I think the problem may be what counts as correlated. If I toss two coins and both get heads, that’s probably coincidence. If I toss two coins N times and get HH TT HH HH HH TT HH HH HH HH TT HH HH HH HH HH TT HH TT TT HH then there’s probably a common cause of some sort.
But real life is littered with things that look sort of correlated, like price of X and price of Y both (a) go up over time and (b) shoot up temporarily when the roads are closed, but are not otherwise correlated, and it’s not clear when this should apply (even though I agree it’s a good principle).
I think the problem may be what counts as correlated. If I toss two coins and both get heads, that’s probably coincidence. If I toss two coins N times and get HH TT HH HH HH TT HH HH HH HH TT HH HH HH HH HH TT HH TT TT HH then there’s probably a common cause of some sort.
But real life is littered with things that look sort of correlated, like price of X and price of Y both (a) go up over time and (b) shoot up temporarily when the roads are closed, but are not otherwise correlated, and it’s not clear when this should apply (even though I agree it’s a good principle).