[FRIAM] Getting You Libertarians' Goats

[jon zingale]

Nick,

Let's say I have a language designed to work with sticks, where for
instance, it makes sense to name certain relations *Triangle*. Additionally,
let's assume that the language is detailed enough to include less obvious
relations such as those which relate sticks to trees to soil and water.
Would it be cheap to narrowly define *downward causation* as the
manipulation of the world in accordance with this language to produce new
sticks?

Consider as another example when one manipulates charge in bulk using analog
filters. Here, a circuit designer may not need to know about spin or
superposition or a lot of other details about the universe. In fact, the
designer may not know how to write a "mid-frequency ranged filter" if they
were only given a quantum mechanical view of the world. They may, however,
know how to build such a filter if they are given appropriately shaped
conductive surfaces and coils.

My apologies in advance if this characterization (that of reducing *downward
causation* to manipulation of a domain-specific language) is horribly
flawed, but I spent this much time writing a response. So, there.



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