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Re:Creativity Predicts a Longer Life by tlb on Sunday September 09, 2012 @04:42PM (#4496908)
"is correlated with".

If you're not convinced that the reporters are trying to suggest causation with the word "predicts", try swapping the two terms. Would they write a headline, "Longer life predicts creativity"?

Re:Creativity Predicts a Longer Life by meric on Sunday September 09, 2012 @08:55PM (#4497740)
If the statistics show that creative people are correlated with longer life, but that longer life is only correlated with creativity if factors X, Y, Z are also present (but not necessarily just X, Y, Z without creativity), then it would be correct to say "creativity predicts longer life" but not "longer life predicts creativity"; while not implying any causation.

Also it could be that some long living people are creative and all creative people are long living; while creative still not being a cause of the longer life. (let's say all creative people eat peanut butter sandwiches, and it was infact the peanut butter that caused a longer life.)

"The weatherman predicts the weather". Are you saying in this sentence, causation is implicitly referenced?

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Re:Creativity Predicts a Longer Life by dllthomas on Monday September 10, 2012 @02:40PM (#4501351)
It doesn't work the other way because of temporal constraints, not causality. A person's creativity happens before their longevity is determined. Similarly, you wouldn't write "election predicts poll results."

That said, if I was looking at records of the deceased and first discovered a person's age at time of death, then I could use the correlation to predict that I am likely to further find that they were creative.