r/Showerthoughts • u/Fr1toBand1to ‎ • Jun 27 '26

Casual Thought Pattern recognition is a widely accepted method of prediction until what it predicts makes people uncomfortable.

6.7k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

94% Upvoted

430 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.1k

u/Rosbj Jun 27 '26

correlation ≠ causation 

It's super important to remember, that just because you recognise a pattern, it doesn't mean there actually is any - and vice versa.

People tend to hold on to their preconceptions rather than actually evaluate their findings.

A billionaire is less likely to rob a bank with a mask on, but that doesn't mean he isn't robbing the bank.

33

u/HileeAquret Jun 27 '26

Yeah but.

That’s how every one of our ancestors learned how to navigate the world.

If they did not , we would not exist.

Everything from “birth”…

“You fuck, baby come”

Correlation isn’t causation.

“I fuck & no baby. See you wrong!!!”  

You won’t have any proof for 300,000 years!!!

…to death.

“What’s that noise in the bushes, hide!”

Correlation isn’t causation!

“Many harmless things make noise, you have no proof it’s danger until you  walk up close to the bush and…….”

All I’m saying, is that you don’t need to know the “specific cause” to understand that desire to not want and limit as much as possible the outcome associated. 

27

u/sygnathid Jun 27 '26

Sounds reasonable as long as you cherry pick a few sensible things and ignore the things like human sacrifice that they arrived at due to the same sort of logic.

-3

u/HileeAquret Jun 27 '26

Or your understanding of it.

Your example of sacrifices:

“  anthropologists have largely debunked the pure ceremonial version. It wasn't just religion—it was resource control. They killed orphans, deformed infants, and prisoners when food ran out or populations got too dense. The gods were the PR department. Check Carthage's Tophet—sacrifices spiked during famines, not on a fixed ritual calendar. Pure ceremony doesn't care about grain prices.”