Comment on YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels are making you dumber, according to science

• echodot@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Then they were already dumb.

  Short attention span correlates with low intelligence but short attention span doesn’t cause low intelligence.

  I can’t remember the whole thing but there is a sort of pseudo research paper that got published exactly to demonstrate the difference between correlation and causation. In the paper they “found” that yellow teeth cause cancer.

  Of course smoking causes yellow teeth, and cancer. The yellow teeth are correlated, but do not cause.

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  • victorz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    You could do this with anything. Most cancer patients spend a lot of time indoors (hospitals) => being indoors now leading cause for cancer!

    Statistical correlation is very useful if used correctly — to lead you where to do proper technical research and not quantitative research. 👍

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• Honytawk@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  They would do so with short and long content either way.

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• victorz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Not shocking at all. I was only speaking for myself.

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