FRIAM and causality

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FRIAM and causality

Nick Thompson
?The truth arises from arguments amongst friends? -- David Hume
 
One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some fundamental issues settled amongst us.  We had, last week, a brisk discussion about causality.  I don?t think I was particularly articulate, and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try to state my position clearly and succinctly.    
 
The argument was between some who felt that causality was ?real? and those that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.   The argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence anytime anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the cause of Y.  Intuitively, X is the cause of Y if Y is X?s ?fault?.  To say that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my current belief that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I think you convince somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling the most reasonable story in which it seems obvious that Y would not have occurred had not X occurred.  But there is no particular reason that the world should always be a reasonable place, and therefore, it is also ALWAYS possible to tell an UNREASONABLE story that shows that Y?s occurrence was not the responsibility of X, no matter how reasonable the original causal attribution is.  One of us asked for a hammer and nail, claiming that if he could but drive a nail into the surface of one of St. John?s caf? tables, none of us would be silly enough to doubt that his hammering had been the cause of the nails penetration of the table.  Not withstanding his certainty on this matter, several of us instantly offered to be JUST THAT SILLY!  We would claim, we said, that contrary to his account, his hammering had had nothing to do with the nail?s penetration, but that the accommodating molecules of wood directly under the nail had randomly parted and sucked the nail into their midst.  
 
How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as alternatives.  By experience, obviously.  We have seen hundreds of cases where nails were driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few cases where the hammer missed the nail, the nail remained where it was, and the thumb was driven into the wood.)  Also, despite its theoretical possibility, none of us has EVER seen a real world object sucked into a surface by random motion of the surface?s molecules.  So it is the comparative analysis of our experience with hammers and nails that would have convinced us that the hammering had driven in the nail.  
 
            So what is the problem?  Why did we not just agree to that proposition and go on?  The reason to me is simple: the conventions of our language prevent us from arriving at that conclusion.  We not only  say that Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know to be true, we also  say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be embedded in the wood.  Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced concreteness.  Causality is easily attributed to the pattern of relations amongst hammers and nails, but we err when we allow ourselves to assert that that higher order pattern is exhibited by any of its contributory instances.  In fact, that in our experience the missed nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a real part of our notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit nail is.   Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.  
 
            The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in our conversation that we could barely speak without it,  but it is a fallacy all the same.  Other instances of it are intentions, dispositions, personality traits, communication, information etc., etc., and such mathematical fictions as the slope of a line at a point.   Whenever we use any of these terms, we attribute to single instances properties of aggregates of which they are part.  
 
            Now, how do we stop arguing about this?  First of all, we stop and give honor to the enormous amount of information that actually goes into making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes embedding, information which is not available in any of its instances.   Second, we then stop and give honor to  the incredible power of the human mind to sift through this data and identify patterns in it.  Third, and finally,  we stop and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our evolution, our neurology, our cognition, our culture, or our language that causes us to lodge this knowledge in the one place it can never be ? single instances.  
 
            Are we done?
 
Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthompson at clarku.edu)
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FRIAM and causality

Phil Henshaw-2
But the question you posed wasn't whether you could make a subject
trivial, which anyone can do with any subject I think, but whether you
can make it meaningful.    Can causality be meaningful is a much more
open question that does not have several of the traps built in it seems
to me.
 
The one phenomenological dilemma I keep seeing at FRIAM is that we skirt
the question of whether one needs to take on the laborious task of
inventing a whole new mode of explanation for the systems of the world
that have behaviors of their own, or do we just continue bagging them in
along with the things that are determined from their surroundings, since
that's where we started?
 
 

Phil Henshaw                       ????.?? ? `?.????
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
NY NY 10040                      
tel: 212-795-4844                
e-mail: pfh at synapse9.com          
explorations: www.synapse9.com <http://www.synapse9.com/>    

-----Original Message-----
From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 2:30 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Cc: gbarker at bucknell.edu; pderr at clarku.edu; caleb.thompson
Subject: [FRIAM] FRIAM and causality






?The truth arises from arguments amongst friends? -- David Hume

 

One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some
fundamental issues settled amongst us.  We had, last week, a brisk
discussion about causality.  I don?t think I was particularly
articulate, and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try
to state my position clearly and succinctly.    

 

The argument was between some who felt that causality was ?real? and
those that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.
The argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence
anytime anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the cause
of Y.  Intuitively, X is the cause of Y if Y is X?s ?fault?.  To say
that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my current belief
that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I think you convince
somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling the most reasonable
story in which it seems obvious that Y would not have occurred had not X
occurred.  But there is no particular reason that the world should
always be a reasonable place, and therefore, it is also ALWAYS possible
to tell an UNREASONABLE story that shows that Y?s occurrence was not the
responsibility of X, no matter how reasonable the original causal
attribution is.  One of us asked for a hammer and nail, claiming that if
he could but drive a nail into the surface of one of St. John?s caf?
tables, none of us would be silly enough to doubt that his hammering had
been the cause of the nails penetration of the table.  Not withstanding
his certainty on this matter, several of us instantly offered to be JUST
THAT SILLY!  We would claim, we said, that contrary to his account, his
hammering had had nothing to do with the nail?s penetration, but that
the accommodating molecules of wood directly under the nail had randomly
parte d and sucked the nail into their midst.  

 

How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of
unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as alternatives.
By experience, obviously.  We have seen hundreds of cases where nails
were driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few cases where the
hammer missed the nail, the nail remained where it was, and the thumb
was driven into the wood.)  Also, despite its theoretical possibility,
none of us has EVER seen a real world object sucked into a surface by
random motion of the surface?s molecules.  So it is the comparative
analysis of our experience with hammers and nails that would have
convinced us that the hammering had driven in the nail.  

 

            So what is the problem?  Why did we not just agree to that
proposition and go on?  The reason to me is simple: the conventions of
our language prevent us from arriving at that conclusion.  We not only
say that Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know
to be true, we also  say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be
embedded in the wood.  Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced
concreteness.  Causality is easily attributed to the pattern of
relations amongst hammers and nails, but we err when we allow ourselves
to assert that that higher order pattern is exhibited by any of its
contributory instances.  In fact, that in our experience the missed
nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a real part of our
notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit nail is.
Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.  

 

            The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in
our conversation that we could barely speak without it,  but it is a
fallacy all the same.  Other instances of it are intentions,
dispositions, personality traits, communication, information etc., etc.,
and such mathematical fictions as the slope of a line at a point.
Whenever we use any of these terms, we attribute to single instances
properties of aggregates of which they are part.  

 

            Now, how do we stop arguing about this?  First of all, we
stop and give honor to the enormous amount of information that actually
goes into making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes
embedding, information which is not available in any of its instances.
Second, we then stop and give honor to  the incredible power of the
human mind to sift through this data and identify patterns in it.
Third, and finally,  we stop and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our
evolution, our neurology, our cognition, our culture, or our language
that causes us to lodge this knowledge in the one place it can never be

 single instances.  

 

            Are we done?

 

Nick

 
 
Nicholas S. Thompson
Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
(nthompson at clarku.edu)
 
 
 



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FRIAM and causality

Carl Tollander
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
At that same session, I was going on about the Kochen-Specker theorem,
asking for references, on the basis of Baez's comment about it in "This
Week's Finds" at http://www.math.ucr.edu/home/baez/week257.html. He was
discussion some ideas around the concept of a "topos":

"It basically means this: using topos logic, we can talk about a
classical space
of states for a quantum system! However, this space typically has "no
global
points" - that's called the "Kochen-Specker theorem". In other words,
there's
no overall classical reality that matches all the classical snapshots."

Since I'd been thinking about locality and structure lately (thus the
interest in topoi), that statement seemed kind of remarkable to me, so
after asking around I finally got around to looking it up.

Wikipedia had little to say, but the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
had a nice discussion:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kochen-specker/#intro

Anyhow, based on Nick's intro, parts of that discussion now look germane
(situated equivalence!) to this discussion.

Carl

Nicholas Thompson wrote:

>
> */?The truth arises from arguments amongst friends?/* -- *David Hume*
>
> One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some
> fundamental issues settled amongst us. We had, last week, a brisk
> discussion about causality. I don?t think I was particularly
> articulate, and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try
> to state my position clearly and succinctly.
>
> The argument was between some who felt that causality was ?real? and
> those that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.
> The argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence
> anytime anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the
> cause of Y. Intuitively, X is the cause of Y if Y is X?s ?fault?. To
> say that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y. Given my current
> belief that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I think you
> convince somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling the most
> reasonable story in which it seems obvious that Y would not have
> occurred had not X occurred. But there is no particular reason that
> the world should always be a reasonable place, and therefore, it is
> also ALWAYS possible to tell an UNREASONABLE story that shows that Y?s
> occurrence was not the responsibility of X, no matter how reasonable
> the original causal attribution is. One of us asked for a hammer and
> nail, claiming that if he could but drive a nail into the surface of
> one of St. John?s caf? tables, none of us would be silly enough to
> doubt that his hammering had been the cause of the nails penetration
> of the table. Not withstanding his certainty on this matter, several
> of us instantly offered to be JUST THAT SILLY! We would claim, we
> said, that contrary to his account, his hammering had had nothing to
> do with the nail?s penetration, but that the accommodating molecules
> of wood directly under the nail had randomly parted and sucked the
> nail into their midst.
>
> How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of
> unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as
> alternatives. By experience, obviously. We have seen hundreds of cases
> where nails were driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few
> cases where the hammer missed the nail, the nail remained where it
> was, and the thumb was driven into the wood.) Also, despite its
> theoretical possibility, none of us has EVER seen a real world object
> sucked into a surface by random motion of the surface?s molecules. So
> it is the comparative analysis of our experience with hammers and
> nails that would have convinced us that the hammering had driven in
> the nail.
>
> So what is the problem? Why did we not just agree to that proposition
> and go on? The reason to me is simple: the conventions of our language
> prevent us from arriving at that conclusion. We not only say that
> Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know to be
> true, we also say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be embedded in
> the wood. Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced
> concreteness. Causality is easily attributed to the pattern of
> relations amongst hammers and nails, but we err when we allow
> ourselves to assert that that higher order pattern is exhibited by any
> of its contributory instances. In fact, that in our experience the
> missed nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a real part
> of our notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit nail
> is. Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.
>
> The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in our
> conversation that we could barely speak without it, but it is a
> fallacy all the same. Other instances of it are intentions,
> dispositions, personality traits, communication, information etc.,
> etc., and such mathematical fictions as the slope of a line at a
> point. Whenever we use any of these terms, we attribute to single
> instances properties of aggregates of which they are part.
>
> Now, how do we stop arguing about this? First of all, we stop and give
> honor to the enormous amount of information that actually goes into
> making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes embedding,
> information which is not available in any of its instances. Second, we
> then stop and give honor to the incredible power of the human mind to
> sift through this data and identify patterns in it. Third, and
> finally, we stop and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our evolution,
> our neurology, our cognition, our culture, or our language that causes
> us to lodge this knowledge in the one place it can never be ? single
> instances.
>
> Are we done?
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com
> <mailto:nick at redfish.com>)
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
> (nthompson at clarku.edu <mailto:nthompson at clarku.edu>)
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org


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FRIAM and causality

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> To say that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my
> current belief that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I
> think you convince somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling
> the most reasonable story in which it seems obvious that Y would not
> have occurred had not X occurred.
>
I'm skeptical of the tradition that says we should have predictive
models before measuring things in the world or interpreting data.
Where does a hypothesis come from?   I'd say it is little more than the
prior expectations we have about how the world molded into a compact
if/then type of story.   And just because a model says to measure
certain things (out a large universe of possible things to measure)
doesn't mean the prescribed measurements are really independent samples,
as there is some bias from a scientific culture.

Given the advanced technology that exists for automated data collection,
let's put aside the story telling (and  the dogma that often underlies
it) to see if the priors look very promising.  For example, using
machine learning techniques, infer models from partial data, and then
predict the rest.

Human experts are often wrong or in conflict, and not always a good
source for setting prior expectations.  Machines can help with that, by
considering thousands or millions of possible explanations for phenomena
based on a small number features found in a larger space of observables.
  When so found using a simple, statistically-sound metric, I really
think the `experts' need to look at that result pretty hard.

Marcus



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FRIAM and causality

Frank Wimberly
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
At that Friam I was talking about the difference between token causation (or
"actual" causation) and statistical causation (or "type" causation).  Here
is a Wikipedia article that may help further the discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_mental_causation

 

Frank

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf
Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Monday, November 12, 2007 12:30 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Cc: gbarker at bucknell.edu; pderr at clarku.edu; caleb.thompson
Subject: [FRIAM] FRIAM and causality

 

"The truth arises from arguments amongst friends" -- David Hume

 

One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some
fundamental issues settled amongst us.  We had, last week, a brisk
discussion about causality.  I don't think I was particularly articulate,
and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try to state my
position clearly and succinctly.    

 

The argument was between some who felt that causality was "real" and those
that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.   The
argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence anytime
anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the cause of Y.
Intuitively, X is the cause of Y if Y is X's "fault".  To say that X is the
cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my current belief that story-telling
is at the base of EVERYTHING, I think you convince somebody that X is the
cause of Y just by telling the most reasonable story in which it seems
obvious that Y would not have occurred had not X occurred.  But there is no
particular reason that the world should always be a reasonable place, and
therefore, it is also ALWAYS possible to tell an UNREASONABLE story that
shows that Y's occurrence was not the responsibility of X, no matter how
reasonable the original causal attribution is.  One of us asked for a hammer
and nail, claiming that if he could but drive a nail into the surface of one
of St. John's caf? tables, none of us would be silly enough to doubt that
his hammering had been the cause of the nails penetration of the table.  Not
withstanding his certainty on this matter, several of us instantly offered
to be JUST THAT SILLY!  We would claim, we said, that contrary to his
account, his hammering had had nothing to do with the nail's penetration,
but that the accommodating molecules of wood directly under the nail had
randomly parted and sucked the nail into their midst.  

 

How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of
unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as alternatives.  By
experience, obviously.  We have seen hundreds of cases where nails were
driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few cases where the hammer
missed the nail, the nail remained where it was, and the thumb was driven
into the wood.)  Also, despite its theoretical possibility, none of us has
EVER seen a real world object sucked into a surface by random motion of the
surface's molecules.  So it is the comparative analysis of our experience
with hammers and nails that would have convinced us that the hammering had
driven in the nail.  

 

            So what is the problem?  Why did we not just agree to that
proposition and go on?  The reason to me is simple: the conventions of our
language prevent us from arriving at that conclusion.  We not only  say that
Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know to be true, we
also  say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be embedded in the wood.
Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced concreteness.  Causality is
easily attributed to the pattern of relations amongst hammers and nails, but
we err when we allow ourselves to assert that that higher order pattern is
exhibited by any of its contributory instances.  In fact, that in our
experience the missed nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a
real part of our notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit
nail is.   Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.  

 

            The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in our
conversation that we could barely speak without it,  but it is a fallacy all
the same.  Other instances of it are intentions, dispositions, personality
traits, communication, information etc., etc., and such mathematical
fictions as the slope of a line at a point.   Whenever we use any of these
terms, we attribute to single instances properties of aggregates of which
they are part.  

 

            Now, how do we stop arguing about this?  First of all, we stop
and give honor to the enormous amount of information that actually goes into
making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes embedding,
information which is not available in any of its instances.   Second, we
then stop and give honor to  the incredible power of the human mind to sift
through this data and identify patterns in it.  Third, and finally,  we stop
and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our evolution, our neurology, our
cognition, our culture, or our language that causes us to lodge this
knowledge in the one place it can never be . single instances.  

 

            Are we done?

 

Nick

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)

Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University
(nthompson at clarku.edu)

 

 

 

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FRIAM and causality

David Eric Smith
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Hi Nick,

I assume you already know about the work Judea Pearl did to define a
notion of causality in the context of inference on Boolean networks?
I don't have citations on this, because I only learned about it
recently in someone's talk, but I gather it is fairly widely known.
Happily it doesn't claim to address all questions in which a given
kind of word appears, so it probably contributed something concrete to
answering a single class of them.

What is that old folk saying, said with a sigh?  
"Always a physicist, never a philosopher."

Best,

Eric



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FRIAM and causality

Tom Carter
Nick / Eric -

   Judea Pearl's book "Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference" is  
actually pretty good -- somewhat technical, and not always convincing  
(to me :-),  but worth reading . . .

      http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-Pearl/dp/0521773628/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9833658-1917726?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194901716&sr=8-1

tom

On Nov 12, 2007, at 12:29 PM, Eric Smith wrote:

> Hi Nick,
>
> I assume you already know about the work Judea Pearl did to define a
> notion of causality in the context of inference on Boolean networks?
> I don't have citations on this, because I only learned about it
> recently in someone's talk, but I gather it is fairly widely known.
> Happily it doesn't claim to address all questions in which a given
> kind of word appears, so it probably contributed something concrete to
> answering a single class of them.
>
> What is that old folk saying, said with a sigh?
> "Always a physicist, never a philosopher."
>
> Best,
>
> Eric
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>



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FRIAM and causality

Roger Critchlow-2
Judea Pearl's web site is chock full of papers, too.

http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html

-- rec --

On Nov 12, 2007 2:11 PM, Tom Carter <tom at astarte.csustan.edu> wrote:

> Nick / Eric -
>
>   Judea Pearl's book "Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference" is
> actually pretty good -- somewhat technical, and not always convincing
> (to me :-),  but worth reading . . .
>
>
> http://www.amazon.com/Causality-Reasoning-Inference-Judea-Pearl/dp/0521773628/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-9833658-1917726?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194901716&sr=8-1
>
> tom
>
> On Nov 12, 2007, at 12:29 PM, Eric Smith wrote:
>
> > Hi Nick,
> >
> > I assume you already know about the work Judea Pearl did to define a
> > notion of causality in the context of inference on Boolean networks?
> > I don't have citations on this, because I only learned about it
> > recently in someone's talk, but I gather it is fairly widely known.
> > Happily it doesn't claim to address all questions in which a given
> > kind of word appears, so it probably contributed something concrete to
> > answering a single class of them.
> >
> > What is that old folk saying, said with a sigh?
> > "Always a physicist, never a philosopher."
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Eric
> >
> >
> > ============================================================
> > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
> >
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>
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FRIAM and causality

Phil Henshaw-2
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Sure, data is good to have, but what would past behavior tell you about the novel aspects of new behavior, and how would you be able to tell that from incomplete data on the past, anyway?  For original behavior it would seem the usual tools don't help much, unless you do what I do and. turn models around to study what about individual behaviors they miss.

Phil
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: "Marcus G. Daniels" <[hidden email]>

Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 10:17:06
To:The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Cc:gbarker at bucknell.edu, pderr at clarku.edu,       "caleb.thompson" <caleb.thompson at sjcsf.edu>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] FRIAM and causality


Nicholas Thompson wrote:
>
> To say that X is the cause of Y is to accuse X of Y.   Given my
> current belief that story-telling is at the base of EVERYTHING, I
> think you convince somebody that X is the cause of Y just by telling
> the most reasonable story in which it seems obvious that Y would not
> have occurred had not X occurred.
>
I'm skeptical of the tradition that says we should have predictive
models before measuring things in the world or interpreting data.
Where does a hypothesis come from?   I'd say it is little more than the
prior expectations we have about how the world molded into a compact
if/then type of story.   And just because a model says to measure
certain things (out a large universe of possible things to measure)
doesn't mean the prescribed measurements are really independent samples,
as there is some bias from a scientific culture.

Given the advanced technology that exists for automated data collection,
let's put aside the story telling (and  the dogma that often underlies
it) to see if the priors look very promising.  For example, using
machine learning techniques, infer models from partial data, and then
predict the rest.

Human experts are often wrong or in conflict, and not always a good
source for setting prior expectations.  Machines can help with that, by
considering thousands or millions of possible explanations for phenomena
based on a small number features found in a larger space of observables.
  When so found using a simple, statistically-sound metric, I really
think the `experts' need to look at that result pretty hard.

Marcus


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FRIAM and causality

Marcus G. Daniels
sy at synapse9.com wrote:
> Sure, data is good to have, but what would past behavior tell you about the novel aspects of new behavior, and how would you be able to tell that from incomplete data on the past, anyway?
I wasn't really thinking about predicted the future from the past, but
rather choosing not to speculate.   For example, rather than going to
look in some part of a genome for something you think ought to be there,
build computerized search codes to look everywhere.    Rank order the
statistics, and start the modeling at that point, after you can see the
big picture of the patterns and relationships that are seen across large
independent samples.

In any case, the same point applies.   If there is poor data, why should
the intuitions or models that humans pull out of thin air be good priors?

Marcus


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FRIAM and causality

Phil Henshaw-2
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
NIck,
Didn't you place the only things that physcally cause anything, the
individual hammers and the individual nails in the direct action of driving
a nail, in the place of the 'unreal' in you argument?    The things that
don't actually exist except in our minds, the categories of hammers and of
nails and their presumptive relation in an orderly arrangement of ideas, you
seemed to treat as being real and causal.    Doesn't that what you mean
depends on what you're using the words to refer to, the physical things on
one hand, or the relations of images on the other?    Perhaps they're
different, and a good bit of the con-fusion occurs as a result of not being
clear about which we're referring to.

Phil


On 11/12/07, Nicholas Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net> wrote:

>
>   *"The truth arises from arguments amongst friends"* -- *David Hume*
>
>
>
> One of my goals at Friam, believe it or not, is actually to get some
> fundamental issues settled amongst us.  We had, last week, a brisk
> discussion about causality.  I don't think I was particularly articulate,
> and so, to push that argument forward, I would like to try to state my
> position clearly and succinctly.
>
>
>
> The argument was between some who felt that causality was "real" and those
> that felt that it was basically a figment of our imaginations.   The
> argument may seem frivolous, but actually becomes of consequence anytime
> anyone starts to think about how one proves that X is the cause of Y.  Intuitively,
> X is the cause of Y if Y is X's "fault".  To say that X is the cause of Y
> is to accuse X of Y.   Given my current belief that story-telling is at
> the base of EVERYTHING, I think you convince somebody that X is the cause of
> Y just by telling the most reasonable story in which it seems obvious that Y
> would not have occurred had not X occurred.  But there is no particular
> reason that the world should always be a reasonable place, and therefore, it
> is also ALWAYS possible to tell an UNREASONABLE story that shows that Y's
> occurrence was not the responsibility of X, no matter how reasonable the
> original causal attribution is.  One of us asked for a hammer and nail,
> claiming that if he could but drive a nail into the surface of one of St.
> John's caf? tables, none of us would be silly enough to doubt that his
> hammering had been the cause of the nails penetration of the table.  Not
> withstanding his certainty on this matter, several of us instantly offered
> to be JUST THAT SILLY!  We would claim, we said, that contrary to his
> account, his hammering had had nothing to do with the nail's penetration,
> but that the accommodating molecules of wood directly under the nail had
> randomly parte d and sucked the nail into their midst.
>
>
>
> How validate a reasonable causal story against the infinite number of
> unreasonable causal stories that can always be proposed as alternatives.  By
> experience, obviously.  We have seen hundreds of cases where nails were
> driven into wood when struck by hammers (and a few cases where the hammer
> missed the nail, the nail remained where it was, and the thumb was driven
> into the wood.)  Also, despite its theoretical possibility, none of us has
> EVER seen a real world object sucked into a surface by random motion of the
> surface's molecules.  So it is the comparative analysis of our experience
> with hammers and nails that would have convinced us that the hammering had
> driven in the nail.
>
>
>
>             So what is the problem?  Why did we not just agree to that
> proposition and go on?  The reason to me is simple: the conventions of our
> language prevent us from arriving at that conclusion.  We not only  say
> that Hammers Cause Nails to embed in tables, which is what we know to be
> true, we also  say that THIS Hammer caused THIS nail to be embedded in the
> wood.  Thus our use of causality is a case of misplaced concreteness.  Causality
> is easily attributed to the pattern of relations amongst hammers and nails,
> but we err when we allow ourselves to assert that that higher order pattern
> is exhibited by any of its contributory instances.  In fact, that in our
> experience the missed nails have not been driven into the wood is as much a
> real part of our notions of causality and hammering as the fact that a hit
> nail is.   Causality just cannot be attributed to an individual instance.
>
>
>
>
>             The fallacy of misplaced concreteness is so widespread in our
> conversation that we could barely speak without it,  but it is a fallacy
> all the same.  Other instances of it are intentions, dispositions,
> personality traits, communication, information etc., etc., and such
> mathematical fictions as the slope of a line at a point.   Whenever we use
> any of these terms, we attribute to single instances properties of
> aggregates of which they are part.
>
>
>
>             Now, how do we stop arguing about this?  First of all, we stop
> and give honor to the enormous amount of information that actually goes into
> making a rational causal attribution that hammering causes embedding,
> information which is not available in any of its instances.   Second, we
> then stop and give honor to  the incredible power of the human mind to sift
> through this data and identify patterns in it.  Third, and finally,  we
> stop and wonder at whatever flaw it is in our evolution, our neurology, our
> cognition, our culture, or our language that causes us to lodge this
> knowledge in the one place it can never be ? single instances.
>
>
>
>             Are we done?
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Research Associate, Redfish Group, Santa Fe, NM (nick at redfish.com)
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (
> nthompson at clarku.edu)
>
>
>
>
>
> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
>



--

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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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