Matt Mahoney wrote:
--- On Sun, 10/26/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So what's the connection according to you between
viruses and illness/disease, heating water and boiling,
force applied to object and acceleration of object?
Observing illness causes me to believe a virus might be present. Observing
boiling water causes me to believe it was heated. f = ma says nothing about
cause and effect.
We say "X causes Y" if X and Y are correlated, and we can control X but not Y.
This implies X precedes Y in time, because if Y happens first then controlling X would
make them uncorrelated.
If the mind is computable, then control is just a belief. Therefore, cause and
effect would also be just a belief. Physics is computable and does not require
cause and effect to model it.
-- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Even that's overstating the case. If a spigot is open at the bottom of
a coffee urn, and there is liquid in it, and there is no lid on it, and
the sun is shining, then liquid is observed to flow. If there's no
light then liquid is not observed to flow. Did the light cause the
flow? No, but it permitted the observation.
And even that is overstating the case. If the bottom part of the liquid
were frozen, then liquid wouldn't flow, so my prior statement was
incorrect. And I can keep adding exceptional conditions that will
prevent the flow of liquid, or will alter things so that the prevention
is overcome.
Science is the abstraction away of exceptional conditions, and examining
the relation between the remaining conditions. It only works because
(if?) we can presume that the relations between the normal conditions
continue to persist with only a few alterations caused by the
exceptional conditions, which enables us to determine THEIR effects.
In essence Science is model building...and testing the models for
correspondence with observable externality. And the very process of
building those models rests on beliefs such as object permanence.
(Which is what made radio-activity/alchemy so appalling/appealing.)
-------------------------------------------
agi
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