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Philosophy

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    I don't understand the premise that an arbitrary cause-effect pair can be reversed such that the effect is actually the cause. It is simply not true that if A can cause B, B must logically be able to cause A. Commented Sep 6, 2023 at 19:10
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    Some processes are only reversible by turning back time, since entropy only goes one way and prevents the exact restoration of a previous state. Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 6:14
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    @Olivier5 Atomic fusion has the same problem as entropy, that is during fission you release energy that dissipates randomly while the reverse process would thus require that you'd concentrate energy in addition to the split products, which is not going to happen on it's own. Though why do you focus on the exact process to begin with? Like if you watch a movie and that makes you feel something, then you're feeling isn't going to influence the movie, but it may very well influence your decision making in the real world. So it can have an effect without being a direct reversal of the process. Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 10:03
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    @Olivier5 Physical processes are not theoretical concepts. In practice, there is no such thing as a reversible process. Newton's third law does not address causation in any way and is entirely irrelevant. It is rather silly to argue that if pushing a domino causes it to fall over, that the domino falling over can cause you to push it. Temporally, effects must come after causes, it is nonsense to say that an event was caused by something that hasn't even happened yet. Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 13:08
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    @Olivier5 But the domino example is a pretty clear case where "A causes B" doesnt mean "B causes A", when you define A as pushing the dominoes, and B as the domino stack falling over. Therefore you cant take it as a general rule. It's not even clear how you are trying to fit touching and pushing a domino or vice versa into A and B. Like, the cause and effect are just different in those cases. Touching the domino causes a push on it. The opposite of that would be "pushing the domino causes it to be touched", which typically isn't how we would talk about the cause and effect there. Commented Sep 7, 2023 at 22:00