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MugaSofer comments on Wrong Questions - Less Wrong
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I agree with you about this. (And also agree with you & ArisKatsaris's response to PrawnOfFate's airbag example.) I suspect we just differ in our reactions to this inability to explain: you think it's a bug while I think it's expected behaviour.
Any causal chain eventually has to (1) end, (2) loop back on itself, or (3) go on forever without looping. So it's inevitable that if I try to locate the universe's cause, I'll get a counterintuitive answer. I'll find that it either just sprang into existence without being caused, that it caused itself, or that there's a never-ending procession of turtles.
None of these feel like Real Explanations, but (at least?) one of them must be the case. So I already know, a priori, that the universe's causal chain has no Real Explanation. If I think one exists, that just means I've failed to notice my confusion. Asking "Why is there everything?" and its equivalents is a failure to notice confusion.
What do you think you are confused about? You have grounds for thinking the question has no answer, but those are not per se grounds for thinking there was never a question.
About the reason the universe exists. I'm using "confusion" as shorthand for not having an explanation that feels adequate on a gut level (which leads to a sensation of confusion), whether or not that confusion is justified.
I don't doubt the question's existence. I doubt the question is worth asking.
Because?
Because I already know the three possible answers that question can have, and I already know none of them will feel adequate. As my only motivation for asking the question would be getting an answer that feels adequate, there's no point in asking it.
Realising that you can't answer it can set boundaries on your knowledge.
My conclusion that I can't answer it follows from my existing knowledge of those boundaries, however, so I don't learn novel boundaries from that conclusion.
By time you are saying things like "Well I'm confused, but... ...and therefore, it must be the case that A, B, or C", you should worry that you have already baked your confusion into your formulation of the question.
Or there could be a fourth explanation neither of us has thought of.
"There could be an (n+1)th explanation neither of us has thought of" is a fully general counterargument to any argument by cases.
It's valid too. Which is one reason not to put p=1.0 on anything.
Most fully general counterarguments are valid, taken at face value. This does not mean they're worth giving much weight. For example, someone could answer any argument I post on LW with "but satt, it's always possible you are wrong about that!" Which would be correct but rarely helpful.
Similarly, although I'm sympathetic to the idea of never assigning p=0 or p=1 to anything, any well-specified model I make is going to leave something out. So for me to make any inferences at all, I have to implicitly assign p=0 or p=1 to something. If I started throwing out models on that basis I'd have nothing left.
Why yes, yes it is. Arguing that someone else is wrong, therefore you are right is a well-known cheap debating trick.
Would you care to explain why I'm wrong, rather than sorting my argument into a low-status category?
When I was complaining about the "but satt, it's always possible you are wrong about that!" argument, I wasn't complaining about all arguments that have "you are wrong, satt, therefore I am right" as a conclusion. I'm only taking issue with people mumbling "well, have you ever considered you might be wrong?" without elaborating. There's nothing wrong with someone arguing I might be wrong about something. But they should at least give a hint as to why I'd be wrong.
In this case, "there could be a fourth explanation neither of us has thought of" amounts to saying "there could be a fourth possible terminal state for a causal chain". Well, sure, it's always possible. But why should I assign that possibility any substantial probability?
Causal chains are pretty basic, abstract objects — directed graphs. I'm not talking about a set of concrete objects, where a fourth example could be hiding somewhere in the physical world where no one can see it. I'm not talking about some abstruse mathematical object that's liable to have weird properties I'm not even aware of. I'm talking about boxes connected by arrows. If there were some fourth terminal state I could arrange them to have I'd expect to know about it.
What I've just said might be mistaken. But you haven't given any specifics as to where or how it goes wrong, so your comment is just another form of "but satt, it's always possible you are wrong about that!", which doesn't help me.
If propositional calculus (simpler than it sounds is a good way of describing causality in the territory, I very much doubt there is a fourth option. If I'm doing logic right:
1.¬A is A's cause(1)∨A is A's cause (1)(By NOT-3)
2.A has a cause→ ¬A is A's cause(1)∨A is A's cause(1)(By THEN-1)
3.A has a cause→ ¬A is A's cause(1)∨A is A's cause(1)→A has a cause ∧¬A is A's cause(1)∨A is A's cause(1)(By AND-3)
4.A has a cause→A has a cause ∧¬A is A's cause(1)∨ A is A's cause(1)(Modus Ponens on 3)
6.¬A has a cause∨A has a cause ∧ A is A's cause(1)∨¬A is A's cause(1)(Modus ponens on 5)
Which, translated back into English, means that something either has a cause apart from itself, is it's own cause*,or has no cause. If you apply "has a cause apart from itself" recursively, you end up with an infinite chain of causes. Otherwise, you have to go with "is it's own cause(1)", which means the causal chain loops back on itself or "has no cause" which means the causal chain ends.
Nothing thus far, to my knowledge, has been found to defy the axioms of PC, and thus, if PC were wrong, it would seem not only unsatisfying but downright crazy. I believe that I could make at least a thousand claims which I believe as strongly as "If the Universe defied the principles of logic, it would seem crazy to me." and be wrong at most once, so I assign at least a 99.9% probability to the claim that "Why is everything" has no satisfying answer if "It spontaneously sprang into being", "Causality is cyclical." and "an infinite chain of causes" are unsatisfying.
(1)Directly or indirectly
A problem, or a strength, depending on the context, with this sort of argument is that it does not depend on the meaning of the phrase "X is caused by Y". Logically, any binary relation forms chains that are either infinite, lead to a cycle, or stop. If the words "X is caused by Y" indeed define a binary relation, then the argument tells you this fact about that relation.
If the concept being groped for with the words is vague, ill-defined, or confused, then the argument will be working from a wrong ontology, and the precision and soundness of the argument may distract from noticing that. Hume denied causation, in favour of correlation; Pearl asserts causation as distinct but as far as I can see takes it as unproblematic enough for his purposes to leave undefined. The discussion here suggests the concept of causation is still unclear. Or if there is a clear concept, people are still unclear what it is.