Cool—thanks for your feedback! I agree that I could be more rigorous with my terminology. Nonetheless, I do think I have a rigorous argument underneath all this—even if it didn’t come across. Let me try to clarify:
I did not mean to refer to human intentionality anywhere here. I was specifically trying to argue that the “chaos-theory definition of causality” you give, while great in idealized deterministic systems, is inadequate in complex messy “real world.” Instead, the rigorous definition I prefer is the counter-factual information theoretic one, developed by Judea Pearl, and which I here tried to outline in layman’s terms. This definition is entirely ill-posed in a deterministic chaotic system, but will work as soon as we have any stochasticity (from whatever source).
Does this address your point at all, or am I off-base?
You do address my point. This comment helped too. I think I understand better what you’re getting at now. I think you are trying to explain how attempting to trace causation back with the precision of chaos theory is impossible in complex real world situations of limited information and that an alternative definition of causation is necessary to handle such contexts. Such contexts constitute the majority of practical experience.
I no longer believe your argument would selfdestruct if you included a rigorous definition of causality. I understand now that your argument does not depend on human intentionality. Neither is it wrong.
Cool—thanks for your feedback! I agree that I could be more rigorous with my terminology. Nonetheless, I do think I have a rigorous argument underneath all this—even if it didn’t come across. Let me try to clarify:
I did not mean to refer to human intentionality anywhere here. I was specifically trying to argue that the “chaos-theory definition of causality” you give, while great in idealized deterministic systems, is inadequate in complex messy “real world.” Instead, the rigorous definition I prefer is the counter-factual information theoretic one, developed by Judea Pearl, and which I here tried to outline in layman’s terms. This definition is entirely ill-posed in a deterministic chaotic system, but will work as soon as we have any stochasticity (from whatever source).
Does this address your point at all, or am I off-base?
You do address my point. This comment helped too. I think I understand better what you’re getting at now. I think you are trying to explain how attempting to trace causation back with the precision of chaos theory is impossible in complex real world situations of limited information and that an alternative definition of causation is necessary to handle such contexts. Such contexts constitute the majority of practical experience.
I no longer believe your argument would selfdestruct if you included a rigorous definition of causality. I understand now that your argument does not depend on human intentionality. Neither is it wrong.
whow, some Bayesian updating there—impressive! :)