Imperfectly Correlated (as all things should be)

People often make the mistake of thinking variables are perfectly correlated, or perfectly uncorrelated.

“They say that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian rain forest, it can change the weather half a world away.”

Events just tend not to be perfectly independent. Most of the time, in our imperfect world, things are imperfectly correlated, and the tough part is finding exactly how correlated and how that relationship changes with different circumstances. The nature of imperfect correlation is an example of the Law of EAS.

Many mainstream arguments rely on pithy one-liners and surface-level slogans that make “perfectly correlated” or “perfectly uncorrelated” claims. These tend to be legitimate for the most part, but fall flat in certain important edge cases (hence the “imperfect correlation”).

Perfectly correlated

• “You should always be free to do whatever you want with your body.” Freedom is perfectly correlated with goodness.
• “Killing is never okay.” Killing is perfectly correlated with badness.

For the most part, these are true. Right? They sound like good philosophies. But what about in cases of serial killers, property damage, theft, etc.? Are those perpetrators (exercising bodily autonomy) doing good things? What about the death penalty, defeating war criminals, etc.? Is killing never the right thing to do?