The Illusion of Cause

• Pattern perception is central to our lives. It allows us to draw conclusions in seconds from our surroundings. Unfortunately, at times we perceive patterns where none exist. We readily infer that causes exist when they do not. We have a bias to perceive meaning out of randomness and coincidence. If two events happen together, we infer that one must have caused the other. The only way to test whether an association is causal is to run and experiment where subjects are randomly selected. Many useful experiments, however, cannot be carried out as it would involve unethical treatment of the subjects. Sometimes laws are given credit for changing things when the changes would have happened anyway. News reports contain all sorts of causal attribution not supported by experiment.

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