Skip to main content

What is Causality?


Ah, yes.  Causality.  We love it and hate it.  We seek it for resolution, but sometimes we don’t want to find it.
·        Advertising causes sales.
·        Fear causes flight or fight.
·        She dumped me because I flirt.
·        Vaccinations prevent disease.
To my understanding, causality is fundamentally difficult or impossible to prove. It is a truth. Causality seems to be a consensus of experts, claimed by countless experiments and observations - sometimes by an authority.
In centuries past, causality was the domain of religion, philosophy, and God. Permanent. Yet, today’s cause may become tomorrow’s fantasy.
Now, causality is mostly an aspect of science. Rushing to causality is a modern consequence of ubiquitous models, each establishing, in part, a correlation or correspondence. Personal causality is always a risk, always subject to emotion.
Think of causality as a working solution to a problem, a pathway to finding a cure, or leading to deeper understanding. Causality is frequently a victim of progress.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please Comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

  Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality   1.       Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...
2 comments
Read more

No Sympathy From Me

Suicide Coming Home Many years ago, a friend hung himself in his basement.  I was a pall-bearer at his funeral. I was shocked I was so asked.  I did this.  I did not understand why a good-looking fellow, intelligent, kindly, and true could do such a thing. He did. I do not.  His family suffered greatly.  Yet he left no issue.   Thankfully. To my mind Country singer Mindy McCready, 37, showed us the very height of personal selfishness by committing suicide.  By giving birth to two offspring, she accepted the responsibility to raise her newborn and six-year old son.  She abrogated it spectacularly.  (As did the father a month ago.)  Though she may have suffered depression for any number of reasons, she has little sympathy from me for leaving behind a legacy that is now lost, is now parent-less, and may drift into problems of their own in the future.    There is shame and heartbreak in all this, but blame should be...
1 comment
Read more

Problem Solving - Murder

Abstract  Most certainly, a homicide investigation is a problem-solving event and requires tools and intelligence similar to most scientific research. A homicide investigation is the most rigorous application of the state’s police power. This paper examines the structural framework of these investigations, focusing on the psychological profile of the detective, the procedural utility of the "Murder Manual" and "Murder Book," and the taxonomy of investigative problems. This essay is about solving a murder, though by synthesizing these theories with the 2026 Nancy Guthrie abduction/presumptive homicide case in Arizona, it illustrates the shift from physical evidence to "digital and medical absence" as an essential tool for prosecution in "no-body" cases. Here is a table of contents for this essay. 1.      The Homicide Detective 2.      The Murder Book and Murder Manual 3.      The Complexity of Homicide 4.  ...
Post a Comment
Read more