If causality is everywhere, it is nowhere; declaring “causality is involved” will have no meaning. It begs the question whether an ontology containing the concept of causality is the best one to wield for what you’re trying to achieve. Consider that causality is not axiomatic, since the laws of physics are time-reversible.
Instead of “is there causality?” we should ask “how much causality is there?”.
The closest analogy to the old question would be “is there enough causality (for my purpose)?”. If drinking water improves my mood by 0.0001%, then drinking water is not a cost-effective way to improve my mood.
I am not denying that there is a connection, I am just saying it does not make sense for me to act on it.
A basic operationalization of “causality is everywhere” is “if we ran an RCT on some effect with sufficiently many subjects, we’d always reach statistical significance”—which is an empirical claim that I think is true in “almost” all cases. Even for “if I clap today, will it change the temperature in Tokyo tomorrow?”. I think I get what you mean by “if causality is everywhere, it is nowhere” (similar to “a theory that can explain everything has no predictive power”), but my “causality is everyhwere” claim is an at least in theory verifiable/falsifiable factual claim about the world.
Of course “two things are causally connected” is not at all the same as “the causal connection is relevant and we should measure it / utilize it / whatever”. My basic point is that assuming that something has no causal connection is almost always wrong. Maybe this happens to yield appropriate results, because the effect is indeed so small that you can simply act as if there was no causal connection. But I also believe that the “I believe X and Y have no causal connection at all” world view leads to many errors in judgment, and makes us overlook many relevant effects as well.
If causality is everywhere, it is nowhere; declaring “causality is involved” will have no meaning. It begs the question whether an ontology containing the concept of causality is the best one to wield for what you’re trying to achieve. Consider that causality is not axiomatic, since the laws of physics are time-reversible.
Instead of “is there causality?” we should ask “how much causality is there?”.
The closest analogy to the old question would be “is there enough causality (for my purpose)?”. If drinking water improves my mood by 0.0001%, then drinking water is not a cost-effective way to improve my mood.
I am not denying that there is a connection, I am just saying it does not make sense for me to act on it.
A basic operationalization of “causality is everywhere” is “if we ran an RCT on some effect with sufficiently many subjects, we’d always reach statistical significance”—which is an empirical claim that I think is true in “almost” all cases. Even for “if I clap today, will it change the temperature in Tokyo tomorrow?”. I think I get what you mean by “if causality is everywhere, it is nowhere” (similar to “a theory that can explain everything has no predictive power”), but my “causality is everyhwere” claim is an at least in theory verifiable/falsifiable factual claim about the world.
Of course “two things are causally connected” is not at all the same as “the causal connection is relevant and we should measure it / utilize it / whatever”. My basic point is that assuming that something has no causal connection is almost always wrong. Maybe this happens to yield appropriate results, because the effect is indeed so small that you can simply act as if there was no causal connection. But I also believe that the “I believe X and Y have no causal connection at all” world view leads to many errors in judgment, and makes us overlook many relevant effects as well.