Third Post

#3) I thought that number 5 in section A helped me understand why the cause makes a difference. The example they gave reminded me of an episode of the Simpsons that I watched a while ago. After a bear attacks Homer, he convinces the city to spend a lot of money on a “Bear Patrol.” When Lisa tries to use critical thinking to point out that the Bear Patrol is not effective, Homer doesn’t understand, since the bear hasn’t come back since the patrol started. When she picks up a rock and says that she could just as easily say that the rock keeps away tigers, since there aren’t any around. Homer, not being a big critical thinker, immediately wants to buy the rock from her. These examples show why cause matters in a causal argument. Correlation isn’t enough, because lots of things can be explained by correlation that aren’t always true.