[FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues

Tue Dec 28 00:01:46 EST 2021

Some jargon that "we" use.  The kind of causation where time order matters
is called "actual causation" or "token causation".  Hitting the glass with
a a hammer causes it to break.

The other kind is called "statistical" or "probabilistic" causation.
Smoking causes cancer.

See Glymour, et al "Actual Causation and Thought Experiments".

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sun, Dec 26, 2021, 12:03 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com>
wrote:

> As repeatedly hammered in the excellent book "Beyond Versus", Sober is
> conflating two things:
>
> 1) A does not cause C except through B. (A-> B -> C with no other arrows)
>
> 2) In this data set, knowledge of B lets us predict C exactly as well as
> we can predict it with combined knowledge of B & knowledge of A.
>
> For the first one,  time matters a lot (assuming standard forward-casualty
> views), and for the latter it doesn't matter in the slightest. As Glen
> points out,  it could easily be bidirectional.
>
> Also, to Sober's point: YES,  if internal mental states existed in a
> Cartesian manner,  AND we somehow had perfect knowledge of them,  THEN they
> would be higly useful for predicting behavior.  But we can all see that
> isn't actually a good arguement for believing in them... right? All the
> math in the world wouldn't change that.... right?
>
> But ALSO,  don't forget the crucial point behaviorist-Nick should be
> making... let's say someone punches you,  and you kick them back.  Let's
> say I happen to be brain scanning when you get punched,  and I detect a
> signal in your brain that perfectly predicts you will kick back.  That
> signal,  is part of the process by which the other guys punch caused your
> kick. The signal is contained in "you kicked back"; it is a component part
> of it.  That "you kicked" entails all of that stuff,  not just the muscle
> contractions in your leg,  which could be caused by knee-tap reflexes,
> external electrical stimulation,  or other causes completely unrelated to
> the internal process entailed in "you kicked".
>
> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 4:42 PM Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Instead of "if A is true then B is true" think "if I know the value of A
>> then I know something about the value of B".  For instance A = age and B =
>> income.
>>
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 2:03 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I think you mean by a "fork" what we call a "common cause".  When two
>>> variables are correlated it may be that they have a common cause.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sober’s word, not mine.  Yours is the meaning he seems to give it.  The
>>> whole article concerns how a causal “fork” breathes life into hypothetical
>>> “inner” variables.  The abstract concerns how a causal collision breathes
>>> life into  hypothetical “inner” variables.  You and glen agree that order
>>> is NOT important, so now I am going to have a rethink.  Does it make any
>>> sense to distinguish between logical and temporal order?  So B is true,
>>> given A, speaks to logical order.   A CAUSES B speaks to temporal order,
>>> unless we have given up on the requirement that the Cause A cannot occur
>>> after A itself.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> N
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Nick Thompson
>>>
>>> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>>>
>>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
>>> *Sent:* Monday, December 20, 2021 12:02 PM
>>> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>>> friam at redfish.com>
>>> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] Dear Long Suffering Colleagues
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I think you mean by a "fork" what we call a "common cause".  When two
>>> variables are correlated it may be that they have a common cause.
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Frank C. Wimberly
>>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>>
>>> 505 670-9918
>>> Santa Fe, NM
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Dec 20, 2021, 8:17 AM uǝlƃ ☤>$ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> I don't understand your criticism. What do you think is "cocked up"? [⛧]
>>>
>>> I'll take a swipe at what might be the problem: The concluding paragraph
>>> seems to make the point that forks *are* (reversed) collisions and
>>> collisions are (reversed) forks. The key may lie in some preemptive
>>> registration of words like "prediction". If you stick to words like
>>> "relation" and "correlation" and toss out all the mechanistic/causal
>>> language, it might be clearer how forks are collisions and vice versa. The
>>> only difference is the *direction* of inference.
>>>
>>> But to be clear, despite my guess above, I'm asking a question. What do
>>> you think is wrong, here?
>>>
>>> [⛧] For my own convenience, here's the link to the article I *think*
>>> we're talking about:
>>> methodological behaviorism, causal chains, and causal forks
>>> https://behavior.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/BPv45_SOBER.pdf
>>>
>>> On 12/19/21 10:08 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>>> > */Yes!  Right!  Thankyou! /*
>>> >
>>> > That is now obvious to you because you know that stuff.  But for three
>>> weeks it has been driving me crazy.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Now for the second point.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> E1 and E2, each causally contribute to a behavior, B.  In this case, postulating
>>> >
>>> >
>>>  an inner state, I, that is caused by both E1 and E2, and which causes I, affects
>>> >
>>> >
>>> one's predictions concerning the relationship between environment and behavior.
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > This is from the abstract of the article.  Not only do we see the same
>>> slip-up with respect to I (I IS after all, the inner state), but we see
>>> also that the abstract entertains an article about causal convergence
>>> (“collision”), not causal forks.  Yet every where else, in the title, or in
>>> the body, the article seems to be talking about forks.  Even with my weak
>>> knowledge of formal logic and probability, I can see that that would make a
>>> huge difference.  Can you confirm also that that is a cockup, so I don’t
>>> spend another month trying to make it make sense?
>>>
>>> --
>>> "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
>>> ☤>$ uǝlƃ
>>>
>>>
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