I still stand by this claim, again with the caveat that you take it as a correlational use of the word “explain” (which is not at all uncommon e.g. when talking about “fraction of explained variance” and so forth) and not one that suggests a causal explanation of the form “people wanted to eat more food, so they ate more food, so they got fatter as a result”.
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”?
(The thread continues to look to me like what I described here https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-probably-not-lithium?commentId=NxzEfuyGfuao25mrx
i.e. Yudkowsky is responding to the part of your original comment where you said
)
I still stand by this claim, again with the caveat that you take it as a correlational use of the word “explain” (which is not at all uncommon e.g. when talking about “fraction of explained variance” and so forth) and not one that suggests a causal explanation of the form “people wanted to eat more food, so they ate more food, so they got fatter as a result”.
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.