It seems to me to be related to the big separate issue of whether, if an election is settled by two votes, nobody’s vote had any effect—by the same logic if an election was settled by one vote, everyone who voted for the winning side solely decided the election and get all the credit for it. The altruistic credit due to Page and Brin is not the interval between this universe and the counterfactual universe where they didn’t exist, any more than the credit due for an election result is the distance between this universe and the counterfactual universe where you voted the other way.
Yes, that’s a very good analogy; and perhaps one that’s a little easier to get a handle on mathematically since it’s very well specified. The logic of the problems seems exactly the same.
It seems to me to be related to the big separate issue of whether, if an election is settled by two votes, nobody’s vote had any effect—by the same logic if an election was settled by one vote, everyone who voted for the winning side solely decided the election and get all the credit for it. The altruistic credit due to Page and Brin is not the interval between this universe and the counterfactual universe where they didn’t exist, any more than the credit due for an election result is the distance between this universe and the counterfactual universe where you voted the other way.
The more general problem is considering something as “the” cause when it is only “a” cause.
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/halpern/papers/blame.pdf (etc by Halpern)
Yes, that’s a very good analogy; and perhaps one that’s a little easier to get a handle on mathematically since it’s very well specified. The logic of the problems seems exactly the same.