Navigating a Whackadoodle World: Episode 61, The Power of Focus, or Why our brains are designed to misjudge each other.

A Whackadoodle lesson in critical thinking, causation versus correlation, cognitive biases, plus six reasons that your toilet might keep backing up.

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

As quick as my student is, there’s always one or two concepts per week that stump her. This week it was a concept from her ‘Critical Thinking’ class. She was expecting a test the next day, so the pressure was on.

“I don’t get it,” she said, banging her head softly on the table in front of her, as if she was trying to shake things up in there. “I can explain the difference between causation and correlation, but when it comes to telling them apart in real life.” Her muffled voice broke off into an anguished groan.

“Keep telling yourself that you don’t get it.” Even I could hear the sarcasm in my voice. “That’s sure to help.”

She let out another groan.

I reached out and put my hand on her head to prevent more banging. “You want to try one more time, or do you need a break?” I asked.

Shoving my hand away, she lifted her head and began repeating by rote, “Causation means there is a clear cause and effect connection between things. The changes in one variable brings about, or causes, the changes in the other. Example, I place water over heat and the water will boil. The heat applied to the pan of water raises the water’s temperature and causes it to boil.” She sounded tired but determined.

“And correlation?”

“One thing happens, followed by another thing that happens, but there is no evidence that the one thing actually caused the other. Example, my friend comes to visit, and then my toilet backs up. There is a correlation because one thing happened, which was closely followed by another thing that happened, but there is no evidence that my friend’s visit actually caused my toilet to back up.”

“Nearly there,” I semi-approved. “But your definition of correlation is still a wee bit wonky. In correlation the change can happen at the same time; when one variable changes, so does the other, but this change doesn’t necessarily reflect a causal link. Sometimes it because you can’t distinguish which variable is the ultimate cause. Often it’s because a third variable is affecting them both. A correlation doesn’t imply causation, but causation always implies correlation.”

“Smaller words please,” she sighed weakly.

“All causations are correlated, but not all correlations are causal.” The look she sent me was withering, so I added. “Okay, how about this? Heat will always cause ice cream to melt, so we have a causation. However, even though when it’s hot, people buy more ice cream, the heat does not cause everyone to run out and buy ice cream, so we we don’t have causation, we have correlation. Better?”

“Sort of.” Her face screwed up in thought as she considered the idea.

“Okay, one more example, statistics tell us that violent crime and ice cream sales both tend to go up at the same time, but ice cream sales don’t cause violent crime, and violent crime doesn’t make everyone want to go out and buy ice cream. However, hotter temperatures is a third variable that seems to cause an increases in both. Hence we have a correlation, not a causation. Make sense?”

She ignored my question to offer an example of her own, “Whenever my friend visits, the toilet paper usage goes from one roll a week, to over a roll a day, which suggest to me that she’s been wrapping an inch of toilet paper around her fingers each time she wipes. Now, would her toilet paper usage be the third variable that caused the backed up toilet?” She looked at me with a touch of defiance, daring me to answer.

“I believe you need more information before determining whether or not your guest’s excessive toilet paper usage is the cause of the back up,” I replied, attempting to keep a straight face. “Toilets clog for many reasons.”

“Like what?” Her face still defiant.

I decided that her change of topic might offer some welcome comic relief. “Let’s see if we can find out,” I replied, and plugged her question into my iPhone. “Here’s an article that gives six reasons toilets back up. Your toilet trap might be blocked, or your plumbing vents obstructed. It’s also possible that your sewer line is damaged, or your water flow is too low. Sometimes your toilet is just too old. And yes, it does add that excessive toilet paper usage has been know to block the the system.”

Too Much Toilet Paper?

Toilet paper is soluble, so it's designed to break up quickly and completely during flushes. But too much toilet paper can clog a toilet. Too large wad can obscure the drain, hinder the flush, or prevent new water from entering the toilet basin.

Cottonelle researchers have estimated that seven sheets of toilet paper are needed per wipe. While the quantity can go up or down according to needs, this tends to be an average amount.

6 Reasons Your Toilet Keeps Clogging (thespruce.com)

Reading over my shoulder, she burst out laughing, “People do research on how much toilet paper people should use?” Shaking her head, she sat back down. “Companies pay for the weirdest studies.”

“It also says that things other than excessive toilet paper can clog the trap: disposable cloths, napkins, ear swabs, and even flushing your hair,” I pointed out.

“Hair?” she lifted her fingers to a strand. “I always clean my hair brush over the toilet,” she admitted.

“So your flushed hair balls might have contributed to the cause as well as the old pipes and your friend’s toilet paper usage,” I shrugged, putting aside my phone. “That’s one the challenges with Causation versus Correlation. People can be too quick to assume that something is a cause when it’s merely a correlation.”

“I don’t see why it matters.”

“Don’t you? You don’t want that brain of yours to infect your thinking with cognitive biases, do you?”

“What’s the heck are those?”

“Subconscious errors in thinking that lead people to misinterpret information in the world around them, often influencing the rationality and accuracy of their decisions and judgments. Also know as, ‘How our brains are wired to misjudge things.’”

“Huh?”

“It’s like with your friend and her wads of toilet paper. Some might accuse you of having a hostile attribution bias by assuming that her wads of toilet paper are intentionally designed to plug your toilet.”

“I never said that!”

“Or they might think you suffer from actor-observer bias because if you had plugged the toilets, you would have blamed the old pipes, but because your friend blocked the toilet, you blame her inconsiderate use of toilet paper.”

“I never said that either!”

“On the other hand, it might be confirmation bias, since we were seeking out information that confirmed your original belief while generally ignoring any information which contradicted it.”

“I never did any of those things!”

“Ah you see, that’s the problem with cognitive biases,” I smiled sadly. “They’re subconscious. We all have them, but we don’t even notice them unless we look for them. It has to do with the way our brains are wired. Phycologists speculate that it is a sort of protection against information overload.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if our brains didn’t take certain shortcuts when it comes to processing all the information available to it, we we might well become overwhelmed by all the stimulus. You see, our biases make up a framework for how we process, judge, and evaluate the world around us. You can’t really get away from them because they’re part of how our brains process and classify information.” I could seen this news bothered her, so I added. “Don’t worry, biases are not necessarily negative. It’s just that they inevitably influence how clearly we perceive situations, people, even risks.”

“How many of these biases are there?” she asked suddenly.

“Do you remember how many logical fallacies there are?”

“I remember you wrote a book about explaining them all to me.”

“Let’s just say that we could probably write a similar book about cognitive biases.”

“That many,” she shook her head in disbelief. “And there’s nothing you can do to avoid them?”

“Not really, the best you can do is become aware of the effect they may have on your judgement and decisions, so that you can use them as they were meant to be used.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well,” I paused to consider how to put my thoughts into words. “You know how we’ve talked about how because of the power of our Focus, we tend to notice what we are focused upon? In fact,” I started to snicker. “Now that we have talked about it, I bet that the next time you used the facilities, you’re going to count how many sheet of toilet paper you used to see if your usage conforms with the Cottonelle average.”

“Now that you’ve brought it up again, I probably will,” she conceded, scowling.

“So you can use that same focus with regards to the biases. If you are aware of them, you can consider how they might be influencing your judgement and decision making processes. You can use your knowledge to consider when those brain short cuts are leading you rightly, or when they might be clouding your judgment. See what I mean?”

“I suppose.” She screwed up her face, considering. “What were those three you mentioned again?”

“Hostile attribution bias, which is the tendency to interpret the ambiguous behavior of others as hostile. Under hostile attribution bias, people assume that others have negative intentions towards them and want to hurt them, even when others have no such intentions.”

She began taking notes, so I slowed down to let her keep up, “Then there was the actor-observer bias. That’s the tendency we have to attribute the behavior of others to internal causes, while attributing our own behavior to external causes. In other words, we explain our own behavior differently than how an observer would explain the same behavior.”

I paused to give her a chance to write that down. She grunted when she was ready for me to go on, “Finally, there was confirmation bias, which is the tendency to seek out and prefer information that supports our preexisting beliefs, while generally ignoring or excusing any information that contradicts those beliefs.”

A short silence followed my words. Her pen still at the ready, she looked up, “So what are the others?”

“Humm,” I hesitated. “I don’t know. If I explain them all now, you are likely to fall victim to a Primacy Bias, which before you ask, is our tendency to more easily recall information that we encounter first in any presentation, while forgetting information that comes later. In other words, if I explain them all now, you will remember only the first few.”

“So what do you want me to do?” She was starting to look annoyed. “You gonna make me look them up on my own?”

“Tell you what,” I offered, feeling inspired. “I’ll put together a sort of cheat sheet for you. You can focus on one or two a day. That way, you will be able recall them individually and look for how each influences your interactions each day. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like a lot of work,” she grumbled.

“A lot of work for me. I’m the one who has to write the cheat sheet.” I grumbled back. “Not so much for you. All you have to do is read it. Look, it’s like I told you, there’s a lot of them. You won’t be able to take them all in during one session.”

She looked at me skeptically. “Can you email the list to me, so I can get it this week?”

“First thing,” I promised. “As soon as I can get the cheat sheet done.”

“Fine,” she nodded, and began assembling her books.

It took me a moment to realize that we had not settled her first question. “So do you think you can spot the difference between causation and correlation now?” I asked.

She was shoving everything inside her pack, “I think so.”

“Can you give me one last example?”

She was packing up her iPhone just as I asked, so I think it might have inspired her. “How about Internet usage?” she offered. “Lots of people say that too much Internet causes kids to lose self-esteem and critical thinking skills, but there’s no direct causal link between a person’s self-esteem and their Internet use. In fact, the Internet can be great for some people. However, there does seem to be a correlation between teen self-esteem and the amount of time they spend on social media. Would that be a good example?”

“A most excellent example.”

She grunted her satisfaction as she shouldered her pack, calling out a reminder as she left. “Don’t forget the email!”

For those of you who are as nerdy as my student, below is a link to the cheat sheet that I prepared for her. Focus on one or two at a time. Look for how cognitive biases influence the situations you encounter everyday. You might find it interesting, possibly disconcerting, and maybe a little fun.

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