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...

> contents of the box and all the associated materials such as the written guides on infant care

None of that did anything either, since other countries didn't have them and infant mortality went down there too.

Food for tought: if Norway has the same infant mortality rate and is substantially richer, does that mean something?

I am not exactly a socialist but the Finnish people still impress me again and again. (Happen to have a few friends and/or relatives from Finland. )

It means Norway found oil and gas.

And they are plowing (at least some of) the proceeds into public programs, instead of private companies.

...in 1969, 10 years after the mentioned 1940-to-1960 gains.

And those other countries were identical in every respect and hence perfect statistical controls?

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.

That's a ridiculous conclusion to reach.

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.

[edit: too harsh]

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!