The TRUE-TRUE-BUT Red Herring

Ken's Blog

We are a species that likes to tie outcomes into neat cause-and-effect packages. But often, things are just too complex to be able to do that.

Many people have not taken a course in statistics or are not especially logic-left-brained-oriented. So I'm talking about a common mistake in thinking that, ultimately, can be perilous to your financial health...

Be careful of two events that are true and seem related. They are not necessarily cause-and-effect, even if the timing may suggest they are.

This TRUE-TRUE-RELATED thinking is everywhere, not just as it relates to SBI!, but to life in general. And not just with those who are "logic-impaired," but in the Nightly News (ex., the latest reason that the stock market goes up or down on any given day, barring the occasional very rare, clear reason).

I'm already digressing because this is a philosophical pet peeve of mine, sorry...

Let's stick to SBI!. Specifically, let's discuss something you do with SBI! at one end (ex., you re-work a page or you secure a link from Yahoo!'s directory) and something that happens at the other end of SBI! (ex., a good ranking of a page, overall traffic jump, increased income).

-----SIDEBAR-----
How hard is this habit to break? Before I chose the word
"happens" just above, I had written "results." The word
"results" suggests TRUE-TRUE-RELATED. So this is a tough
one to break through.

You need evidence to say that something that happened is
the result of something you did.
-----SIDEBAR-----

OK, here's the bottom line...

It's not valid to attribute anything that HAPPENS (ex., a traffic surge) to any one thing you happen to have DONE lately. The exception, of course, is when you have absolute, direct proof (ex., you can see 1000 visitors per day coming from Yahoo! in your Traffic Stats -- then you would have TRUE-TRUE-RELATED).

Without direct evidence linking the two SBI! TRUEs (one you DO and one that HAPPENS), all you have is TRUE-TRUE. Let's say you also baked a chocolate cake a week ago. And this week, traffic doubled. Now, you KNOW that is TRUE-TRUE and not related because not even Google could know about the cake. (Well, maybe Google could, but it likely doesn't care.)

But falling into TRUE-TRUE-RELATED is easy when DAY 7 of the Action Guide says that an inbound link from Yahoo! improves your "Link Popularity" and that will ultimately get the traffic snowball rolling. You know there is a connection here. And that's the trap...

It may really seem like there is "cause-and-effect" when the timing of "DO" and "HAPPEN" seems right. But "I did this" and "Traffic increased next day/week/month" is a classic TRUE-TRUE, but you cannot know that the two are related, let alone that there is a cause-and-effect relationship.

The Web is just too complicated to know that.

-----SIDEBAR-----
There was a day when I could tweak a Web page, submit to
InfoSeek, and go from nowhere to Top 10 at InfoSeek in
a matter of minutes. Yes, really. InfoSeek had to close
that program down; it was so abused by Webmasters. But
those were simpler times. And that type of event is so
tightly tied together that TRUE-TRUE-RELATED was a fair
conclusion. But matters are way more complex nowadays.
-----SIDEBAR-----

Hundreds of other reasons could explain what happened, and nowadays the odds are that something that happened is a result of a combination of many things you did. You likely don't even know some of the "good things" you did!

That's why "The Tao Of SBI!" is so important. The "keep it real" and "please humans to please engines" big picture is going to become more essential.

Yes, SBI!'s tools will still be important. Brainstorm It!'s guidance in the early days is critical. Management tools like Blog It! and XML Sitemap updating and pinging are so far ahead of when we used to submit pages automatically to the Search Engines. And Content 2.0, a potent "mini-combination" of Wikipedia, MySpace and Flickr, make it fast and easy to control the quality and quantity of user-created content.

Remember, there is real math and logic underneath what seems increasingly like a "human-smart" Google. It's just that you don't need to know it -- focus on business instead. The SBI! tools and process guide you through "the matrix" without needing to see it, tilting the odds of success in your favor as you execute each step properly.

But that math and logic are just too complex to penetrate with cause-and-effect for any single thing you do. Let the SEO folks speculate about stuff like that.

For you...

Be careful of the TRUE-TRUE-RELATED trap. Why is this important? Because it takes your eyes off the big picture and puts too much weight (in your mind) on any single factor. Especially dangerous is when you do something that you've paid a lot for and, oops... something good happens. You're going to want to keep on paying for that false connection. And even if it's not false, even if there is a connection, it may not be nearly as important a year later.

Learning to think critically about two events that are TRUE and whether they are cause-and-effect or just related-in-time is a good skill to acquire, in general. In SBI!, it can certainly keep you on the "big picture" of the Action Guide and from developing questionable conclusions.

All the best,

 

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Comments

[Vince]

As a philosophy major I know this stuff but...

Thank you, thank you, thank you for putting this on a well read blog.

The logical fallacy you expose here is responsible for a ton of misleading information being posted on forums and in ebooks.

It is one of the top two fallacies causing people, especially new people, in IM to make bad decisions; the other being the double bind.

Awesome post.

[Steve Coleman]

Hi Ken,

Cause and effect can and does occur but too often are not related. Your warning is well founded that evidence is needed to prove any relationship.

Hi Ken,

Thank you for extending yourself to philosophy and for sharing your insights with us. Thank you also for making SBI so newbie-friendly that anyone can feel welcomed and at home.

Jennifer