#CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION

[byler-alarmist]

Mike found it harder and harder to date El the more feminine she presented, because it made it harder to lie to himself

🤷‍♂️

[bastionofbibliophiles]

[somechubbynerd]

Is there really a correlation between being trans and being a software developer?

There's a lot of alt-culture wrapped up in the software dev area because writing programs leaves you with a lot of free time, since the whole point of "software" is automation of tasks. If you're good, you aren't spending most of your job time doing much other than tinkering and thinking. Once I had free time to consider my identity actively, I comprehended that I was not the gender I was born with, and my identity has been slowly evolving ever since as I explore myself in new avenues.

[if-loki-was-a-fox]

As much as I love any life series content, ngl this whole real life thing has me just a little bit anxious for its discourse potential

I reeaallly want people to have fun with it and move on, and not turn people not taking it seriously into A Thing because it is objectively not at the same scale as any other seasons

[condescending-jerk]

but also even if your past self was actually better than you and you decide that you want to be more like that person again

the right way to do it is definitely not to just do the easy things which are also the worst things

sometimes if you want something you actually need to work for it

i guess i never really accepted that concept

[byler-alarmist]

I don't make the rules

SHUT UP RN I JUST SAW SOMEONE SAY THAT MIKE ONLY SAID HE FELL IN LOVE W EL WHEN HE FIRST SAW HER BECAUSE HE THOUGHT SHE WAS A BOY. IM LOOSING IT

[adharastarlight]

Slughorn: Mr Black, your homework is a day late

Regulus: I was off ill yesterday

Slughorn: you're conviently off a lot

Regulus: correlation does not imply causation

Slughorn: Mr Blac-

Regulus: listen sir, if you want to get onto this boat you should know that there are already six people here. One of them is screaming in the back, another is passed out and half falling out, two of them are rowing backwards, one of them is desperately rowing and wishing he could stick his head into the water and drown and the other is fucking critising everything he is doing. So if you want to pursue this conversation and get on this boat, you're fucking rowing

Slughorn: ...lovely to have you back in class, Mr Black

Regulus, sacrastically: wonderful to be here

[creature-wizard]

"I had a health problem but then I did [insert alternative health treatment], and it was miraculously healed!"

Wonderful! I'm so happy for you! But before you go prescribing it to people with similar problems, ask yourself - what does the overall evidence suggest about the efficacy of X? Are your results typical, or even common?

Correlation does not imply causation, and even if there was a causal relationship, it doesn't necessarily mean that other people will be able to get the exact same results as you.

I have no doubt in my mind that miraculous healings happen at least sometimes, because I've known of people who had these things happen. But, I've also known - personally known - people who literally died because they relied on what they thought was responsible for these other miraculous healings.

Thing is, we still don't know exactly why these things happen or not. We have lots of ideas, but the more we start looking around and looking into things, the less evidence we can find to suggest that any of them are correct. At this point, "they held their mouths wrong" is as good of an explanation as any.

[xkcd-for-that]

I found this blog just a few days ago and today there was one in my uni lecture! The one about correlation and causation!! I had never realised how ubiquitous they are!!

They're very popular among STEM folks, that's for sure! The referenced comic, for those unfamiliar:

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.

[transmutationisms]

these tags annoyed me to be honest

1. PCOS is a bad point of comparison because despite the name, diagnosis is not *supposed to be* done on the primary basis of finding cysts in the ovaries; these are common and not inherently of concern. instead, the more indicative biomarker is the hormone test (high levels of testosterone *throughout the menstrual period*, with corresponding disruption to the expected/typical fluctuations in estrogen/progesterone) but often diagnosis is done more on the basis of a physical exam ('exam') confirming characteristics such as hairiness or adiposity. this absolutely DOES result in PCOS overdiagnosis for some demographics; while a real biological condition, PCOS is also a load-bearing diagnostic term in the enforcement of very specific standards of (white) femininity and its use also frequently masks, for example, the frequency of hypothalamic amenorrhea (HA) secondary to chronic energy deficiency (as in anorexia), which doctors are loathe to diagnose because they view weight loss as prima facie good

2. the reason it matters that psychiatric diagnoses do not have a 'biology' is not because every disease must have a single specific biomarker; it is correct that some do not. however, the way patient complaints are sifted into categories labelled 'psychiatric' versus '(otherwise) medical' begins essentially with determining whether the distress is 'physical' or 'mental'. in other words, in the case of, say, the chronic fatigue syndrome (famously, lacking a known specific biomarker), the symptoms being investigated by the non-psychiatrist physician are still physical (PEM; mast cell dysregulation; pain; etc) whereas a diagnosis of depression may be accompanied by, but requires no, physical symptoms or presentation. the psychiatric claim that its diagnoses have biological causes and correlates is specifically a claim about the role of neurobiology in the causation of affective states; thus, the comparison to physical complaints is meaningless here

3. this person goes on to claim that depressives do in fact share, though not universally, certain biomarkers such as mitochondrial dysregulations. such claims typically come from various imaging studies plagued with systemic problems in the selection and definition of patient populations as well as the subjectivity of result interpretation and analysis. these claims are not well supported and typically rely on circular selection and definition of patient populations

4. speaking philosophically, it is in fact often correct to challenge the notion that a physical 'disease' chronically lacking a specific biomarker is indeed a disease, in any sense besides the colloquial one. that is, diseases that cannot be correlated with one cause or presentation are often better understood as 'syndromes', which is to say, as a taxonomical heuristic that is likely grouping together multiple disparate physical (anatomical, physiological, functional, &c) problems with multiple disparate causes. this is almost certainly the case for chronic fatigue syndrome, for example. this is a philosophical distinction that matters for research and understanding, and does not mean or imply anything to minimise or contradict the patient experience of the syndrome or symptoms. it matters because, for instance, CFS triggered by the epstein-barr virus may indeed turn out to have different disease mechanisms to CFS triggered by, say, covid-19, or may have different specific mechanisms when running in certain families, and so on. distinguishing these much more specific presentations, and possibly distinct diseases, from the current discursive schema of the overlying syndrome is potentially very good for patients, who likely have different needs and treatments to one another despite currently all sharing the same label in their charts

5. which goes back to an overlying point, which is that (despite frequent defensiveness to the contrary), whether or not something is a disease does not inherently tell us anything about its reality, its severity, its cause, the moral status of its sufferers, &c

[lovemyromance]

Do people not understand first person POVs suddenly?

I hate this claim that Elain only started getting better when Lucien arrived because talk about correlation does not imply causation.

Did we forget this story is told in First person POV - through Feyre? We didn't even know there was a problem with Elain or what state she was in - until Feyre & Lucien arrived at the NC. Feyre narrates Elain's entire transformation from confusion/depression to figuring out she's a Seer and immediately beginning to contribute to their cause.

Lucien does not cause this change in Elain. He is simply there. It is not HIS arrival that gave us this look into Elain's issues - it was Feyre's narration. He did not do anything to actually change Elain's depressive state other than the obvious suggestion "get her outside or something idk".

If it were Lucien or Lucien's presence even that actually helped Elain get better - where do we see that in the text? Point to exactly how and where Lucien "makes Elain get better".

Because you know what I can point to?

Elain being uncomfortable. Elain avoiding Lucien. Elain calling the bond strange.

You know what else I can point to?

Azriel taking Elain to the garden. Azriel figuring out what was wrong with Elain - immediately making her feel better and bring her back to this realm.

That is an example of causation. Azriel directly taking action -> leading to the effect of Elain getting some clarity and starting to improve and break out of her depressive state. That is the exact moment she started to become more responsive and cognizant of her surroundings.

It was Azriel. Not Lucien who made Elain feel better.

Azriel, not her "fated mate".

It has always been Azriel written in these key moments with Elain. Yes Lucien might've been off on the continent or out searching for Vassa - but the point is he was NOT there. SJM wrote his storyline far away from Elain, and wrote Azriel's to intwine with hers.

And if people can't recognize that fact - then they're going to be in for a big surprise whenever the next book comes out.

[smile-files]

welcome home's character-color-coding, and what it might mean going forward... the color theory :D

hello neighbors!! last night i had an epiphany... perhaps someone's made it before, but either way, it struck me, and i just have to talk about it!!

in this latest update, eddie was absent for the majority of the homewarming media -- namely, he was MIA for basically everything new on the main site. his only time to shine was on the secret site, in which he was still isolated from all of his neighbors.

this was stewing around in my brain for a while, until i remembered... until the bug update, none of the text on the site contained purple.

this is the menu on the current site -- any purple in these options was not present in the original menu: the letters just cycled through a red-orange-yellow-green-blue-pink loop. oddly enough, certain pages present on the original site -- such as 'the neighborhood!' -- had their text in the menu updated to include teal and purple, while certain pages new to the bug update -- such as 'stickers' -- lack these new colors.

not to mention how the logo, containing only the red-orange-yellow-green-blue-pink color loop, was not updated to include the new colors.

this is all worthy of note because all of our characters are color-coded! julie is pink, wally is red, sally is orange, frank is yellow, poppy is green, howdy is teal, barnaby is blue, and eddie is purple. the absence of purple in the site's typography would suggest the absence of eddie, which we have certainly received -- of course, correlation does not equal causation, but it's still an odd coincidence.

though, if we follow this to its logical conclusion, then something is also bound to happen to howdy -- for his color, teal, was also absent in the site's original text.

another odd thing is that howdy, eddie, and wally are the only neighbors in welcome home to have non-alliterative names (howdy pillar, eddie dear, wally darling). this likely has no real significance, but it could imply some tie between the three -- and, if eddie and howdy are the victims here, given their colors were originally missing, wally being roped in with them despite having his color on the site since the beginning might imply that he was the one behind what happened to them.

i guess if we wanna really go crazy, home has no color assigned to them... so does that mean they're every color? or none of them? what would the former, or the latter, imply about their fate in the story, if this color theory has any real significance? if they're every color, then they're omnipresent... the mastermind behind it all. if they're none of them, their color was always missing from the website... they're the ultimate victim. though that's going a bit overboard, no?

anyway, please tell me what you think!!! thank you, and have a nice day :)

[jules-ln]

Its just a genuine question. I have seen most of patrochilles fan arts depicting patroclus with a deeper skintone and i wonder where that interpretation comes from. I think the Hades game is one of such interpretation but I wonder if there were like other sources which depicted him with dark skin (like how in many century old artworks achilles is depicted with blonde hair and so its common to see him with blonde hair)

If I remember correctly, I don't think there's an ancient source that explicitly describes the color of Patroclus' skin

Like, in the Iliad he simply is described as having a beautiful body and lovely eyes (I don't remember if beautiful was the word or was it masculine?)

So, I think the fact that Patroclus didn’t have a particular description in the Iliad lead to him not having a trend like Achilles

Though in vase paintings is a bit difficult to say what color his skin was supposed to look like, as they don't have a lot of color other than reddish brown and black. Like there are some vase paintings where Achilles is literally black as in the color black, but if you say that Achilles might be POC, watch how people come out of the woods to complain lmao (Troy fall of a city, am I right or am I right)

There are also some frescoes and mosaics that depict Patroclus with light brown skin

And with more "modern" paintings (like Neo classicism, romanticism, academicism) listen, there was a whole thing about painting poor people because people didn't like it, let's not even talk about POC lol, so nothing on that front

I think the depiction of Patroclus with dark skin started to get more popular in modern times; I won't say it started with TSoA, because I don't know, I don't believe it did (correlation does not imply causation). Like I think this was where people where heading to anyway, as depictions of characters evolve with time to reflect better the society around them. Like there was this version of Patroclus in DC that is a reincarnation, called Patrick Cleese that came out in 2010 I think, and he's POC

So, yeah, I can't say there are a lot of old sources/paintings that have Patroclus with dark skin, but there are a lot of Paintings with Patroclus being dead at least??

[kismetconstellations]

@sockdooe I first encountered this supposed explanation in the comments section of a fanfiction, so it is to be taken with a grain of salt, but I read that Shiro's design was primarily based on what the showrunners thought "looked cool". This includes the prosthetic grafted onto his person by his captors, the scar across his face, and the shock of white fringe in his otherwise naturally dark hair. And, I won't lie, his design serves its purpose. Shiro immediately draws the eye, and not just because of his usual placement front and center in the standard team line up.

It's reasonable for the sort of space soldier, G.I. Joe type of character the staff intended Shiro to be to have these sorts of physical characteristics.

It's also completely reasonable in a Sci-Fi/Action show for a villain as menacing and ruthless as Sendak to have a similarly distinct, eye-catching design. Such features as a sinister, gleaming, red bionic eye, and massive prosthetic arm powered by a core of glowing, magical electric energy pulsing in a line from shoulder to forearm stand out, are easily memorable, and make him instantly recognizable as a really Bad Guy.

The idea of Shiro being a sort of "light, heroic mirror" to Sendak, which the show introduced and continued to attempt to enforce all the way up to Sendak's death, sits incredibly uneasily with me, however. As I've made explicit several times, before.

Content Warning for discussion of sexual assault/rape.

We're shown the recurrent imagery of Sendak looming over and behind an incapacitated Shiro.

Shiro's instinctive response to seeing Sendak heading toward him is to back away out of fear before steeling himself and resolving to fight, if only to protect the Castle and an unconscious Lance.

The very first thing that Shiro says to Sendak is, "You're not getting in", to which Sendak replies, "Yes. I am".

Coran suggests that the Galra might keep him and Hunk as, "some sort of creepy pet to play with how they please", in an appeal to Shay and Rax for assistance concealing their presence on the Balmera.

There's genuine contempt in Shiro's voice when he asks Sendak, "What do you want?", prior to his torture at Sendak's hands.

Sendak delivers a stomach-churning gloating little speech after torturing Shiro via electric shock.

And, Rolo refers to Sendak as a, "real nasty bugger", a term that has an exceptionally crude colloquial meaning.

Now, maybe I'm a cynical weirdo who is reading far too deeply into this, and connecting dots that aren't there. But...

Shiro bears a much stronger resemblance to Berserk's Guts than the Takashi Shirogane from the original Go Lion! that he's named after. Guts is a famous survivor of childhood sexual abuse, having been sold by his adoptive father and purchased for use as a sex slave by an ugly hulking pederast.

There were obvious Neon Genesis Evangelion fans working on this show, and Rei Ayanami, the character that Shiro's story seems to reference with the sheer excess of clones created using his DNA, is also a victim of sexual abuse.

(There's even, arguably, influence taken from The Legend of the Blue Wolves, a relatively obscure yaoi OVA largely set at a military facility which trains soldiers and pilots for combat missions in deep space. It features an extended scene with a virtual flight simulator, and one of the two male leads is-- wouldn't you know it? Raped by an ugly hulking monster.)

Correlation does not imply causation, and perhaps the similarities are entirely superficial, and we're not meant to think too hard about them.

Yet, with the amount of scrutiny that a series as utterly wholesome and innocuous as Bluey is constantly under, I cannot buy for a minute that a series Netflix gave a TV Y7 rating to didn't undergo some level of screening to ensure that its content was appropriate for the intended child audience. Someone had to have asked the staff if bugger was the term they meant to use, aware of the disturbing, far less than child-friendly implications, and was met with a resounding confirmation.

Beyond that, extended proximity to even an imprisoned and inanimate Sendak sends Shiro spiraling into a psychological break down.

Shiro's intensely traumatic experiences in captivity, which his brain seems to have largely repressed in order to protect him ("It's all a blur.") would, by themselves, be enough to convince him that he's been broken and reshaped into something monstrous. His bodily autonomy was, unquestionably, brutally violated, and his innately altruistic, self-sacrificing nature was violently challenged when he was forced to kill or be killed for his captors' entertainment. His right arm was taken from him and replaced with a weapon, and he has the blood of who knows just how many innocents on his hands. He was, indeed, broken down in an attempt to reform him into the Galra Empire's "greatest weapon", and likely very much wars with himself over what he had to do to ensure his own survival, believing himself to be a monster.

What really stands out to me, though, is that this intense, primal terror and the accompanying feelings of "brokenness" and "monstrousness" only surface around Sendak. Despite also being associated with and direct causes of his trauma, neither Haggar nor Zarkon rattle Shiro to his core the way Sendak does.

Neither of them are insistent on drilling into Shiro's head how "broken" he supposedly is, as Sendak is shown doing over and over again. Including taunting Shiro over the non-consensual modifications to his body.

Harboring a deep sense of shame, and viewing themselves as something dirty, ugly, disgusting, broken, or even monstrous is an experience common among survivors of sexual abuse.

Having Shiro's physical condition repeatedly mirror his personal tormentor's would be sick and twisted enough.

Adding the context of rape or sexual abuse to Shiro's torment makes the creative decision to intentionally model his arm after his abuser's outright sadistic.

No one deserves to have a constant physical reminder of their abuser and rapist permanently attached to their person. And, attempting to paint Shiro as a "heroic mirror" to Sendak fails entirely when Shiro doesn't so much as get to best Sendak in combat once.

All of the points you've raised about the function and structure of prosthetics are amazing, informative, and highly appreciated. (The comment about Shiro's abominable floating arm looking like it wouldn't be able to support the weight of a grocery bag makes me laugh.) Sadly, there's a faction of the fanbase who are all too quick to fetishize that arm, like everything else surface-level about Shiro. I've seen a number of fics where its ability to be propelled a great distance with a single thought is used to pleasure a partner while Shiro, himself, is in a different room, where the arm is equipped with a vibrating function for use as a sex toy, and, of course, where the thickness of its fingers is sexualized for... the same reason the bulge in the crotch of Shiro's pants is.

(I beg this fandom to stop reducing this man to a seme stereotype because of his physical build and height. Nothing in his personality suggests that he would be anything even approximating that cursed archetype. Let him be a pillow princess, for God's sake, like he deserves.)

This reply took me forever, and I am sincerely sorry about that. I hope you find something worthwhile in this haphazard collection of thoughts.

And, "Sendick" is how I'm going to be mentally referring to that creep from now on.

[angel-hawthorne]

No, you're seeing the consequences of adults actively choosing to hit children. Every damn time someone bitches and moans about people not being "disciplined", they're quick to blame those who don’t spank for a laundry list of societal ills. Their genius idea is to hit kids even more instead of addressing the root problems. A lot of these youngsters have received a "good ol fashioned beating" once or more than that, and it still didn't do anything.

"I'm not saying you should abuse [children], but..." stop right there, that's exactly what you're suggesting. What exactly do you mean by proper discipline? Or as this person ever so wonderfully puts it "good ol slap on the wrist"? Ah, it's occasionally hitting the young when they say or do things that offends your fragile sensibilities. Adults in positions of power often get away with pulling all manner of fuckshit stunts under the guise of “discipline”. At this point, y'all sound no different from the domineering religious men who think hitting their wives will make them behave aka "Christian Domestic Discipline". Y'all didn't turn out fine at all. Just grew up to be violent bullies and/or enablers.

You hit them once, and it makes you, the adult, feel powerful. Getting that temporary feel-good rush of being in control. That's all it ever does - grant temporary compliance and relief. What will you do then if that one time with the initial amount of physical force doesn't work? Amp up the dosage (pain intensity) until you achieve that same feel-good high? If that keeps up, then these consequences will result: child goes no contact in the future, end up with a # of mental health issues, the child dies from their injuries (or removed from custody if they survive), and the caregiver gets slapped with legal repercussions. No pun intended. In extreme cases, the child will kill their parents/guardians for their own safety when there's no other alternatives.

Funny how it’s only the adults who care about splitting hairs over differences. A child’s brain doesn’t know, nor does it give a shit about “differences” you adults arbitrate. Their brains don’t stop to think “it’s only a smacking, so turn off your fight/flight/fawn/freeze response and halt the cortisol production”.

"Let me tell you, we only did it once." I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but your sample size of 1 anecdote does not trump decades worth of empirical evidence. Correlation doesn't imply causation. Plenty of children got that "one time deal", and they learned to repeat the same behaviors without getting caught. Last time I checked, discipline isn't something you DO to people. Just because you were raised to believe that assault is okay, doesn't mean others feel the same way. I'd recommend looking up survivorship bias and appeal to tradition fallacy.

This non-parent thanks you for coming to my Parenting Opinion Ted Talk.

[sophieinwonderland]

Experience is subjective. I 100% believe that people experience a sense of multiple selves or identities. Identity itself isn’t fixed for even the most basic person. Identity is complicated, hence why finding oneself is such a common theme across movies and literature.

I don’t believe that the various identities exist in the brain as their own people. It’s just not the way the brain works. Brain scan interpretations should be taken with a grain of salt. Correlation does not imply causation, essentially.

Honestly that it likely isn’t various identities existing in the brain as their own people just highlights how incredibly mysterious and wondrous the human brain is.

That said, negating others’ experience because it makes you uncomfortable is cringey af. Like it has absolutely nothing to do with you.

I don’t believe that the various identities exist in the brain as their own people. It’s just not the way the brain works.

How does the brain work?

Do you know something we don't? Last I checked, neuroscientists were still trying to figure this out.

There are a lot of hypotheses we could discuss but we currently just aren't able to really see how the individual neurons interacting in the human brain. At best, we have these brain scans that can show activity in certain regions, but as some researchers have put it, this is a bit like trying to tell what's happening in a city by watching when their lights are turned on.

To that extent, I'll agree that brain scans may not be perfect and have a long way to go.

But I also do fully believe that headmates are encoded in the brain at a neurological level, even if we might not be able to detect it and read what's happening with current technology.

Without more neurological evidence, we may have to agree to disagree on this though.

Correlation does not imply causation, essentially.

I really wish this phrase would stop being applied to circumstances where it's not relevant.

What the Standford tulpa study did was look at the brains of tulpamancers during possession. (When a tulpa controlled limbs without fronting.) This was compared to the tulpamancer simply imagining someone else controlling their limbs or dictating their movements as a control condition.

What was found was that there was reduced activity during possession in regions of the brain associated with control over your actions.

That's causation. The researchers give an instruction. The subject follows the instruction. And that causes a difference in brain activity.

Perhaps other explanations could be made up that don't involve multiple people in the brain to explain this phenomenon. (Similar activity is shown during hypnosis.) But those explanations have nothing to do with the difference between correlation and causation.