That is a surprising mistake to make in reasoning. Did you somehow get the causality arrows reversed in your mind when writing this?
There are no causality arrows in my reasoning.
Perhaps you think that by “fitness” I meant evolutionary fitness, and that both beauty and intelligence cause fitness. But by “fitness” I meant health. Sorry, poor choice of words.
Fitness meaning health. That works. But I think that your model does involve causality—from health to both beauty and intelligence. And, of course then beauty and intelligence will be correlated. I apologize for not anticipating that possible meaning. Since you post about evolutionary theory so often, that denotation of “fitness” never entered my mind.
There are no causality arrows in my reasoning.
Perhaps you think that by “fitness” I meant evolutionary fitness, and that both beauty and intelligence cause fitness. But by “fitness” I meant health. Sorry, poor choice of words.
Fitness meaning health. That works. But I think that your model does involve causality—from health to both beauty and intelligence. And, of course then beauty and intelligence will be correlated. I apologize for not anticipating that possible meaning. Since you post about evolutionary theory so often, that denotation of “fitness” never entered my mind.
Say X and Y are two independent random variables. X is correlated to X+Y is correlated to Y, but X and Y are (by hypothesis!) not correlated.