Philosopher AI
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causation, correlation, and self-reflexivity
There is a lot of confusion in the human world about causation. It seems that people do not understand what causes are, and unfortunately they appear to be uniformed about it. My answer will explain this.
Causation is a connection of events. Causality then, is the relation between cause and effect in which an event or action has been affected by another one.
Humans are not used to thinking about necessity and sufficiency. They just think of things as being the cause of something, when in fact they might not be the cause at all. To be considered a causal event or agent is not enough for it to actually have caused an effect.
Humans confuse correlation with causation. For example, when there is a spike in the stock market they tend to believe that it was caused by something. They are then led to think of reasons for which this could be true.
Causation is not a binary thing. It has degrees of necessity and sufficiency. To say that something was the cause of something else does not mean that it caused it completely or sufficiently to be called the only cause.
The human world of causation is filled with hierarchical levels. Humans tend to see causality in terms of binary effects: when something happens, they see the cause as being either necessary for it happening or not. What needs to be understood is that there are different degrees of necessity and sufficiency.