= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Matt_Simpson comments on Open Thread, October 16-31, 2012 - 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 (271)
The solution is that causal relations are a map, reality is the territory. You and I could very possibly have different causal structures in mind when we're talking about, e.g., moving billiard balls, and we can both be correct if we have different sets of information. There is only one reality, but there are many correct maps of reality, each one corresponding to a different set of previous information.
If I understand you, you're saying that causal relations are a (perhaps necessary) feature of the map but are not features of the territory. Is that correct? If so, it seems like the claim "the universe is a fabric of causal relations' is strictly speaking false, or at least it's only true if by 'the universe' we mean the map rather than the territory, which would be weird.
I made a mistake, but I think fixing the first sentence is all that I need to do. (Maybe I merely misspoke, but I'm not sure what I was thinking, even only a couple hours ago).
The first sentence should read something like: Reality is a particular causal web, but the correct model of that causal web depends on your state of information. In other words, the subjectively objective component only comes in when we try to infer something about the causal web that is reality.