me_irl

I remember the name of the fallacy for this one! It's called "correlation, not causation". If thing X is correlated with thing Y and we agree that thing Y is bad, that does not necessarily mean thing X is bad. If you want to attack thing X, you have to give reasons why X is bad or why X leads to Y, not just that the two are correlated. This is not to mean that correlation is useless--if Communism (X) is heavily correlated to death and suffering (Y), and we both agree that Y is bad, it is a signal that it could be useful to look into whether X causes Y and, if so, why/how.