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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   30716 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 21, 2022

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anti gay beliefs almost never leading to attacks on gays does imply that attacks on gays aren't caused in part by anti-gay beliefs

if you look at any two variables and find near zero correlation, it implies they are not connected or "caused" by each other

Rockets almost never launch humans into space. Does that imply that humans being launched into space isn't caused by rockets?

sure

now what?

no part of a something "implying," i.e., suggesting, something else means it must be the case or not be the case

Or most people don't act at the extremes of their beliefs, but some do. Most Christians do not attack abortion doctors, but the belief system is a vector. Most people who believe climate change is an existential crisis are not killing oil billionaires but again the belief system is a vector.

That doesn't mean the belief system is wrong or should be stopped, bad actors will attach themselves to every belief system. But there is a connection.

Claiming the thinking is a "vector" is muddying the waters to attempt to bridge the substantive evidence gap between the two. It feels intuitive, but "I understand why someone who believes X would do Y" doesn't mean X causes Y. It doesn't mean it partly causes it. There needs to be more and yet there isn't.

When attempting to find correlations between these beliefs it cannot be distinguished from zero. In that circumstance, that is exactly what the word "implies" means.

if you look at any two variables and find near zero correlation, it implies they are not connected or "caused" by each other

Aside from this formulation just being entirely wrong, you definitely can have causation without correlation (https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/causation-without-correlation-is-possible/), if anti-gay sentiment only causes attacks in people with rare mental issues, then we would surely expect little correlation.

before you attempt to correct anyone, you should first attempt a definition at the word "imply" which is generally agreed upon

that isn't what "imply" means

it doesn't matter if it's possible for something to happen

something can be possible and yet it is not "implied" by it or the vis-a-versa

"imply" isn't a word for possible/impossible, it's a word which means suggests to varying degrees

you are simply misusing the word

I don't think I was misusing it. With respect to questions of logic, imply generally means, as the Free Dictionary has it, to 'involve by logical necessity'. X implies Y means that Y is always a logical consequence of X.

well, I think we spotted our disagreement

In mathematics, "implies" is how we pronounce "⇒". Your statement was mathematically false, which was a useful thing for him to point out.

If you were trying to speak a language other than mathematics, like English, in which there are more and fuzzier definitions, either use a less fuzzy word like "suggests" or "hints", or make your context clearer by avoiding other words with both math and English meanings like "variables" and "correlation".

yes, I will

In hindsight mathematicians should have swiped jargon from a dead language, like the doctors and lawyers mostly did, or at least used more proper names instead of generic words.

I might not even have remembered that "implies" was one of the important words repurposed with a significant confusing distinction in meaning, if I'd been making a list from scratch. There's "or", "in general", just about every word in topology, ... and "significant", ironically.

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