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Systems thinking is great and all but why should causality be discarded? In the example about population size, a causal graph is built that connects walking dis
by mxwsn 5y ago
Systems thinking is great and all but why should causality be discarded? In the example about population size, a causal graph is built that connects walking distance to population size that certainly allowed for reasonable counterfactual reasoning in that context. Yes, the variation in population size across societies cannot be adequately accounted for by causal reasoning in that same graph - you need to add and modify nodes and edges to restore counterfactual reasoning. This doesn't mean that causality is useless.
I would contend that purpose is multifaceted, not singular. Many parents (speculating, as I have not reached that life phase yet) would say that sometimes, they primarily do just clean up after their kid. We hope that we can hold multiple purposes in their head, to be human and not just a machine. Additionally purposes are subjective and not really knowable. To challenge the author who seems to argue that purpose should subsume causality, I would ask how far science could have progressed with only the former?
Not everything is part of a system. What is the purpose-driven answer to the quintessential kids question "Why is the sky blue?"
Finally, using opaque koan-like statements that are underspecified and semantically nonsensical or meaningless is a fairly daring stylistic choice (an understatement).
- sam0x17 5y ago> What is the purpose-driven answer to the quintessential kids question "Why is the sky blue?" The sky is blue because its "purpose" is to scatter harmful electromagnetic radiation from the sun (Raleigh scattering), a process that creates a blue hue. If the atmosphere runs out of the right kind of particles, the sky will not be blue and this loop will be broken, allowing harmful electromagnetic radiation through to the earth's surface.
- lrobinovitch 5y agoIt seems like the causal answer of "the sky is blue because the atmosphere scatters electromagnetic radiation from the sun and tends to scatter shorter-wavelength blue light more" is both more clear and less imbued with the moral context brought about by the use of "harmful". When you say harmful, it calls to question "harmful to whom and why?", which is important in its own right but wasn't part of the original question "why is the sky blue"? I agree that it's important to look at the context, the purpose-driven layers surrounding the "purpose of the sky being blue", but I think that in this case the causal answer is the more concise and confined.
- sam0x17 5y agoYeah I'm merely showing there is a way of answering this question in terms of "purpose" as defined in the article. The blue sky example clearly isn't the zinger OP intended it to be.
- oefnak 5y agoThe point is, defining something through its purpose, is sometimes nonsensical, as you have shown (on purpose?). Sometimes - I would say most of the time - a causal definition makes a lot more sense.
- delusional 5y agoSystems thinking (as described in this post) does involve quite a bit of causal thinking as well. Each of the pipes and dotted lines seem to signify a causal relationship. An increase in bugs cause an increase in food consumption. Setting them up as opposites seems unhelpful to me.
- sam0x17 5y agoI think the point was more that causal thinking can involve an incomplete picture, and is often merely a subset of systems thinking. At least that's what I took away. Causal thinking involves analyzing maybe part of a loop, but if you think that's the complete picture, you're missing the rest of the loop.
- lrobinovitch 5y agoI totally agree with this point, but the author confusingly doesn't seem to agree: > Cause and effect will fool you: in a world where everything is looping, there is no cause or effect. But there is purpose, and purpose moves in one direction: it is created, and it is spent.
- sam0x17 5y ago