khafra comments on Causation, Probability and Objectivity - Less Wrong

7 Post author: antigonus 18 March 2012 06:54AM

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Comment author: khafra 19 March 2012 06:48:47PM 0 points [-]

It just seems really weird to be able to correctly say that A caused B when, in fact, A had nothing to do with B. If that doesn't seem weird to you, then O.K.

"Causation is in the mind" does not imply "correlation is in the mind," does it? I mean, assuming a deterministic interpretation of QM, causal determinism is pretty much a correct philosophical position. That means causality, in the Pearl sense, really is only in the mind. In the world, there are only interactions which happen according to mathematically regular rules.

You might as well talk about causality along the X-axis instead of the time axis: "the state of the universe at any point along the X axis can be known, with unlimited computing power and complete knowledge of any other Y,Z,T hyperplane." If we were epistemically limited to a one-way view along the universe's X-axis, and could see in both directions along the time axis, this would make sense.