What philosophy buffs have against Science buffs

[Kriminal99]

Haha I was going to explain it but then it occured to me how amusing your response might be if I didn't. But alas instead of the expected "What the?!?!" all I got was an objective "how does that help".

 

Just replace cause with correlation

 

Before I start (because I don't know if you realize this or not and are just waiting for me to say "causes" or "would result in") you can simply replace a word like "causes" with "is correlated with x occuring" but as causes is shorter it might be better not to bother typing it that way. IE if I had my way I would just define causes to mean is correlated with.

 

Now that thats out of the way, I believe in the model you presented where income is the most correlated factor the way to fix it is to equalize income.

 

Reducing market failure

 

Privatizing secondary education would give economic incentive to advance the learning process, to make it more affordable etc etc. This would lessen the arbitrary monopoly on knowledge which is now the most competitive asset to have as a worker (unlike assets such as "willingness to risk your life" the asset that police and military have which affords them minimal wages) Thus our free market economy would go more towards its socialistic limit (in the math sense of limit where limit capitolism = socialism as market failure approaches 0) and people would have better wages.

 

Free flow of information

 

Besides just making you more competitive as a worker knowledge also allows you to make choices that benefit you more (capitolism requires free flow of information, people have to know what will benefit them so they can choose what they want) So for example they might be less likely to work a dead end job for fear of change if they better understand what fear of change is. Anotherwords it increases the efficiency of all human efforts.

 

A more general approach

 

Now in reality income might not be something very strongly correlated with OOW births. Education might be more correlated than income. Or the culture one subscribes to. Or a million other things. For instance, one would expect that repeated unprotected sex would be much more correlated in the real world. So you could just have everyone nuetered if this was not a problem for you morally. You devise a theory about what has the strongest correlation that could be changed, then test the correlation, and if it is correlated then change it. In your example you just arbitrarily said income was the most correlated, so income is the thing to alter.

[TheFaithfulStone]

I do not understand your argument.

 

Privatizing secondary education results in smarter workers, which results in higher paying job, which eliminates poverty, which is highly correlated with OOW births? Is that the jist of it?

 

If so, a few question - would attendees be required to pay for this privatized secondary education? Would financial aid (if any) be need or merit based?

 

Is the thinking here that having to pay for high school would make people value their education more highly? If indeed that is your thought process, do you have information which supports this correlation?

 

TFS

[Erasmus00]

Who told you that? The result is the same regardless. Maybe if you are confused by the lack of proximity to the alleged cause and just organize the correlation measurement wrong.

 

Basic logic indicates this is true. Again, the current understanding is that the Earth's gravitational pull is responsible for the moon orbitting the Earth, apples falling from trees, and bottles falling off my desk. Because these all have very different proximal causes, but the same root cause they appear uncorrelated. If you believe otherwise, demonstrate this to me, or offer a formal proof.

 

I'm not saying correlations don't have their place, but we certainly cannot replace all ideas of causation with correlation, and you haven't made a great case to the contrary.

 

Finally, consider that events which CANNOT be causal under the current use of the word can be correlated under the current use of the word. In your redeffinition, we lose the capacity for making this distinction.

-Will

[Kriminal99]

No we don't. Correlation is everything that cause is and more. You came in the discussion late and now I am having to remake all the same arguments that I already have. Events that cannot be causal do not have the same strength of correlation as events that are causes, and also may not occur prior to the effect. You don't need cause to make these distinctions.

 

Gravity would be correlated with apples and bottles falling as well as the moon moving since gravity always occurs. What are you talking about when you say gravity would be uncorrelated with these things oO?

[TheFaithfulStone]

Gravity would be correlated with apples and bottles falling as well as the moon moving since gravity always occurs. What are you talking about when you say gravity would be uncorrelated with these things oO?

 

In that case, EVERYTHING would be correlated with gravity - even things that have no relationship to it. Birds singing, you arguing, me farting.

 

TFS

[Erasmus00]

No we don't. Correlation is everything that cause is and more. You came in the discussion late and now I am having to remake all the same arguments that I already have. Events that cannot be causal do not have the same strength of correlation as events that are causes, and also may not occur prior to the effect. You don't need cause to make these distinctions.

 

No, correlation is NOT everything that cause is and more. The fundamental cry of EVERY statistical analysis book is "CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION." You want to define away that distinction, be defining causation to BE correlation.

 

And, I don't know why you claim I came in late, I have read every post on this thread.

 

Now, consider EPR type experiments with photons. These are spacelike seperated(so cannot be causal) and yet are PERFECTLY correlated. So, they have perfect correlation WITHOUT being causal. (in fact, if we consider the two events in an EPR correlation there is total ambiguity about which event happened first). Hence, they are as strongly correlated as causal events without being causal.

 

Gravity would be correlated with apples and bottles falling as well as the moon moving since gravity always occurs. What are you talking about when you say gravity would be uncorrelated with these things oO?

 

You are repeatedly missing my point. Gravity is DEFINED as a causal agent. Masses CAUSE other masses to accelerate according to an inverse square law. Without investigating fundamental causes you lose (among other things) the theory of gravity. I never said gravity would be uncorrelated, gravity is an abstract concept, not an event to be correlated with another.

-Will

[Kriminal99]

EPR events are not a problem, since there is no event that occured first they are equally as distinct using only correlation as they would be using cause. Any statistically inclined idiot knows that any correlation at all is not indicative of a cause and effect relationship. However really strong correlations are, when combined with consideration of order of events.

 

I am not repeatedly missing your point, you are repeatedly missing that I am directly addressing your so called points. If masses cause other masses to accelerate, then they are correlated with things accelerating. This is what it means to say gravity is correlated with things moving. There is absolutely no problem with a causation to correlation reduction involved with gravity.

[TheFaithfulStone]

EPR events are not a problem, since there is no event that occured first they are equally as distinct using only correlation as they would be using cause. Any statistically inclined idiot knows that any correlation at all is not indicative of a cause and effect relationship. However really strong correlations are, when combined with consideration of order of events.

 

That whooshing sound - it was the point flying past your head.

 

EPR events are NOT causal - yet they are correlated 100%. In your model we'd need to say they WERE causal, since they are correlated at r=1. (But we CAN'T because "order of events" isn't helpful in this case.)

 

Edit: Didn't you just imply that cause and effect relationship exist and can be talked about there anyway?

 

TFS

[Erasmus00]

Someone else already responded about EPR type experiments.

 

Any statistically inclined idiot knows that any correlation at all is not indicative of a cause and effect relationship. However really strong correlations are, when combined with consideration of order of events.

 

This still isn't the case, even strong correlations do not mean causation. Consider: in a recent study of heroin addiction, 100% of heroin addicts who participated admitted to drinking milk before developing their heroin addiction. This was the single strongest correlation in the whole study. By your logic, drinking milk causes heroin addiction.

 

If masses cause other masses to accelerate, then they are correlated with things accelerating. This is what it means to say gravity is correlated with things moving. There is absolutely no problem with a causation to correlation reduction involved with gravity.

 

Every single event on Earth is spatially correlated with the Earth (obviously). Hence, how do you weed out the correlations in which gravity is important to the correlations in which it is not? As far as I can tell, there is a problem with reduction to correlation of any agent DEFINED to be causal (gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, electric forces)

-Will

[Kriminal99]

That whooshing sound - it was the point flying past your head.

 

EPR events are NOT causal - yet they are correlated 100%. In your model we'd need to say they WERE causal, since they are correlated at r=1. (But we CAN'T because "order of events" isn't helpful in this case.)

 

Edit: Didn't you just imply that cause and effect relationship exist and can be talked about there anyway?

 

TFS

 

The fact that there is no order of events means they can be distinguished from normal causes using only correlation. The idea is that two events with the strongest correlation where one occurs prior to the other is the mind's criteria for determining cause.

 

No I did not imply that. Nothing wooshes past me, though I tire of immature posters participating in debates with no goal except to "win" and as such responding with an endless supply of straw men and try to drown out opposition with quantity not quality.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Nothing wooshes past me, though I tire of immature posters participating in debates with no goal except to "win" and as such responding with an endless supply of straw men and try to drown out opposition with quantity not quality.

 

Yeah, we're done.

[Erasmus00]

No I did not imply that. Nothing wooshes past me, though I tire of immature posters participating in debates with no goal except to "win" and as such responding with an endless supply of straw men and try to drown out opposition with quantity not quality.

 

If that is how you feel, then I am finished with this. You may consider yourself to have "won," if you like.

-Will

[Kriminal99]

Someone else already responded about EPR type experiments.

 

 

 

This still isn't the case, even strong correlations do not mean causation. Consider: in a recent study of heroin addiction, 100% of heroin addicts who participated admitted to drinking milk before developing their heroin addiction. This was the single strongest correlation in the whole study. By your logic, drinking milk causes heroin addiction.

 

 

 

Every single event on Earth is spatially correlated with the Earth (obviously). Hence, how do you weed out the correlations in which gravity is important to the correlations in which it is not? As far as I can tell, there is a problem with reduction to correlation of any agent DEFINED to be causal (gravity, strong and weak nuclear forces, electric forces)

-Will

 

No it wouldn't because shooting heroine would have a higher correlation with heroin addiction. The strongest correlation in the study is not the cause, the strongest correlation period is (or a cause rather than the cause).

 

You wouldn't need to weed out the correlations in which gravity was important or not until you had a situation where gravity was not present at which time you would have experiences with which to weed out gravity. An assumption of correlation is that you have sampled randomly from the population you plan to make predictions for.

 

I don't have a problem with debating with people that have honest intentions, but when I am constantly bending over backwards to extend the bridge of communication and the result is I am constantly being insulted and my points seem to not be addressed or considered whatsoever, then things I say are purposely taken out of context etc etc... I lose interest. I feel like there needs to be stated a set of debate fouls which people can recognize as tactics that do not aid the progress of any discussion, specifically so the more difficult ones to recognize can be more widely known and less widely used.

[Qfwfq]

I tire of immature posters participating in debates with no goal except to "win" and as such responding with an endless supply of straw men and try to drown out opposition with quantity not quality.

Krim,

 

I don't see where any of your opponents has been immature and I even struggle to see their straw men. Whether or not other points were correct, calling them immature is not the way to argue. One might accuse you of missing his point, peraps even when you hadn't, you might see their points as being straw men, perhaps even when they weren't, but that isn't an excuse for calling them immature.

 

I was already considering to close this thread simply because it is a pointless debate and it's getting nowhere. With the addition of that remark, that's it.