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endoself comments on Causal Reference - Less Wrong
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Taboo spatio-temporal. Why is it a good idea to give one category of statements the special name 'events' and to reason about them differently than you would reason about other events?
Also, what about Newcomb's problem?
"Events" aren't a kind of statement. However a subset of statements is about events. The point of separating them out is that this discussion is about causality, and, uncontentiously, causality links events. If something is a Non-event (or a statement is not about an event), that is a good argument for not granting it (or what is is about) causal powers.
What is an event? What properties do events have that statements do not?
Are you a native English speaker?
Yes, I'm trying to get you to reduce the concept rather than take it as primitive. I know what an event is, by I think that the distinction between events and statements is fuzzy, and I think that events are best understood as a subcategory of statements.
Reduce it to whart? You've already "tabood" spatio-temporal. I can't communicate anything to you without some set of common meanings. It;s a cheap trick to complain that someone can't define something from a basis of shared-nothing, since no one can do that with any term.
The diffrerence is screamingly obvious. Statements are verbal communiations. If one asteroid crashes into another, that is an event but not a statement.. Statements are events, because they happen at particular palces and times, but most events are not statements. You've got it the wrong way round.
I meant 'statement' in the abstract sense of what is stated rather than things like when it is stated and who it is stated by. 'Proposition' has the meanings that I intend without any others, so it would better convey my meaning here.
The point of rationalist taboo is to eliminate all the different phrasings we can use to mention a concept without really understanding it and force us to consider how the phenomenon being discussed actually works. Your wording presumes certain intuition about what the physical world is and how it should work by virtue of being "physical", intuitions that are not usually argued for or even noticed. When you say you can't explain what an "event" or something "spatio-temporal" is without reference to words that really just restate the concept, that is giving a mysterious answer. Things work a certain way, and we can determine how.
I have no idea what "work" means, please explain...
If you are a native english speaker, you will have enough of an understanding of "event" to appreciate my point. You expect me understand terms like "work" without your going through the process of giving a sematic bedrock definition , beyond the common one.