Another reference request: Eliezer made a post about how it’s ultimately incoherent to talk about how “A causes B” in the physical world because at root, everything is caused by the physical laws and initial conditions of the universe. But I don’t remember what it is called. Does anybody else remember?
It is coherent to talks about “A causes B”, to the contrary it’s a mistake to say that everything is caused by physical laws, and therefore you have no free will, for example (as if your actions don’t cause anything). Of course, any given event won’t normally have only one cause, but considering the causes of an event makes sense. See the posts on free will, and then the solution posts linked from there. The picture you were thinking about is probably from theseposts.
Thanks for the reference, yes, this is what I had remembered. And yes, I garbled the article—what I had in mind was that point any given event won’t normally have only one cause.
Another reference request: Eliezer made a post about how it’s ultimately incoherent to talk about how “A causes B” in the physical world because at root, everything is caused by the physical laws and initial conditions of the universe. But I don’t remember what it is called. Does anybody else remember?
It is coherent to talks about “A causes B”, to the contrary it’s a mistake to say that everything is caused by physical laws, and therefore you have no free will, for example (as if your actions don’t cause anything). Of course, any given event won’t normally have only one cause, but considering the causes of an event makes sense. See the posts on free will, and then the solution posts linked from there. The picture you were thinking about is probably from these posts.
Thanks for the reference, yes, this is what I had remembered. And yes, I garbled the article—what I had in mind was that point any given event won’t normally have only one cause.
It couldn’t have been “Timeless Causality” or “Causality and Moral Responsibility”, could it?
Thanks, but neither of these are the one I remember.