How Judea Pearl Became One of AI's Sharpest Critics

Re:How Judea Pearl Became One of AI's Sharpest Critics by salty_biscuits on Saturday May 19, 2018 @11:15PM (#17110980)

I meant in how people talk about "causality", it is always poorly defined. It seems like there is a implicit assumption about irreversible systems at play.

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Re:How Judea Pearl Became One of AI's Sharpest Critics by throwaway37585 on Sunday May 20, 2018 @04:23PM (#17114576)

Did you mean that, under reversibility + determinism, the future “causes” the past just as much as the past “causes” the future?

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Re:How Judea Pearl Became One of AI's Sharpest Critics by salty_biscuits on Sunday May 20, 2018 @05:07PM (#17114735)

For some closed physical systems this is pretty much true, but I think the way people think about the world is at odds with this. That is why we find things like this so surprising https://youtu.be/p08_KlTKP50

It gets even murkier when you think of statements like "Hitler coming into power caused world war 2". There are so many things going on in that system that it couldn't possibly be true (e.g. if you change Hitler out for another person maybe world war 2 still happens), but works as a plausible line of causal reasoning for a lot of people.

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