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Correlation is not Causation Roland00 Send a noteboard - 05/11/2018 08:05:02 PM

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The link below is to a fun little widget that purports to tell you how likely someone with traits you select is to vote Dem or Rep. Turns out that 'people like me' have about a 90% chance of voting Democratic. The last three democrats (only three!) I voted for were extremely conservative Georgia Senator Zell Miller in... uh... 2000 maybe, I think a bog-standard democratic operative in Kansas that I had a personal connection to in 1996 (or maybe '94?), and Bill Clinton in '92.

Fun result: If I switch from 'white' (which I am) to 'black', the chances of voting Democrat drop around 8%. So a black person who has my other characteristics is more likely to favor the Republican party than a white person who does. Weird.


Sigh this "correlation measures" just in the end cause people to distrust each other and think of people as objects. It is like saying blue eye instead of white, sure white and blue eye have a strong correlation but being blue eye does not determine your voting pattern, just like being white does not determine your voting pattern.

Well give 7 traits like this to a person, 7 correlation (not causation) categories and you overwhelm a person critical thinking capabilities and thus the myth-making part of your brain kicks in and you start to belive your own marketing spin and this creates "fake tribes" that does not describe reality and once you start doing this the us vs them part of your brain activates and it all bad faith after that.

But hey this world is hell, and this world is not the ideal so you just have to live with it for you can't convince everyone all at once to "jump" and realize this stuff is bullshit. Everyone moving past this stuff all at once will be the ideal, but we are not living in such a place.

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