I believe that over the years I have developed many of the skills of a systems thinker. What does that mean? Well basically I try to take a helicopter view of life, issues, problems, whatever. Looking at the relationships between issues as well as the detail of life's 'building blocks'. One of the attributes of a systems thinker is the ability to think beyond seemingly obvious cause and effect relationships and particularly not to jump to simplistic conclusions like, for example, A caused B, which caused C, which caused D. Therefore, A caused D - maybe! Life's relationships are rarely as simple as A, B, C and D. Cause and Effect are not always obvious. Here's a statement, which might not register immediately, but is very profound:
Correlation does not imply causation.
Correlation, the apparent dependency of two events, does not mean that one event caused the other to happen. Every morning at sunrise I hear a cockerel crowing and I also hear the Imam chanting a call to prayer from a nearby mosque. Does the cockerel crowing cause the Imam to chant? Unlikely. Does the Imam chanting cause the cockerel to crow? Also unlikely. Do either the Imam or the cockerel cause the sun to rise? IMPOSSIBLE? What is most likely is that the Imam's chant is timed to take place at sunrise and the transition from dark to light also stimulates the cockerel to crow.
Does the cockerel only crow at sunrise? I don't claim to be an expert on cockerels' habits but I'm sure I have heard cockerels crow at other times of day. Could the cockerel crow at midnight? Possibly. Would that cause the sun to rise? DEFINITELY NOT! So now I hope you have grasped the fact that correlation definitely doesn't imply causation BUT causation requires correlation.
Now let's move on to a recent example of correlation and therefore cause and effect, playing games with me. Every morning I charge my two phones, a BlackBerry and a Nokia. They don't always need it but rather than get caught with a flat battery I developed this daily routine, which I rarely forget to do, rather like cleaning my teeth. Earlier this week I went through my charging routine, first plugging the BlackBerry in to charge and automatically looking at the face of the phone to note the little icon signifying the phone was accepting a charge. Then I followed the same procedure for the Nokia. I first plugged it in to charge, looked at the face of the phone and there was no icon, it apparently wasn't charging! Without pausing for a period of rational thinking to explore the possible cause and effect scenarios, my mind went into auto! The charger must be defective so I will go into the town and buy a replacement. Should I buy a branded Nokia device or a cheaper alternative? If, say, the Nokia product cost 20% more than the alternative brand but would have twice the life, then the Nokia route would be preferable. In the meantime, my wife, Sandie, also has a Nokia phone, a different model to mine but the charger might be compatible, in which case I would borrow it as an interim solution. I left my chargers and went to see my wife, but before I could explain the problem she informed me we had just had a power cut! In the period of time between plugging in the BlackBerry and noting it was charging and plugging in the Nokia and noting it wasn't charging, the mains electricity supply had been cut - ELEKTRİK YOK as we say in Turkish!
Now you might be sympathetic towards me thinking it's a fair assumption that the charger wasn't working but I can assure you I do not deserve your sympathy. In the area where we live, the probability of a power cut is far greater than the probability of a Nokia charger failing. So the fact that the phone didn't indicate it was charging correlated with the charger being plugged into the mains should not, on that occasion, imply the charger was defective. I can wax eloquently on the virtues of systems thinking, the danger of using linear models for a non-linear world and the nuances of correlation and causation but........life's a bitch!
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