Ok. My main point is just to clarify that other people are reading you as talking about explanation in general, not just strictly correlational explanation (if that’s what’s happening).
I do also think that’s not a great use of the word “explain” and “mystery”, because it’s not why the colloquial word is useful. The colloquial words “explain”/”mystery” are useful because they index “more information and ideas given/needed about this”. So just because X correlationally explains Y, and X is true, doesn’t mean there’s no mystery about Y.
I never said there’s no mystery about Y, just that there’s no mystery about Y being true conditional on X being true.
It’s a fair point that my usage of “explain” and “mystery” confused some people but I’m not too sure how else I would have made my point. Should I have said “people today are eating about as much more compared to the past as we would expect given how much fatter they’ve gotten”?
Ok. My main point is just to clarify that other people are reading you as talking about explanation in general, not just strictly correlational explanation (if that’s what’s happening).
I do also think that’s not a great use of the word “explain” and “mystery”, because it’s not why the colloquial word is useful. The colloquial words “explain”/”mystery” are useful because they index “more information and ideas given/needed about this”. So just because X correlationally explains Y, and X is true, doesn’t mean there’s no mystery about Y.
I never said there’s no mystery about Y, just that there’s no mystery about Y being true conditional on X being true.
It’s a fair point that my usage of “explain” and “mystery” confused some people but I’m not too sure how else I would have made my point. Should I have said “people today are eating about as much more compared to the past as we would expect given how much fatter they’ve gotten”?
That’s clearer to me, yeah. It’s unambiguous that it’s about conditional prediction (“we would expect given”) rather than explanation-in-general.