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The correlated trait fallacy

last edited 2024-11-05

The correlated trait fallacy is having a trait that you want to screen for and which can be directly checked, and instead defining your test on a trait correlated with that one.

An example everyone should recognize is minimum word requirements on essays in school. What you care about is that the essay is good; the word count is at best a symptom of quality that you can use if you don't have time to read the actual writing. So all you're doing by making the word count an actual criterion for judgement is discrediting essays that make equally powerful points in fewer words than you expected - ironically, the opposite of what you should be doing!

Politics and the English Language

Another example is distributing aid meant for the unfortunate to people based on "oppressed traits". For example, shelters for homeless LGBT youth.

Wanting to help the unfortunate is good, but why is it only for LGBT youth? That means you would turn away a homeless person for not being LGBT. Even if they're an ally. Even if they're definitely less fortunate than someone you'd accept. Oppressed traits should be a heuristic for who deserves priority, not the definition.

Another example (I've saved the spiciest for last) is the age of consent. Almost everyone believes that people who are even slightly younger than the age of legal adulthood in their country CANNOT consent to sex under any circumstances, and even if they say they do, having sex with them is, always, equivalent to rape, if not worse than raping an adult. It should be based on maturity, and age is merely a correlated trait for maturity. Not everyone matures in the same ways at the exact same times, so the age of consent can't be the same for everyone. Some people may be mature enough before others.

I'd also like to call attention to 2 other faulty things about how people think about the age of consent:

They almost always define the age as the age of legal adulthood in their country. Why? Is it just a coincidence the government picked exactly the right number? What about other countries, states, or time periods where it's slightly different? I've heard someone who normally draws the line at 18 argue that someone who was accused of having sex with a 17-year old was innocent because it happened in a state where the age was 17. The person making this argument was a self-described anarchist 😆

Maturity isn't a binary and doesn't change suddenly, so neither can this. The idea that you go instantly from being totally unable to consent to being totally able to consent is absurd.