> correlated to

Correlation measures whether Y=mX+c holds with small error. I sometimes think that many people unknowingly assume that all dependencies are somehow straight-line ones. This is distinct however from "linear approximations" in physics, which can at least be justified sometimes.

I also suspect that correlations of 0.5 or lower are often just statistical noise.

I don’t see how your reply relates to my comment. At no point do I say that any correlations are linear, nor does my argument depend on linear correlations.

Fundamentally my argument is maybe science can solve a problem, let’s at least try.