Asking the Right Questions - Chapter 10

Summary

Are There Rival Causes?

A rival cause is a plausible alternative explanation that can explain why a certain outcome occurred.

It is necessary to look for rival causes when we realize the writer or speaker is using evidence to support a claim about the cause of something. The writer or the speaker's causal thinking may omit some essential factors, which is the reason why his claim is not correct.

Communicators can indicate causal thinking to you in a number of ways.

图片发自App

Detecting rival causes can help us better react to causal conclusions. We can achieve that by asking questions as follows:

• Can I think of any other way to interpret the evidence?

• What else might have caused this act or these findings?

• If I looked at this from another point of view, what might I see as impor-tant causes?

• If this interpretation is incorrect, what other interpretation might make sense?

Try to avoid some fallacies as follows:

Fallacy: Causal Oversimplification: Explaining an event by relying on causal factors that are insufficient to account for the event or by overemphasizing the role of one or more of these factors.

Fallacy: Confusion of Cause and Effect: Confusing the cause with the effect of an event or failing to recognize that the two events may be influencing each other.

Fallacy: Neglect of a Common Cause: Failure to recognize that two events may be related because of the effects of a common third factor.

Fallacy: Post Hoc: Assuming that a particular event, B, is caused by another event, A, simply because B follows A in time.

The author also mentions that in comparing causes, we should apply the following criteria：

✓ Their logical soundness. Which ones make the most sense to you

✓ Their consistency with other knowledge that you have

✓ Their previous success in explaining or predicting similar events

✓ The extent to which the explanation is implied by a greater variety of accepted truths than other explanations

✓ The extent to which it has been disconfirmed by fewer accepted beliefs

✓ The extent to which it explains a larger number and variety of facts than competing explanations

All in all, the lesson we learned in this chapter can be explained in the following table.

Thought

有因就有果，有果就有因？本章讨论的核心就是如何判断作者的“果因”关系是否正确，如果发掘干扰性原因。

和数学推理不同，生活中的因果问题常常是正向推理比较容易，逆向推理比较难，因为一件事情的结果不可能是仅由一个原因导致。比如种树，需要种子正常、温度适宜、湿度合理、照看得当等等因素共同起作用，不是说任意播撒种子，就一定会长成参天大树。

当我们分析一个结果时，我们既要分析内在原因，也要分析外在原因，既要考虑到主要问题，也要考虑到次要问题。只有考虑的非常全面，我们才能找到问题的核心，才能从纷杂的原因中找到最本质的那一个，从而从根本上降低这个问题发生的可能性。