Comment by jongjong

Comment by jongjong a day ago

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Also, I'm convinced that the reason humans intuitively struggle to figure out causality is because the vast majority of causes and effects are self-reinforcing cycles and go both ways. There was little evolutionary pressure for us to understand the concept of causality because it doesn't play a strong role in natural selection.

For example, eat a lot and you will gain weight, gain weight and you will feel more hungry and will likely eat more.

Or exercise more and it becomes easier to exercise.

Earning money becomes easier as you have more money.

Public speaking becomes easier as you do it more and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

Etc...

ctenb a day ago

> Public speaking becomes easier as you do it more and the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

That's saying the same thing twice :)

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  • jongjong a day ago

    Haha yes. I meant to say the more public speaking you do, the easier it gets so the more often you want to do it.

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renox a day ago

> Or exercise more and it becomes easier to exercise.

Only if you don't injure yourself while exercising.

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  • jongjong a day ago

    A lot of things can happen to break a self-perpetuating cycle. But it's usually some extreme event. The cycle keeps optimizing in a particular direction and this eventually leads to an extreme situation which becomes unsustainable. The natural equilibrium of a self-reinforcing cycle is not static but drifting towards some extreme unstable state. There is usually a point where it breaks down.

    But I suspect that being able to figure out causation doesn't matter much from a survival or reproduction perspective because cause and effect are just labels.

    Reality in a self-perpetuating cycle is probably like Condition A is 70% responsible and Condition B is 30% responsible for a problem but they feedback and exacerbate each other... You could argue that Condition A is the cause and Condition B is the effect because B < A but that's not quite right IMO. Also, it's not quite right to say that because A happened first, that A is the cause of a severe problem... The problem would never have gotten so bad to such extent without feedback from B.

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