Vaniver was saying that causality is entirely high level.
That cannot be the case, though, because it means that causality itself is caused by the low level, which is a contradiction.
The true meaning of cause is just “what has something else coming from it, namely when it can help to explain the thing that comes from it.” This cannot be reduced to something else, because the thing it was supposedly reduced to would be what causality is from, and would help to explain it, leading to a contradiction.
That cannot be the case, though, because it means that causality itself is caused by the low level, which is a contradiction.
Disagreed, because this looks like a type error to me. Molecular chemistry describes the interactions of atoms, but the interactions of atoms are not themselves made of atoms. (That is, a covalent bond is a different kind of thing than an atom is.)
Causality is what it looks like when you consider running a dynamical system forward from various starting points, and noting how the future behavior of the system is different from different points. This is deeply similar to the concept of ‘running a dynamical system’ in the first place, and so you might not want to draw a distinction between the two of them.
My point is that our human view of causality typically involves human-sized objects in it, whereas the update rules of the universe operate on a level much smaller than human-sized, and so the connection between the two is mostly opaque to us.
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying, and I am very sure that you either did not understand what I was saying, or else you misinterpreted it.
I was using “cause” in a very general sense, where it is almost, but not quite, equivalent to anything that can be helpful in explaining something. The one extra element that is needed is that, in some way, the effect comes “from” the cause. In the situation you are calling causality, it is true that you can say “the future behavior comes from the present situation and is somehow explained by it,” so there is a kind of causality there. But that is only one kind of causality, and there are plenty of other kinds. For example “is made out of” is a way of being an effect: if something is made out of something else, the thing that is made is “from” the stuff it is made out of, and the stuff helps to explain the existence of the thing.
My point is that if you use this general sense of cause, which I do because I consider it the most useful way to use the word, then you cannot completely reduce causality to something else, but it is in some respect irreducible. This is because “reducing” a thing is finding a kind of cause.
It looks to me like you’re saying something along the lines of ‘wait, reverse reductionism is a core part of causation because the properties of the higher level model are caused by the properties of the lower level model.’ I think it makes sense to differentiate between reductionism (and doing it in reverse) and temporal causation, though they are linked.
I agree with the point that if someone is trying to figure out the word “because” you haven’t fully explained it until you’ve unpacked each of its meanings into something crisp, and that saying “because means temporal causation” is a mistake because it obscures those other meanings. But I also think it’s a mistake to not carve out temporal causation and discuss that independent of the other sorts of causation.
Vaniver was saying that causality is entirely high level.
Maybe. But Yudkowsky sometimes writes as though it is fundamental.
That cannot be the case, though, because it means that causality itself is caused by the low level, which is a contradiction.
It would mean causality is constituted by the low level. Nowadays, causation means efficient causation, not material causation.
This cannot be reduced to something else, because the thing it was supposedly reduced to would be what causality is from, and would help to explain it, leading to a contradiction.
As before …efficient causation is narrower than anything that can explain anything.
I agree, it would not be a contradiction to think that you could explain efficient causality using material causality (although you still might be wrong.) But you could not explain material causality in the same way.
Vaniver was saying that causality is entirely high level.
That cannot be the case, though, because it means that causality itself is caused by the low level, which is a contradiction.
The true meaning of cause is just “what has something else coming from it, namely when it can help to explain the thing that comes from it.” This cannot be reduced to something else, because the thing it was supposedly reduced to would be what causality is from, and would help to explain it, leading to a contradiction.
Disagreed, because this looks like a type error to me. Molecular chemistry describes the interactions of atoms, but the interactions of atoms are not themselves made of atoms. (That is, a covalent bond is a different kind of thing than an atom is.)
Causality is what it looks like when you consider running a dynamical system forward from various starting points, and noting how the future behavior of the system is different from different points. This is deeply similar to the concept of ‘running a dynamical system’ in the first place, and so you might not want to draw a distinction between the two of them.
My point is that our human view of causality typically involves human-sized objects in it, whereas the update rules of the universe operate on a level much smaller than human-sized, and so the connection between the two is mostly opaque to us.
I’m not sure I understand what you are saying, and I am very sure that you either did not understand what I was saying, or else you misinterpreted it.
I was using “cause” in a very general sense, where it is almost, but not quite, equivalent to anything that can be helpful in explaining something. The one extra element that is needed is that, in some way, the effect comes “from” the cause. In the situation you are calling causality, it is true that you can say “the future behavior comes from the present situation and is somehow explained by it,” so there is a kind of causality there. But that is only one kind of causality, and there are plenty of other kinds. For example “is made out of” is a way of being an effect: if something is made out of something else, the thing that is made is “from” the stuff it is made out of, and the stuff helps to explain the existence of the thing.
My point is that if you use this general sense of cause, which I do because I consider it the most useful way to use the word, then you cannot completely reduce causality to something else, but it is in some respect irreducible. This is because “reducing” a thing is finding a kind of cause.
It looks to me like you’re saying something along the lines of ‘wait, reverse reductionism is a core part of causation because the properties of the higher level model are caused by the properties of the lower level model.’ I think it makes sense to differentiate between reductionism (and doing it in reverse) and temporal causation, though they are linked.
I agree with the point that if someone is trying to figure out the word “because” you haven’t fully explained it until you’ve unpacked each of its meanings into something crisp, and that saying “because means temporal causation” is a mistake because it obscures those other meanings. But I also think it’s a mistake to not carve out temporal causation and discuss that independent of the other sorts of causation.
Maybe. But Yudkowsky sometimes writes as though it is fundamental.
It would mean causality is constituted by the low level. Nowadays, causation means efficient causation, not material causation.
As before …efficient causation is narrower than anything that can explain anything.
I agree, it would not be a contradiction to think that you could explain efficient causality using material causality (although you still might be wrong.) But you could not explain material causality in the same way.