If we lived in a world where journalists knew the slightest bit about critical thinking: Hmm, I wonder if the cardboard box cuts Finland's infant mortality. Maybe I should look up infant mortality for Norway and Sweden? Oh, it's exactly the same as Finland's? Can't be the box then.
I'm willing to bet that U.S. infant mortality is the same or even lower -- for people of Finnish descent.
It doesn't say the box cut infant mortality, it says that in the period 1940 to 1960, a combination of the box, encouraging visits to doctors and the national health insurance system cut infant mortality.
I've done a small study and it turns out a combination of documenting, preparing unit tests, and cardboard boxes improve my source code quality by quite a bit.
Duh. It's obviously not the box itself that has reduced mortality. The "cardboard box" is a rhetorical shortcut that refers to the contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care.
There's a strong autistic trait in HN discussion sometimes...
Let's turn that around 180 degrees - without statistical controls how can you decide that a box did it?
You have no idea, you just like the box so you declare "the box is the king". It sounds good - the box has something to do with babies after all, so let's assign all the improvement to the box.
Sounds ridiculous doesn't it?
If you want to say "I have no idea whatsoever what caused the improvement", then I'll grant you your statistical rebuttal. But if you want to say "The box did it", then your statistical rebuttal is disingenuous.
If I lose weight because I start exercising and my neighbour loses weight because he started eating less, it's foolish to state that my exercise had no effect since my neighbour didn't do it and he lost weight too.
This word "because" isn't as easy to use as you think.
You seem to be very sure of the exact reason why something happened. But it doesn't work that way in the real world.
Virtually every country on earth had reductions in infant mortality over the years. Only one of them had a box. Clearly the main driver of the improvement is something else.
So you might want to talk about the tiny differences, those things that improved one country more than another. Maybe the box? But see, you've lost all your certainty now, and you can't use the word "because", since you don't really know what improved things - after all the main improvement came from somewhere else entirely.
3rd try: Let's pick something in each country, and declare that thing the "cause" of the improvement! In Finland: A box. In Sweden? Something else.
This is what you did - you have no idea what really did it, you are just picking basically random things.
> You seem to be very sure of the exact reason why something happened. But it doesn't work that way in the real world.
That's completely backwards. You made the absolute statement that "None of that did anything either". How do you know? I see you've even switched now to "Maybe the box".
I wasn't picking anything at all, I just pointed out that your logic was flawed with an example, and now you're trying to argue that I'm wrong by arguing against your very own logic!
I believe that comment is supposed to be an allusion to the following:
A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either." Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the U.S average. Economists Geranda Notten and Chris de Neubourg have calculated the poverty rate in Sweden using the American poverty threshold, finding it to be an identical 6.7%. (Quoting from http://www.newgeography.com/content/001543-is-sweden-a-false... )
I'm willing to bet that U.S. infant mortality is the same or even lower -- for people of Finnish descent.