Simen's Response to My Last Post
Look, I have no interest in proving that correlation implies causation, things like, in this case, the assertion that orange production on one side of the world affects a military coup on the other. My point, mangled though it may be, is that the only thing I’m willing to place faith in is the notion that somebody else who does care eventually will prove it wrong. I don’t feel I should have to accept an certain (implausible) conclusion in the meantime.
I think there are two perfectly valid ways to approach this subject, and both tend to veer a bit too uncomfortably close to “truthiness.” Mine is admittedly the more skeptical of the two, but I think it’s a perfectly reasonable approach to problems I have no interest in solving because it’s my approach.
To some extent, Malcolm Gladwell and the Freakonomics dudes have made me hate having to consider this sort of stuff to begin with, because it so toes the bullshit line. To Simen’s credit, though, he did something they couldn’t do, which was to make me think about this sort of stuff for 10 days after having read it.
