Peterdjones comments on Causal Universes - Less Wrong

60 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 November 2012 04:08AM

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Comment author: Peterdjones 28 November 2012 07:31:34PM 1 point [-]

How about "Harry suspected Quirrel"?

Comment author: ArisKatsaris 29 November 2012 02:34:14PM 1 point [-]

That's "Quirrel caused suspicion in Harry's mind", or perhaps "Harry's model of Quirrel caused suspicion to be generated in Harry".

Comment author: Peterdjones 29 November 2012 02:53:43PM 2 points [-]

The causality isn't what you would expect from the syntax, going from subject to object, and it isn' implied by the syntax at all, it's in the semantics. Consider "Harry winked out of existence for no reason".

Comment author: Cyan 28 November 2012 09:00:34PM *  0 points [-]

That implies the existence of some X and Y in the sentence "Harry suspected Quirrel of X because Y", e.g., "Harry suspected Quirrel of secretly being some variety of uplifted rodent because Harry had suffered organic brain damage that impaired his ability to think rationally." As long as Harry is (being modeled as) subject to causal influences, such a sentence can't escape implying causes.