I am very much aware of the fact that correlation does not necessarily mean causation. And I did not make any cause an effect statement. What I said is that people have, on balance, experienced better results over time when Democrats have been President. And I wondered why, given that, more people than not believe Republicans are better on the economy.GannonFan wrote:Dude, correlation without causation is absolutely worthless, and even worse, can lead people, like yourself, to draw conclusions that have no basis in the data. If you're not going to acknowledge that the underlying data does not support your conclusions, why would you even make those conclusions in the first place? I am worried about you, you wouldn't have made such a crass and unsupported conclusion before Trump got elected. TDS is real.JohnStOnge wrote:
Did you not note my statement about not being able to say there is cause and effect?
But there is correlation. Your statement about "no way to correlate" is not correct. What you need to go with is not "there is no correlation." You need to go with "correlation is not necessarily causation."
What I'm talking about is this: The correlation is such that, overall, the economy has been better when Democrats have been President. That's the experience. So why is it that, with that experience, more in the population think Republicans are better at the economy?
If it's "bad" to think Democrats are better for the economy because the economy has tended to do better when Democrats are on charge, how "bad" is it to think Republicans are better for the economy when the economy has tended to do WORSE when Republicans are in charge?
And BTW, we do make decisions all the time based on correlation when we have to. Like for instance we have decided that cigarette smoking increases the risk of lung cancer based on correlation because it wouldn't be ethical and/or possible to conduct controlled experiments. But, if you have a child, are you going to be unconcerned if they smoke cigarettes?









