david robertsJan 30, 2023

Strikes me that arguments over whether structural racism "caused" this or that event mirror arguments over whether climate change "caused" this or that event.

Wrote about that way back in 2012. https://grist.org/climate-change/did-climate-change-cause-the-colorado-wildfires/

Did climate change ’cause’ the Colorado wildfires?

The question of whether climate change "causes" certain events drives David Roberts a little nuts, but he tries to tackle it once and for all.

Grist
Show threaddavid robertsJan 30, 2023
The analogy I always use is, imagine you turned gravity up by 5%. More people would stumble. Would any given stumble be "caused" by the increase in gravity? Not proximally: there's always something closer, a pebble or uneven sidewalk, to point to that does more explanatory work.
Show threaddavid robertsJan 30, 2023
Nonetheless, an increase in gravity would cause a rise in stumbles. You might call this distal causation, a change in background circumstances linked to a regular & predictable pattern of effects. It's a cause that *raises the likelihood* of an effect.
Show threadtom4okstate

@drvolts and if we know occurrences of event y become a given percentage more likely, then congratulations you've just signed up for that many additional occurrences across your sample data set.

So x more category 5 hurricanes, flood events, whatever were caused though any one occurrence can't be said to have been caused.

Jan 30, 2023 at 5:43amWeb