Cause and Effect

We humans,  the extremely bright as well as the not so bright and everyone in between, have a tendency to linear or two dimensional thinking.  Perhaps it’s because of a tendency towards laziness in some of us.  Just as superstitious people have a tendency to ascribe cause and effect to superstitions, it is really the same for many of the extremely intelligent.  Quite often people ascribe the simplest answer to complex problems missing the nuances of the myriad of variables that affect the outcome.  Parsimony is one of the assumptions of science.   This means that science assumes that the simplest solution is best; however, there really is an inherent problem with that assumption.

For example, there has been a great deal of controversy over vaccinations and autism.  There was a study in the UK where a scientist claimed to prove that vaccinations caused autism.  Problem was that others could not duplicate his study and actually showed the opposite.  It was finally discovered that he had falsified his data.  Recently there has been  evidence that if a child has a mitochondrial disorder, AND gets a high fever, such as when some children receive a series of vaccinations all at once, there is a slightly risk of some children developing autism soon after having received the shots.  Do vaccinations cause autism or ASD, no; but in a few rare cases they may be one factor.

Here’s another example, Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame, recently wrote a book about parenting.  One of the statements in the book is that sugar does not cause hyperactivity (his point about parental responsibility was a good one).  There have also been statements in the past that sugar does not cause ADHD.  Well the problem here again is that this is linear or two dimensional thinking.  Not that Ken Jennings is lazy, but there is a tendency of some highly intelligent people to linear and two dimensional thinking.  Does sugar cause hyperactivity?  No.  Does sugar cause ADHD?  No.  Can large amounts of sugar have an effect on the behavior of some children and adults, absolutely, yes.  Can sugar exacerbate the symptoms of ADHD for some children, yes.

There are a number of examples of similar and limited logic and critical thinking.  It is rarely an issue of do (a) and (b) will happen.  There are quite often additional intervening and confounding variables that need to be taken into consideration.

In my own case of weight loss, there were multiple variables in play as outlined in this article.  It was never a matter of just eating less and losing weight.  It was never a matter of just exercising more and losing weight.  Too often we look for simple solutions and they just don’t work.  There are almost always multiple variables.  We must study situations and think three dimensionally.  We must identify as many of potential intervening variables and take them into consideration.