{"id":1523,"date":"2012-05-12T10:07:45","date_gmt":"2012-05-12T10:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saasoft.com\/blog\/?p=1523"},"modified":"2012-05-12T10:07:45","modified_gmt":"2012-05-12T10:07:45","slug":"cause-and-effect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/?p=1523","title":{"rendered":"Cause and Effect"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Breaking News: Scientists have discovered that people with yellow teeth are more likely to die of lung cancer.\u00a0Patient-groups and dentists are now calling for tooth-whitening to be made freely available to everyone.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Does anything about this statement strike you\u00a0as illogical? Surely it is obvious. Having yellow teeth does not cause lung cancer – smoking causes both yellow teeth and lung cancer!\u00a0 Providing a tax-funded tooth-whitening service will be futile – banning smoking is the way to\u00a0reduce deaths from lung cancer!<\/p>\n

What is wrong here? Do we have a problem with mad scientists, misuse of statistics or manipulative\u00a0journalists? Or all three?<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, while we may believe that smoking causes both yellow teeth and lung cancer it is surprisingly difficult to prove it – even\u00a0when sane scientists use the\u00a0correct statistics and\u00a0their results are accurately reported by trustworthy\u00a0journalists.\u00a0 It is not easy to prove causality. \u00a0So we just assume it.<\/p>\n

We all do this many times every day – we infer causality from our experience of interacting with the real world – and it is our\u00a0innate ability to do that\u00a0which\u00a0allows us\u00a0to say that the opening\u00a0statement\u00a0does not feel right.\u00a0\u00a0And we do this effortlessly and unconsciously.<\/p>\n

We then\u00a0use our\u00a0inferred-causality\u00a0for three purposes. Firstly, we\u00a0use it to explain how past actions led to the present situation. The chain of cause-and-effect.\u00a0Secondly, we use it to create options in the present – our choices of actions. Thirdly, we use it to predict the outcome of\u00a0our chosen action – we set our\u00a0expectation and then compare the outcome with our prediction. If outcome is better than we expected then we feel good, if it is worse then we feel bad.<\/p>\n

What we are doing naturally and effortlessly is called \u201ccausal modelling\u201d. And it is an impressive skill. It is the skill needed to solve problems by designing ways around them.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately –\u00a0the ability to build and\u00a0use a causal model does not guarantee that our\u00a0model is a valid, complete or accurate representation of reality.\u00a0Our model may be imperfect and we may not be aware of it. \u00a0This raises two\u00a0questions:\u00a0\u201cHow could two people end up with different causal models when they are experiencing the same reality?\u201d\u00a0and “How\u00a0do\u00a0we prove if either is correct and if so, which it is?”<\/p>\n

The issue here is that\u00a0no two people can\u00a0perceive\u00a0reality exactly the same way –\u00a0we each have an unique perspective – and it is an inevitable source of variation.<\/p>\n

We\u00a0also tend to\u00a0assume that what-we-perceive-is-the-truth so if someone expresses a different view of reality then we habitually jump to the conclusion that they are \u201cwrong\u201d and we are \u201cright\u201d.\u00a0 This unconscious assumption of our own rightness extends to our causal models as well.\u00a0If someone else believes a different explanation of how we got to where we are, what our choices are and what effect we might expect\u00a0from a particular action then there is almost endless\u00a0opportunity for disagreement!<\/p>\n

Fortunately our different perceptions agree enough to create common ground which allows us\u00a0to co-exist reasonably amicably.\u00a0 But, then we take the common ground for granted, it slips from our awareness, and we then magnify the molehills of disagreement into mountains of discontent. \u00a0It is the way our caveman wetware works. It is part of the human condition.<\/p>\n

So, if our goal is improvement, then\u00a0we need to consider\u00a0a more effective\u00a0approach: which is to assume\u00a0that all our causal models are approximate and that they are all works-in-progress. This implies that each of us has\u00a0two challenges: first to develop a valid causal model by testing it against reality through experimentation; and second to assist the collective development of\u00a0a common causal model by sharing our individual understanding through explanation and demonstration.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0problem we then encounter\u00a0is that\u00a0statistical analysis of historical data\u00a0cannot answer questions of causality<\/em> – it is\u00a0necessary but it is not sufficient – and because it is insufficient it does\u00a0not make common-sense.\u00a0 For example, there may well be a statistically significant association between “yellow teeth” and\u00a0“lung cancer” and “premature death”\u00a0but knowing those facts is\u00a0not enough to help us create a valid cause-and-effect model that we then use to make wiser choices of more effective actions that cause us to live longer.<\/p>\n

Learning how to make wiser choices that lead to better outcomes is what Improvement Science is all about –\u00a0and we need more than statistics – we need to learn how to collectively create,\u00a0test and employ causal models.<\/p>\n

And that has another name – is called\u00a0common sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breaking News: Scientists have discovered that people with yellow teeth are more likely to die of lung cancer.\u00a0Patient-groups and dentists are now calling for tooth-whitening to be made freely available to everyone.\u201d Does anything about this statement strike you\u00a0as illogical? Surely it is obvious. Having yellow teeth does not cause lung cancer – smoking causes … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Cause and Effect”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,35,42,43,45,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healthcare","category-reflections","category-how","category-why","category-what","category-trust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1523\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hcse.blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}