Re:Counterfactuals are not causality
by cycomanic on Tuesday July 27, 2021 @06:19AM
(#27970716)
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.
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I think your example is not a counterfactual, because in your world, landing gear actually didn't retract. Remember, whether something is counterfactual or not depends on what the facts are.
Had the landing gear been retracted in your hypothetical world, then it would be a counterfactual, but it probably wouldn't arise because it's not something out of ordinary - the landing gear retracting is a usual procedure. I think humans are more prone to make the mistake that is described in the article (stopping to search for the root cause) when they see a counterfactual conditional which premise is, in the factual, a procedural error (for example, "operator failed to monitor the disk space"). We see an error and mistake it for the root cause.