Nonlinear Causality

Nonlinear causation is a form of causation where cause and effect can flow in a bidirectional fashion between two or more elements or systems and where a single effect may have multiple causes. The essential characteristic of nonlinear causality is the idea of feedback that an effect can create a cause, but equally, this cause can then be feedback to create an effect in the first system.

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[jeremiahcastro]

@Systems Innovation In truth then we can always trace back the Linear End Effect to a multitude of Non Linear Cause & Effect Cycles which ultimately lead us back to our original Linear Beginning Cause. To illustrate this statement we may simply imagine a person throwing a pebble into a body of water:

*[Beginning: Cause]*
Person throws rock into water.
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*[Middle: Non Linear Cause and Effect Cycles]*
Ripples form, Fish scatter, splashing sound created, etc.
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*[End: Effect]*
Thrown rock makes contact with water.

So then what appears to be a string of unrelated alternating cause and effect chains by analysis, are actually, in sum, a single effect traceable to a single cause through synthesis.

[muskduh]

thanks for all the systems videos. i learn every day

[alexplotkin]

Good material as usual.

I wish our high schools and colleges taught a lot of the ideas in these videos.

[tommythecat]

i wonder if, on a deeper scale; everything is nonlinear, and we only perceive some things as linear because we cant grasp the total concept.

[kyleellefsen]

Systems with feedback can be modeled using Dynamic Bayesian Networks. In the example of the plane in flight, all the reasons given both in 'linear' and 'nonlinear' causality are causes, which can be represented as parent nodes of the 'plane in flight' node in a Bayesian Network.

Criticisms:
'Emergence' in this video seems like a synonym for an effect that has more than one cause. But since most, if not all, effects have more than a single cause, why call them emergent?

The distinction between 'top down' or 'bottom up' causation seems like a distinction between the literal size of causal entities (small DNA vs large biosphere, small atoms vs large stars), and the usefulness of that distinction isn't clear. Also, why would interaction between large and small entities give rise to indeterminism?

The biggest problem with this video is the false equivalence between "events in the future" and "past beliefs about the future". The beliefs people hold about the future causally influence a system, but the actual events in the future do not. Events in the future do not reach back in time and cause events in the past, which is what this video implies with "reverse causation".

[davidyang]

Thank you. Clear, Simple, Interesting. Although, just like how causality is vague and emergent, "goals" are probably not real things either!

[evilpandakillabzonattkoccu]

Yes, but that doesnt (correct me if im wrong, please) mean that cause and effect doesn't still apply....leading, inevitably, to one outcome only. It may not be predictable and our understanding of the causation and correlation of the outcome and the events causing the outcome might be incorrect or unknowable....

that doesnt equate to indeterminism.

As an example: Lets use the Andromeda Paradox here. The Andromeda Paradox (in case someone doesn't know what that is) can be explained like this;

'[On Earth] Imagine two people walking past each other, one moving towards the Andromeda galaxy and the other moving away.'

'From the perspective of the person walking towards Andromeda, events in Andromeda might appear to be occurring in the future compared to the person walking away, and vice versa.'

This is due to the vast distance that light has to travel to get to Earth. Even walking is enough to cause redshift, at that distance.

So, lets imagine two people, walking away from each other but still within talking range. Person A and Person B.

Person A is walking towards Andromeda and is looking through an amazing telescope (read as: a hypothetically, infinitely superior to any tech we can achive), capable of seeing Andromeda in great detail, as well as zoom out to see the entire galaxy. As they look, they see that a large planet in Andromeda suddenly explodes due to a massive alien attack...

....Person B is walking away fro Andromeda and has the same telescope. They look up and see, from their perspective, the Andromeda's past. They see the planet and the attacking ship...but the ship is days away from the planet.

Even if Person B had the technology to contact that planet instantly....they couldnt warn them.

Why?

....because they image that Person B seeing is light that left Andromeda 2.5 million light years, minus a couple days, and is just arriving to their eyes.

The light Person A is seeing spent the same 2.5 million light years...plus a few days...to reach their eyes.

....so, even if you sent an instant warning signal, you'd be 2.5 million years, minus a couple days, too late.

Locally, they are in agreeance that both observations are happening "at the same time", relative to the two. So, it would seem like there would be time but...there isnt. The outcome is already determined once the cause occurs.

We also only consciously process information after it is filtered through our brains (and travels through out we really live in the past and are only reacting to events, which causes other events (that series of events is what we call time).

🤷🏽‍♂️

[NonAbsoluteAbsolutisim]

Nonlinear seems a misnomer. Seems to me it would more apt called multi linear effect

[nanayawsmart]

I think correlation is for reductionism and causation for system thinking

[Marcara]

4:30 - Either this is a terrible example or non-linear causality is a bad joke. Just take a reductionist approach and simply SPECIFY the question being asked. Now look at that! All these other possible causes have been reduced, since we ceased asking too broad a question. Though we also note that in finding every possible explanation as to why the plane is flying, we reduced this sytem of flight to its components anyway (in the form of different qualitative causes).