[Pauldo]

Lisa Simpson’s Tiger-Repellant Rock

http://www.criticalthinking.org.uk/tigerrepellantrock/

A nice illustration of a fallacy from The Simpsons:

After a single bear wandering into town has drawn an over-reaction from the residents of Springfield, Homer stands outside his house and muses, “Not a bear in sight. The Bear Patrol is working like a charm!”

Lisa sees through his reasoning: “That’s specious reasoning, dad.” Homer, misunderstanding the word “specious”, thanks her for the compliment.

Optimistically, she tries to explain the error in his argument: “By your logic, I could claim that this rock keeps tigers away.” Homer is confused: “Hmm; how does it work?” Lisa: “It doesn’t work; it’s just a stupid rock!” Homer: “Uh-huh.” Lisa: “… but I don’t see any tigers around, do you?”

Homer, after a moment’s thought: “Lisa, I want to buy your rock…”

Correlation does not imply causation. Just because two things occur together, does not mean that one caused the other. Homer argues that as the Bear Patrol vans are correlated with an absence of bears, the former must have caused the latter. Lisa, tongue in cheek, argues that as the presence of her rock is correlated with an absence of tigers, the former must have caused the latter.

At least Homer recognises that the two arguments are on a par, even if he fails to recognise that both are examples of the correlation not causation fallacy.

[Ascension]

Haha, awesome. Being a Simpson's nut, I should use this more often.

[_eNdo_]

Can you give an example of where this fallacy is taking place?  Are you referring to people's belief in creationism or intelligent design?  I'm not debating it or anything, just wondering what prompted this or what this may be in reference to. 

[Pauldo]

It was funny was the main reason for the post but it could be applied to spiritual belief or conspiracy theories.  Disconnected thinking, magical thinking, belief that one thing influences another without showing a direct cause.  Like prayer or making the sign of the cross or holy water actually keeps bad things from happening. 

[esmokah]

thanks for posting this. i deal with a lot of trouble calls and such on my job and i notice a lot of people correlate without direct evidence of causation. I have to weed this stuff out to sometimes get a firm understanding of what is actually happening at the place w/ the trouble. i understood this principle you posted but never heard it in a way that sums it up this nice.

[Pauldo]

The Simpson's unite us all!  ;D

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