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"I didn't turn them on" is a fact. It's the "because" that's not a fact. The whole point of the article is that you can't get causality from things that didn't

by cwp 5y ago

"I didn't turn them on" is a fact. It's the "because" that's not a fact. The whole point of the article is that you can't get causality from things that didn't happen. There are seven billion other people in the world who also didn't turn on the lights. What makes your inaction special? In order to get the "because" we have to imagine another state of the world where you DID turn on the lights, and further speculate that this would have been effective to illuminate the room. That's counterfactual, because the fact is that it's dark in here.

drdeca 5y ago
Are you saying that "If I had turned on the lights, they would be on" wouldn't be a true statement? It seems like it would be strange to reject as an answer to "why do blind people tend spend less on lighting?" with "Because they don't tend to use the lighting, because the lighting isn't useful to them, so they don't turn the lights on as much (unless someone else who isn't blind is there).". How else would you answer that question? (modulo little wording changes and such)
- GavinMcG 5y ago
  It's tautologically true, in that you used the word "on" in both clauses, and "if on, then on" is always true. But no, in a meaningful sense it's not a true statement about the world. It's a good guess, and for a statement that simple, there might be no need to go further. For a statement about why a volume is full with too many files, the point is that a nice-sounding "if only" isn't something you can test or be certain of. Your answer about blind people is a very good guess as well, and the same one I would make, but it's not data.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    I actually meant to present that as: Because I didn't flip the switch. A counterfactual requires posing a situation with changed facts. I stand by my statement, saying "X because not Y" is not a counterfactual on its own. "not Y" is still a (potentially) factual statement. And guesses still aren't counterfactuals. "Maybe the lights aren't on because we didn't flip the switch?" That's a hypothesis, and a testable one. Still not a counterfactual. If we know the flip hasn't been switched, then it's just a fact even if the statement is in the form of not X.
    - cwp 5y ago
      The counterfactual is "if I had flipped the switch, the lights would be on." That is a situation with changed facts, and therefore counterfactual. The tricky bit is the causality. We have to construct an alternate history, with a counterfactual cause and a counterfactual result. And we can't actually know that. Maybe the bulb is burnt out. Maybe there's a power outage just now. Maybe we've blown a fuse. The causality is just conjecture. Now consider the opposite. The lights are off because the bulb burnt out. That's a lot less ambiguous. If you want to doubt the causality you've got to get all mystical.
cycomanic 5y ago
But the because is not about imagining another state of the world, it's about using logic. If me turning on the light is a necessary condition for the light being on, then it implies that if I did not turn on the light the light is off. There is no speculation. This is also what distinguishes this one "counterfactual" from all the others. The article seems to completely ignore that we can readily argue about negative statements. I highly doubt that airplane crash investigators would avoid counterfactuals.
- kozd 5y ago
  How would you determine that it's a necessary condition and not just a sufficient condition?
- js8 5y ago
  I think the article doesn't say that the counterfactuals are not useful, it explicitly mentions they can be used as recommendations, as in "do not forget to monitor your disk space". What they say is that counterfactuals stop the search for the root cause. Not monitoring disk space isn't a root cause of the filled disk. The root cause might be "application has suddenly written too many logs". This gives another set of counterfactuals, like "if your application was configured properly, it would write less logs". But it also gives an option of continuing the search for the root cause, which might be, for example, "there is a bug in the application which triggered the log writes". I think the point of methods like 5 whys is not to stop at the first set of counterfactuals and deepen the search.
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Let's take a different example, the plane crashed because the landing gear did not retract. This is a counterfactual according to the article, do you really believe it stops us for looking at the root cause for why the landing gear didn't retract? In fact, I don't think we would be able to even investigate the root cause if we hadn't first identified the cause of the landing gear not retracting.
    - js8 5y ago

by cwp 5y ago

drdeca 5y ago

Are you saying that "If I had turned on the lights, they would be on" wouldn't be a true statement? It seems like it would be strange to reject as an answer to "why do blind people tend spend less on lighting?" with "Because they don't tend to use the lighting, because the lighting isn't useful to them, so they don't turn the lights on as much (unless someone else who isn't blind is there).". How else would you answer that question? (modulo little wording changes and such)

GavinMcG 5y ago
It's tautologically true, in that you used the word "on" in both clauses, and "if on, then on" is always true. But no, in a meaningful sense it's not a true statement about the world. It's a good guess, and for a statement that simple, there might be no need to go further. For a statement about why a volume is full with too many files, the point is that a nice-sounding "if only" isn't something you can test or be certain of. Your answer about blind people is a very good guess as well, and the same one I would make, but it's not data.
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  I actually meant to present that as: Because I didn't flip the switch. A counterfactual requires posing a situation with changed facts. I stand by my statement, saying "X because not Y" is not a counterfactual on its own. "not Y" is still a (potentially) factual statement. And guesses still aren't counterfactuals. "Maybe the lights aren't on because we didn't flip the switch?" That's a hypothesis, and a testable one. Still not a counterfactual. If we know the flip hasn't been switched, then it's just a fact even if the statement is in the form of not X.
  - cwp 5y ago
    The counterfactual is "if I had flipped the switch, the lights would be on." That is a situation with changed facts, and therefore counterfactual. The tricky bit is the causality. We have to construct an alternate history, with a counterfactual cause and a counterfactual result. And we can't actually know that. Maybe the bulb is burnt out. Maybe there's a power outage just now. Maybe we've blown a fuse. The causality is just conjecture. Now consider the opposite. The lights are off because the bulb burnt out. That's a lot less ambiguous. If you want to doubt the causality you've got to get all mystical.

cycomanic 5y ago

But the because is not about imagining another state of the world, it's about using logic. If me turning on the light is a necessary condition for the light being on, then it implies that if I did not turn on the light the light is off. There is no speculation. This is also what distinguishes this one "counterfactual" from all the others. The article seems to completely ignore that we can readily argue about negative statements. I highly doubt that airplane crash investigators would avoid counterfactuals.

kozd 5y ago
How would you determine that it's a necessary condition and not just a sufficient condition?
js8 5y ago
I think the article doesn't say that the counterfactuals are not useful, it explicitly mentions they can be used as recommendations, as in "do not forget to monitor your disk space". What they say is that counterfactuals stop the search for the root cause. Not monitoring disk space isn't a root cause of the filled disk. The root cause might be "application has suddenly written too many logs". This gives another set of counterfactuals, like "if your application was configured properly, it would write less logs". But it also gives an option of continuing the search for the root cause, which might be, for example, "there is a bug in the application which triggered the log writes". I think the point of methods like 5 whys is not to stop at the first set of counterfactuals and deepen the search.
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Let's take a different example, the plane crashed because the landing gear did not retract. This is a counterfactual according to the article, do you really believe it stops us for looking at the root cause for why the landing gear didn't retract? In fact, I don't think we would be able to even investigate the root cause if we hadn't first identified the cause of the landing gear not retracting.
  - js8 5y ago