you already knew all this, in which case I'm not sure why you said the other guy made a guy point. So now I'll have to assume you're just trolling. Well played :P But now I've lost interest :P
It's... everyone has heard the phrase "correlation does not imply causation." Of course I understood what you meant. Please do not condescend this much (again, I can't tell if your explanation of why this can be overapplied was meant to sound like it was directed at a five-year-old, or if that's just how you speak.) But just because it can be used incorrectly does not make it an invalid observation, and in the context of your discussion the meaning seemed perfectly clear. Just because a bunch of people on reddit are fond of using a phrase doesn't mean you should respond to a legitimate point by saying "You're just copying that from reddit! I've thrown a wrench into your mindless argument!" It's a well-understood phrase for a reason.
I apologize for dragging this out, and I know it's unproductive, I just found it really baffling to watch someone respond to a standard point with such a high level of totally unwarranted disdain. And then to think any disagreement is because I've neverheardthephrase "correlation does not imply causation"?
Wow, no other answer could've made me this happy. Next time someone asks me why I think philosophy degrees are useless, I have something specific to point them to.
Sure, I'll provide you with a letter of introduction to that effect. I agree that philosophy degrees are mostly useless -- but they are occasionally quite useful for refuting a condescending troll at a party or on the Internet.
