What would a world be like if corrolation caused causation?

[Q99]

You know how increase in murders is corrolated with an increase in icecream sales?

In reality it's because high heat is a factor in both, but imagine a world where anything strongly corrolated with another thing could be used to affect that thing- you could cause murders by increasing the icecream supply or, conversely, if you were on a desert island and desperately in need of food you could make icecream appear by murdering some people. Or reversely, reduce the murder rate by getting rid of ice-cream.

And this effect with persist until there was enough statistical divergence to separate them (like by spending effort lowering murders and raising icecream at the same time- or the reverse!).


What would a world like that be like?

 

[E73S]

Fucking terrifying and chaotic. Because everything correlates with everything else. A change in one factor will change everything on Earth. For instance, as in the typical "Murder/ice cream" correlation, if Murder goes down, Ice Cream sales go down. However, temperature then drops, because by the laws of this universe correlations are causative and murder is correlated with temperature. Everything else correlated with temperature is then changed, cascading until factors around the world are rising and falling constantly. Humanity dies in this world.

 

[Q99]

Fucking terrifying and chaotic. Because everything correlates with everything else. A change in one factor will change everything on Earth. For instance, as in the typical "Murder/ice cream" correlation, if Murder goes down, Ice Cream sales go down. However, temperature then drops, because by the laws of this universe correlations are causative and murder is correlated with temperature. Everything else correlated with temperature is then changed, cascading until factors around the world are rising and falling constantly. Humanity dies in this world.

Click to shrink...

Ah, but as long as you can encourage stuff corrolated with human survival....!

That and if you can de-corrolate things, the link breaks.

 

[Avernus]

Basically it would be a world of ritual magic.

First, you deliberately do two things in synchronization in order to establish a correlation; such as, every time somebody's cancer goes into remission you sing a particular song while waving a purple flag. Once that's done you can just do one of those things to make the other happen; so from then on you can stop cancer with a song and a flag.

You also use the deliberate-synchronization trick to overwhelm undesirable correlations and replace them with one you want. The trick is to create the desired correlation much more often so it (presumably) has a stronger effect.

 

[E73S]

Ah, but as long as you can encourage stuff corrolated with human survival....!

That and if you can de-corrolate things, the link breaks.

Click to shrink...

What? That's not...what? How would you even go *about* de-corrolating things when correlation is causative? Changing one thing in this constructed world necessarily changes everything that it correlates with. Every action has essentially become a simulation of nuclear fission, and you cannot *control* the effect of an action you take much like you cannot control the order in which atoms explode in a fission event.
Look there are 48 variables with strong negative (less than -.60) correlations with the consumption of eggs per capita in the US and 56 variables with strong positive (greater than .60) correlations with that same factor. The change in per capita consumption of eggs in this constructed world changes 104 other aspects of reality significantly and a host more to a lesser degree, which then go on to change the things *they* are correlated with. There's no way to selectively encourage things that improve human survival, in fact, many things correlate negatively with human survival. And since the correlations are the causative factors unto their own, de-correlating something already correlated is impossible.

 

[Cadis]

You'd get a feedback loop that leads probably at minimum to the extinction of all life on earth.
If A is correlated with B, then it is also true that B is correlated with A. If correlation is automatically casual than necessarily means an infinite feedback loop as a change in one variable provokes a change in another variable which provokes a change in the first variable and so on and so far (note I am aware that normally the fact that A causes B does not mean B causes A, but under this particular scenario it does).
Hurricanes are correlated with the deaths of animals, which means animals dying causes hurricanes. Which means you eventually have a globe entirely covered in hurricanes.

 

[Q99]

What? That's not...what? How would you even go *about* de-corrolating things when correlation is causative? Changing one thing in this constructed world necessarily changes everything that it correlates with. Every action has essentially become a simulation of nuclear fission, and you cannot *control* the effect of an action you take much like you cannot control the order in which atoms explode in a fission event.

Click to shrink...

It's causative but it's not the only thing that's causative. Like 'having people go around breaking every gun and trained in non-lethal takedown,' on an island full of icecream means your no-murder causes are overwhelming your murder causes. Do this enough and they cease to corrolate and then icecream no longer causes murder, see?


So this society might have a bunch of islands with controlled circumstances trying to break murder-corrolations.

You'd get a feedback loop that leads probably at minimum to the extinction of all life on earth.
If A is correlated with B, then it is also true that B is correlated with A. If correlation is automatically casual than necessarily means an infinite feedback loop as a change in one variable provokes a change in another variable which provokes a change in the first variable and so on and so far (note I am aware that normally the fact that A causes B does not mean B causes A, but under this particular scenario it does).
Hurricanes are correlated with the deaths of animals, which means animals dying causes hurricanes. Which means you eventually have a globe entirely covered in hurricanes.

Click to shrink...

They'd still only be correlated as much as they are. Like, if animals dying causes hurricanes, you 1) need to kill large amounts of animals to cause a hurricane because they're associated with large numbers of animal deaths, 2) if the amount of animal death is correlated to, say, a category 3, then if you had a hurricane coming at cat 5 it'd actually decrease in strength to fit the number of animal deaths. And if a hurricane came but there's almost no new animal deaths due to them being dead, well, then that'll clean up your hurricane!

So like if you nuke a place, sure a hurricane will quickly form, but it'll also vanish almost immediately too for the same reasons.

 

[bidoof]

It's causative but it's not the only thing that's causative. Like 'having people go around breaking every gun and trained in non-lethal takedown,' on an island full of icecream means your no-murder causes are overwhelming your murder causes. Do this enough and they cease to corrolate and then icecream no longer causes murder, see?


So this society might have a bunch of islands with controlled circumstances trying to break murder-corrolations.





They'd still only be correlated as much as they are. Like, if animals dying causes hurricanes, you 1) need to kill large amounts of animals to cause a hurricane because they're associated with large numbers of animal deaths, 2) if the amount of animal death is correlated to, say, a category 3, then if you had a hurricane coming at cat 5 it'd actually decrease in strength to fit the number of animal deaths. And if a hurricane came but there's almost no new animal deaths due to them being dead, well, then that'll clean up your hurricane!

So like if you nuke a place, sure a hurricane will quickly form, but it'll also vanish almost immediately too for the same reasons.

Click to shrink...

I think you're missing the level that this would work on. For example, in an atom, the electrical attraction between electrons and the nucleus correlates with their proximity to the nucleus. Therefore the existing electrical attraction would cause greater proximity, which results in a vicious cycle that leads to infinite electron binding energy causing all chemistry and atomic physics to cease to exist as we know it. The same would occur for gravity.

Also correlation and causation are human constructs; especially for correlation they are infinite and arbitrary and so the results cannot be predicted, let alone manipulated.

 

[Cadis]

I think you're missing the level that this would work on. For example, in an atom, the electrical attraction between electrons and the nucleus correlates with their proximity to the nucleus. Therefore the existing electrical attraction would cause greater proximity, which results in a vicious cycle that leads to infinite electron binding energy causing all chemistry and atomic physics to cease to exist as we know it. The same would occur for gravity.

Also correlation and causation are human constructs; especially for correlation they are infinite and arbitrary and so the results cannot be predicted, let alone manipulated.

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This is sorta similar to lenz's law if you removed the minus sign. A magnetic field would create current which would produce a stronger magnetic field (the two fields would add as they would be in the same direction), which would produce a larger current, which would produce a stronger magnetic field and so and so forth for nigh-infinite energy (changes in magnetic field aren't instantaneous and neither is electron flow and since it takes some amount of time for this to occur, you can't have infinite energy except over an infinite period of time).

 

[Mak Taru]

The reasons that I would get banned for still wouldn't become any less explicable.

 

[RoyalNoises]

Fucking terrifying and chaotic. Because everything correlates with everything else. A change in one factor will change everything on Earth. For instance, as in the typical "Murder/ice cream" correlation, if Murder goes down, Ice Cream sales go down. However, temperature then drops, because by the laws of this universe correlations are causative and murder is correlated with temperature. Everything else correlated with temperature is then changed, cascading until factors around the world are rising and falling constantly. Humanity dies in this world.

Click to shrink...

Yes, but before we were wiped out, the universe would be incredibly psychologically satisfying for a while, and honestly, isn't that worth it?

For a few glorious months, years maybe, the world would work as our idiot deluded ape brains think it should, and we would be freed from this arbitrary cosmos that was designed by a blind idiot God to a design that is utterly alien to our experience as medium sized medium speed hairless primates on an unimportant mudball. Our extinction would be according to a process which was immediately intuitive and we'd get why it was happening. We could probably handle that. In the long term, it might be of utilitarian benefit!

 

[thamuzz]

I'm in the "reality unzips at the seams" camp. Cascading cause and effect loops hit and eventually one of those coincides with some aspect of physics itself in a catastrophic way.

I give in five minutes before every single atom in the universe collapses into its own black hole.

 

[Q99]

I think you're missing the level that this would work on. For example, in an atom, the electrical attraction between electrons and the nucleus correlates with their proximity to the nucleus. Therefore the existing electrical attraction would cause greater proximity, which results in a vicious cycle that leads to infinite electron binding energy causing all chemistry and atomic physics to cease to exist as we know it. The same would occur for gravity.

Click to shrink...

Correlation and causation doesn't mean runaway, though.


If something is at 10 and goes to 20, thus causing something else to go from 10 to 20, that doesn't mean the first jumps up. They both just go +10, because the second being 20 is correlated with the first at 20, not 'every time one goes up 10 the other goes up 10'. And the forces that prevent that runaway also still exist, there's still resistance to gaining greater proximity which grow stronger and thus break the effect.

It's a silly premise to begin with but let's not try to break it by making the rules even worse. The point is unrelated stuff is now linked, but stuff that is actually related pretty much works as-is, it doesn't gain additional causation.

 

[mesonoxian]

I kind of tend to agree with everybody else that this would lead to a reality utterly alien to what we actually experience and probably also our extinction.

But I feel like if you made the effect subtle enough, it could be a great basis for a quirky TV show or RPG. Rather than all correlation being causal, assume that there are merely a few, subtle inexplicable causal connections. Build a giant, ZIGGY-esque computer to determine them, and every week our intrepid agents get a message that Hawaiian shirts are inversely correlated with war, or Wal-Mart Super Centers are correlated with pestilence, and have to figure out some creative way of shifting the more amenable half of the equation in one direction or the other.

 

[Kei]

According to WebMD? We'd all get cancer.

 

[spiritualatheist]

According to WebMD? We'd all get cancer.

Click to shrink...

But everyone would be killed by their beds, first.

 

[The Sandman]

Life is correlated with death, therefore life causes death, therefore every living thing everywhere instantly dies.

 

[Shgon Dunstan]

You know how increase in murders is corrolated with an increase in icecream sales?

In reality it's because high heat is a factor in both, but imagine a world where anything strongly corrolated with another thing could be used to affect that thing- you could cause murders by increasing the icecream supply or, conversely, if you were on a desert island and desperately in need of food you could make icecream appear by murdering some people. Or reversely, reduce the murder rate by getting rid of ice-cream.

And this effect with persist until there was enough statistical divergence to separate them (like by spending effort lowering murders and raising icecream at the same time- or the reverse!).


What would a world like that be like?

Click to shrink...

... The fact that murdering someone causes icecream to appear out of thin air completely breaks the very concept of this thread.

How the hell are you supposed to decorrolated something from something else, if it's mere existence causes the other to exist as well?

Hell, if you are on an island with no icecream, then... You shouldn't even be ABLE to murder someone. Otherwise, there would suddenly BE icecream, and thus someone would pop into existence to murder you... And thus make more icecream...

... Exactly what the hell were you on when you made this thread?

 

[Lydia]

How about seeing these connections as their own thing that have a measurable amount of firmness and every time you use one of them to make something happen that has no causal relationship they get weaker. So you could use murder to have ice cream appear but if there is nearly no way for it to appear naturally then the connection is extremely weakened. In-universe it would be pretty hard to decide if the connection someone notices is one of these special connections or one we have in our universe.
It would also mean that there is a natural damper in this system as the natural connections would naturally weaken every connection that goes against them as their firmness would be constant.

 

[Q99]

... The fact that murdering someone causes icecream to appear out of thin air completely breaks the very concept of this thread.

How the hell are you supposed to decorrolated something from something else, if it's mere existence causes the other to exist as well?

Hell, if you are on an island with no icecream, then... You shouldn't even be ABLE to murder someone. Otherwise, there would suddenly BE icecream, and thus someone would pop into existence to murder you... And thus make more icecream...

Click to shrink...

The corrolations are not the *only* thing that can cause something, though, and stuff can have multiple corrolations. Do stuff that causes icecream and decreases murder at the same time and they'll be less corrolated.

... Exactly what the hell were you on when you made this thread?

Click to shrink...

It's a silly topic for fun, thinking about absurd situations is enjoyable ^^

How about seeing these connections as their own thing that have a measurable amount of firmness and every time you use one of them to make something happen that has no causal relationship they get weaker. So you could use murder to have ice cream appear but if there is nearly no way for it to appear naturally then the connection is extremely weakened. In-universe it would be pretty hard to decide if the connection someone notices is one of these special connections or one we have in our universe.
It would also mean that there is a natural damper in this system as the natural connections would naturally weaken every connection that goes against them as their firmness would be constant.

Click to shrink...

Yes, stuff like that. You'd in-universe know whether something is strongly or weakly corrolated.

 

[Shgon Dunstan]

The corrolations are not the *only* thing that can cause something, though, and stuff can have multiple corrolations. Do stuff that causes icecream and decreases murder at the same time and they'll be less corrolated.

Click to shrink...

As I said though, if correlation is capable of out and out warping realty to make something happen/exist... there is no way to do that. How in the world are you supposed to decreases murder, when the mere existence of icecream causes murder to happen regardless of the preexisting circumstances?