= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Jack comments on The Presumptuous Philosopher's Presumptuous Friend - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (80)
Sure. But,
The way I see causal language being used doesn't suggest to me a demystified understanding of causality.
Maybe I'm being dense but it seems to me a non-metaphysical account of causality won't a priori exclude backwards causation and causality loops. In other words, even if we allow some kind of deflated causality that won't mean Newcomb's problem "makes no sense".
Oh, I wasn't agreeing with taw on that. Just responding to your association of causation with metaphysics. I don't see Omega breaking any causality, whether in a metaphysical or statistical sense.
As for excluding backwards causation and causality loops -- I'm not sure why we should necessarily want to exclude them, if a given system allows them and they're useful for explaining or predicting anything, even if they go against our more intuitive notions of causality. I was just recently thinking that backwards causality might be a good way to think about Newcomb's problem. (That idea might go down in flames, but I think the point stands that backward/cyclical causality should be allowed if they're found to be useful.)
I think we agree down the line.