In ancient Russia, there was a cholera outbreak in certain areas. This epidemic caused the government to send doctors to these certain areas. However, sending of doctors did not decrease the intensity of cholera epidemic, rather it intensified it. This caused the Russian in those areas to kill these doctors.
This is a master example what happens when people confuse between correlation and causation. Those Russian doctors did not cause cholera epidemic to intensify, but people thought they were the cause for cholera outbreak intensification. Albeit, doctors and cholera are correlated, but doctors are not the cause of cholera intensification.
Similarly, if you ask that whether government benefits in the form of social security cause people to work less? May be. May be not. May be, people with disability work less, and their working less is not caused by them receiving government benefits, rather their disability cause them to work less. So, in this case, we can say that government benefits are working less are correlated, but whether government benefit causes people to work less, it's a trickier question to answer.
In similar vein, we all are familiar with the idea that during winter or rain, going outside will cause you to catch cold. However, bad weather does not cause cold. Germs or more specifically, viruses do. And when people are indoor, the germs spread. Therefore, cold outside or rain outside are correlated in that they cause people to stay inside, which in turn, helps spread germs, causing people to catch cold.
In another glaring example, researchers who study child development found that watching for breastfeeding after one year, kids are not as healthy as they should be. So they thought breastfeeding caused babies to be less healthy, perhaps sicker. They urged mother to stop breastfeeding after year one. However, later in Peru, researchers identified that kids that are sicker got breastfed more, because their moms lavish more attention to them. In such case,
Babies being sicker causing them to get breastfed more. Not being breastfed more causing them to get sicker. An epic confusion relating correlation versus causation.
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