Cause-effect

Logic Level 1

Alice's cat always sneezes just before it rains.
Alice heard her cat sneeze and thought "It will rain soon".
Is Alice guaranteed to be right?

Yes, she is No, she is not

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7 solutions

Ronald Chén
Dec 6, 2016

No, it is not. Indeed, the fact that event A (rain) always causes B (cat's sneeze) does not mean that B causes event A. This is one example of a very common sort of logical error, the confusion of a statement with its converse.

The answer has to be no. The proposition states that the cat sneezes before it rains, therefore it cannot rain without the cat sneezing. It states nothing about when it doesn't rain. The cat can also sneeze when it is not about to rain.

Kris Hauchecorne - 4 years, 6 months ago

At some point it will be raining... no one said it had to be raining the same day

Peter van der Linden - 4 years, 6 months ago

While this is technically fine, I don't think it quite covers everyone's reason for getting it wrong. It's fairly easy for someone to interpret the sentence as "sneezes implies rain" just because of the temporal aspect of sneezes coming first; in reality the temporal aspect is irrelevant.

Jason Dyer Staff - 4 years, 6 months ago
Alex Li
Dec 11, 2016

The cat could sneeze every 5 seconds!

Mohammad Khaza
Jul 7, 2017

the cat is ill ,i think

Michael Mendrin
Dec 11, 2016

What if the cat also always sneezes just before it snows?

Nikkil V
Dec 7, 2016

According to this question, Cat always sneezes before it rains but that doesn't mean for every sneezes.Here rain is taken as the reference.So the answer is no.

Alex Quicho
Jan 10, 2017

This is a "post hoc ergo propter hoc" fallacy, a Latin term which translates to "after this, therefore because of this". It states that "X event happens, Y event follows. Therefore, Y event is caused by X event". The event is concluded solely on the order of events, disregarding all other factors that might rule out the connection. One example is "I'm not going to invite John to the picnic anymore since it always rains when he joins."

Syed Hissaan
Dec 11, 2016

The statement says that "alice's cat always sneezes before it rains " it does not says "alice's cat only sneezes before it rains" it is guaranteed that before it rains the cat will always sneeze but it is not guaranteed that cat cannot sneeze sometimes else more precisely "it is not guaranteed that it always rain whenever the cat sneezes "

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