Causal Stories

Story 49

In a particular building there are two businesses, a travel agency and a graphic design studio. The building's climate control system is a new design that saves energy by keeping track of the number of people in the building, and only turning on when enough people have entered the building. The climate control system will only turn on when the people who work at the travel agency and the people who work in the design studio arrive for work. Neither office has enough employees to turn on the climate control system on their own. The travel agency employees almost always arrive at 8:45 am, and the design studio employees almost always arrive at 8:45 am. Today, the travel agency employees arrived at 8:45 am. The design studio employees also arrived at 8:45 am, as usual. So, today, the climate control system turned on at 8:45 am.

Question

Did the design studio agents cause the climate control system to turn on at 8:45 am?

Majority Answer: Yes

Answer distribution over 25 people:

P(Yes): 0.76 P(No): 0.24

Is Ambiguous: False

Factor

These are the factors and their attributes present in this story.

Action Omission: Action

Causal Structure: Conjunctive

Event Normality: Normal

Norm Type: Statistical Norm

Time: Same Time Cause