CauseNet: Towards a causality graph extracted from the web

Post by jijijijij » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

svnt wrote: post #86

jijijijij wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you take multiple systems and make them work in concert, you just get a bigger system. The conclusion may be wrong, but a "bigger system" can be larger than the sum of its constituents. So a system can have functions, give rise to complexity, neither of its subsystems feature. An example would be the thinking brain, which is made out of neurons/cells incapable of thought, which are made out of molecules incapabl…

This is just emergence, though? How is emergence related to completeness? This happens over and over with the relatively new popularization of a theory: the theory is proposed to be the solution to every missing thing in the same rough conceptual vector. It takes a lot more than just pointing in the general direction of complexity to propose the creation of a complete system, something which with present systems of u…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 3:17 PM UTC

jijijijij wrote: post #87

tossandthrow wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a non-formalized system? I am very curious on this. In particular, if you are able to split systems into formalized and non formalized, then I thinks there are quite some praise and a central spot in all future history books for you!

I am not a native speaker, so please don't get hung up on particular expressions. I meant, the colloquial philosophies and general ontology are not subject of Gödel's work. I think, the forgone expansion is similar to finding evidence for telepathy in the pop-sci descriptions of quantum entanglement. Gödel's theorems cover axiomatic, formal systems in mathematics. To apply it to whatever, you first have to formalize…

Post by alisonkisk » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 3:37 PM UTC

DrScientist wrote: post #29

tgv wrote: post #14

This makes little sense to me. Ontologies and all that have been tried and have always been found to be too brittle. Take the examples from the front page (which I expect to be among the best in their set): human_activity => climate_change. Those are such a broad concepts that it's practically useless. Or disease => death. There's no nuance at all. There isn't even a definition of what "disease" is, let alone a way t…

I totally agreed that in the past years of hammering out an ontology for a particular area just results in a common understanding between those who wrote the ontology and a large gulf between them and the people they want to use it ( everyone else ). What's perhaps different is that the machine, via LLM's, can also have an 'opinion' on meaning or correctness. Going fully circle I wonder what would happen if you got L…

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 3:42 PM UTC

koliber wrote: post #17

tgv wrote: post #14

This makes little sense to me. Ontologies and all that have been tried and have always been found to be too brittle. Take the examples from the front page (which I expect to be among the best in their set): human_activity => climate_change. Those are such a broad concepts that it's practically useless. Or disease => death. There's no nuance at all. There isn't even a definition of what "disease" is, let alone a way t…

Exactly. In some cases disease causes death. In others it causes immunity which in turn causes “good health” and postpones death.

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 02, 2025, 3:51 PM UTC

asplake wrote: post #42

tgv wrote: post #14

This makes little sense to me. Ontologies and all that have been tried and have always been found to be too brittle. Take the examples from the front page (which I expect to be among the best in their set): human_activity => climate_change. Those are such a broad concepts that it's practically useless. Or disease => death. There's no nuance at all. There isn't even a definition of what "disease" is, let alone a way t…

Agreed. About the strongest we can hope for are causal mechanisms, and most of those will be at most hypotheses and/or partial explanations that only apply under certain conditions. Honestly, I don’t know understand how these so-ontologies have persisted. Who is investing in this space, and why?