Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Causal Chain

Of the tools that we have learned about so far the one that is currently on my mind the most is Cause and Effect. This is probably because it is the one that we have most recently discussed. My grandfather died when I was 7 but he used to always do and say things that would make you think. He wasn’t trying to teach me English but whenever I got in trouble for doing something he would always sit me down and say “If the dog bites you once it’s the dogs fault but if the dog bites you twice it’s your fault” then we would discuss the series of events that happened to cause my inappropriate actions and other choices I could have taken. Although this was a long time ago whenever something goes wrong in my life I still find myself looking for what caused it so the cause part of this comes very naturally to me. We learned today that cause and effect is the how and why of what we do, it predicts things that are going to happen. I believe that this is true but that we also have a choice in what we do which makes the effect part of things less predictable.

Today we learned about the causal chain, which are the terms that can be defined in a series of events. In analyzing the elements of cause and effect we start with contributory cause which is the series of events that led up to the main event. In our example it was love, married, anniversary, and date. The date is the main cause because it is the last cause that occurred before the main event. On our example the main event was speeding. After the main event you have a series of effects that occur. The direct effect was a ticket, which is followed by the remote effects which in this case were fine, insurance going up, and no cash.

I find it interesting to analyze cause an effect and find the Causal Chain very useful in the process of doing so.

2 comments:

  1. I like how you posted about personal experiences, and also the way you explained Casual Chain.

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  2. As he was explaining the causal chaing I was thinking that every effect triggers a cause. So nothing is ever meaningless because something or somethings will become of it. Someone could go insane thinking about what would happen if an event happened differently. Such as taking a different way home one day or not asking your wife out on your first date.

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