Fallacy of The Single Cause

The Fallacy of the Single Cause, is assuming one cause or reason, where actually there are multiple causes or reasons. 

It's a very common mental or thinking error; x occurred after y, so x must be the cause of y.

Example:

Vijay: I ran my car off the the road because that dog ran in front of my car.

Officer: You don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that you were trying to text your girlfriend, and drunk?

Explanation: While if it were not for the dog, perhaps Vijay wouldn’t have banged his car. However, if it weren’t for him texting while driving, plus being drunk, he could have almost certainly found a more efficient dog avoiding tactic.

I was myself guilty of one such.  I banged the SUV in front of me pretty bad, and squarely said he'd braked too suddenly. Well, that was true. What I also knew was that , that was the day I'd been told I'd gotten transferred on my job. Interesting to be aware.(my thinking then said I was using excuses for the accident...today I know it was reason too, not just excuse).

Almost any situation is driven by multiple causes, and such causal complexity underlies even situations or events that appear to be fundamentally clear-cut. There is always a mixture of factors that bring about an event. 

The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy beautifully illustrated this point in his classic novel War and Peace; there is a complex cause even behind an apple falling from a tree or for Napoleon’s invasion of Russia :

When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it? 

Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions in which all vital organic and elemental events occur to enable an occurrence. 

Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because the Czar desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself.

Getting to grips with causal complexity is indispensible for effective strategic and analytic thinking, especially for our ability to diagnose the problem, to understand what factors are responsible for the problem and what prevents possible solutions. Yet, our minds are inclined to look for and settle on a single cause, neglecting any causal complexity. 

This fallacy is particularly easy to notice in the media. Political pundits will ask what the cause of a crisis is. Business analysts will ask what has been the cause of Apple’s success. Such discussions imply that there is a single cause responsible for the outcome. Many of the so-called strategy experts may be equally prone to this oversimplification bias, often suggesting that the sole cause of a successful political or marketing campaign is the leader’s strategic intent or a similar cause.

The First World War, cancer, a friends divorce, the worldwide success of a company, the invention of writing – any clear-thinking person knows that no single factor leads to such events.

Rather, there are hundreds, thousands, an infinite number of factors that add up. Still, we keep trying to pin the blame on just one.

This is not only wrong but also morally questionable. As long as we believe in singular reasons, we will always be able to trace triumphs or disasters back to individuals and stamp them ‘responsible’.

Good to be aware, as this is something we typically do even in day to day situations, where we could potentially end up taking, or putting responsibility on singular people or things way more than what needs. My personal takeaway? Don't waste too much effort and energy on trying to pin the cause of why we are where we are ....instead, focus on where you want to be or where you want to go :)