@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I looked for videos of this experiment to try and understand it better, but I don't seem to have found one.
I would think that the idea would be that what causes that is just the ensemble of causal relations between the buttons: weight, friction, etc with just the right values to make that happen. But my grasp of the case is not great, so I'm not sure.
@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh it’s just a thought experiment, Dimitri. You could replace it with anything that can be described with a network: say a bunch of new people move into a neighbourhood, they bump into each other randomly, two at a time, and become acquainted. When they meet an acquaintance, they pass on new information about the neighbourhood. At some point, when enough of them have become acquainted (ie formed pairwise ties) info will spread to everyone
@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh ah, the description on the book seemed to suggest it was an actual experiment/demonstration, since it talks about connecting physical elements to each other and then mentions, implying a partial contrast, results from a simulation of the scenario.
But in the neighbourhood case, what is the puzzle? Information spreads by people meeting each other, right?
@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh
Yes, but more than that. The importance of "pairwise ties" deserves to be highlighted. Bidirectionality within those subsystems offers robustness to the system as a whole, protecting the dynamic from a freshly introduced disruption, like a new neighbour moving in.
"What caused that?" we might ask. Ongoing interactions? Low turnover in the neighbourhood? Families growing up together?
@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh
DST asks us to accept one little add-on premise: effects can turn around and influence their causes.
Accepting that premise offers more than a re-description of the familiar causal picture. It washes away boundaries that have long cursed investigators: prenatal/postnatal, heredity/environment, discipline#1/discipline#2, et al.
These reconceptualizations are considered advances because they inspire new integrated and highly coherent views of our world.
@dsmith @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh that additional premise is though a normal thing for any causal system with feedback loops and similar, right? This is also accommodated in non-DST accounts.
@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh
I'm good with that, but I'm no longer so sure what you mean by the "mainstream causal view" you have mentioned. To me, the mainstream causal view is more linear, unidirectional, reductionist, and a better fit for our traditional variable-controlling experimental method.
As well, to group "any causal system with feedback loops" with DST and be as explanatorily successful, we'll absolutely need to involve constraints. Can't do without 'em.
@dsmith @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh I'm not quite wedded to talking about the 'mainstream view' either, but some of the most influential views nowadays, such as interventionism, mechanistic explanation, etc, all accommodate feedback loops, and the like, and don't appeal to constraints in doing so.
@dsmith @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh one interesting attempt to unify mechanicism with constraints is this recent paper by Bich and Bechtel, though I'm not sure the sense of constraint they use is the same as in Juarrero's book. I suspect so, but due to her obscurity, I'm not sure.
@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh
Thanks for this, and for your time and trouble. Checking out Bich & Bechtel now.
@dsmith @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh Thank you for the discussion!
Here's a useful quote from them, after they say their notion comes from classical mechanics:
> constraints impose limits on what are otherwise degrees of freedom
through which the states of a physical system can change in time...While limiting, constraints are also enabling... The parts of a mechanism constitute constraints—they limit the flow of free energy within the mechanism but enable it to perform particular activities
