@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 @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh

yes, but the contrast is between the case where information spreads to everyone. (network is connected) and where it does not (network is not connected).

This is where the phase transition as a function of number of pairwise links comes in…

@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh right, I don't think the mainstream view (if it really is so) denies the pattern, it just denies that it is anything over and above the complex causal relations that constitute it in any specific case. The pattern is just a type that can be realised by different token causal systems that have the relevant features necessary for being tokens of the type. That doesn't though make causal statements involving the type false.

@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh so a mathematical 'constraint' is just a way of generalising over different causal systems organised in such a way that they instantiate certain causal structures well captured/approximated by the mathematical formalism at a certain level of abstraction and idealisation.

@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh Dimitri, I’m still not sure what you are taking the causal relations in the system itself. (buttons, neighbourhood network) to be exactly?

@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh but that doesn’t explain the difference between the case when connectivity is such that everyone is reached and the case where it isn’t, no? They are talking to each other in either case.

It feels more to me like the question of whether or not the threshold of ln N (randomly placed) pairwise connections is exceeded or not is an orthogonal issue?

@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I agree, my badly phrased point is sort of the following: the threshold is not something ontologically new that strongly emerges (whole-over-parts), it is a large scale pattern that is constituted by the parts: it just is a feature of the whole of individuals and interactions.
So a point about ontology, not about causal explanation (I think that explanations of the form 'All in the neighbourhood know x because the threshold was exceeded' are fine).

@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh not sure I am understanding correctly:

as a ‘feature of the whole and of the individuals and their interaction’ it is not ontologically distinct, so how does that square with it being a cause?

does that mean causes do not have to be ontologically distinct from their effects or does it mean the explantory use of “because” is not restricted to causal relationships (or both?)

@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I would think that that statement should refer to the fact that a causal change was made such that the whole came to have a feature that it did not have before: e.g., person x talked to person z about k made the system into a type described by certain regularities. In other words, there was a causal change to what constitutes the whole, ie. to some of its parts and interactions.
This should work without leading to those puzzles, right?

@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @uh

I suggest the old and comfortable idea of “cause” needs serious massage.

Because whole systems are complex and unwieldy objects of study, we parcellate them into more manageable sub-systems. Historically, we’ve done the very same thing with causes, parcellating them to study those that are more manageably proximal.

It’s awkward (and work-intensive!) but theorists and investigators studying systems must also consider distal and non-obvious causes.

@dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh the bit where that maybe seems a bit forced is with respect to what constitutes “the whole”. It’s just a collection, pre transition, but ‘a whole’ after it. And I think that might be J’s (and Kaufmann’s) point with the example? If you think about the buttons, adding > ln(N) random links leads to a phase transition where the buttons now hang together in a single network/web. As a result they become correlated (lifting one, lifts others)