This problem has a more worrying extension; we are not made to view things as independent from each other. When viewing two events A and B, it is hard not to assume that A causes B, B causes A, or both cause each other. Our bias is immediately to establish a causal link. While to a budding trader this results in hardly any worse costs than a few pennies in cab fare, it can draw the scientist into spurious inference. For it is harder to act as if one were ignorant than as if one were smart; scientists know that it is emotionally harder to reject a hypothesis than to accept it (what are called
...more
