Correlation and Causation
Greetings, lovers of The Science™! We at the Ministry of Truthiness want you to understand how The Science™ changes depending on whether it contradicts our propaganda or not. Our example for today is a statement you may have heard before: correlation is not causation. We’ll show you how you can use it against those doubleplus-ungood conspiracy-theorist granny killers who aren’t obeying our diktats, while at the same time using its negation to prove that all our lies are actually truthy and truthful nuggets of truthiness.
You’ve probably run into some deplorables who point out that some people have died soon after being injected with our Glorious Goo. All you have to do to prove these people wrong is to say that correlation is not causation, in this particular instance. The people who died must certainly have died because of something else. Here’s a partial list of those possible causes that are definitely not the Glorious Goo:
- climate change
- cold weather
- hot weather
- traffic noise
- too much freedom
- high energy bills
- snow shoveling
- Sudden Adult Death Syndrome
- not enough boosters
- a new scariant
- not enough masking
See? That’s huge list of reasons why those people died after taking the Glorious Goo, versus only one silly reason mentioned by those no-goodniks.
Now, here’s an instance where correlation is causation. We like to say that lockdowns prevented the Worst Disease Ever from getting even worse, by showing you graphs of “cases” of the Worst Disease Ever over time. Of course, you may have noticed that “cases” sometimes rose sharply after we started lockdowns, before dropping again, but that’s because it took a while for lockdowns to have their effect. Also, some disobedient people broke the rules, and that slowed down our efforts. But the main point to remember is that in this case, declines in “cases” happened at some point after lockdowns started. Therefore, lockdowns must have caused the decline! See how that makes total sense? It means that you don’t have to consider any other possibilities, like seasonal rises and falls that have been happening for millennia with respiratory viruses. Ignore all that history and just know that this time, it’s different, due to our super-sciency scientific Science™.
In summary, just remember that correlation is causation when something agrees with our truthy lies, and is not causation when something disagrees with our truthy lies.