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Re: [ProgSoc] Technology Matters - Questions to live with



John Elliot wrote:
Careful now. There's that whole 'correlation' vs. 'causation' thing.

Just because "you did X and failed" doesn't mean "X causes failure".

Maybe you needed to do X, and also Y, but didn't do Y.

Or maybe you needed to do X, and not Y, but did Y.

Or, maybe you shouldn't have done X.

Who knows?

...and just to really rub it in:

If you believe in 'causality' as a premise, then it's difficult to explain where 'free will' or 'choice' exists.

So, assuming that some combination of variables is conducive to an outcome called 'progress' and you can set those variables in order to achieve it in some deliberate way (with some hopefully quantifiable and predetermined probability predicted by a theory), then don't you really admit a requirement of causality? If so, where did you really 'choose' to behave as you did? Wasn't that experience of 'choice' just an experience in an unfolding chain of causality?

More than likely things happen randomly (i.e. algorithmically incompressible yet presumably deterministic state transitions) and then afterwards we sit about and theorise and rationalise about 'how' or 'why' they turned out the way they did.

Or, what about this: in an infinitely long set of 'random' events (aleph-null is big enough, surely), wouldn't there be an infinitely long 'run' of events which appeared to be described by some physical theory?

No wonder the article was called "questions to live with". Seems like you have to. ;)










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