I sometimes like to think that Bayesian causal networks should be drawn directly onto spacetime diagrams, with their edges timelike curves. This automatically enforces some causal structure. But if you care about things whose future lightcone doesn't meet yours then this becomes impossible, your utility function is (in once sense of the word) causally effected by something that can't (in the other sense of the word) causally effect it.
Today's post, Belief in the Implied Invisible was originally published on 08 April 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
That it's impossible even in principle to observe something sometimes isn't enough to conclude that it doesn't exist.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was GAZP vs. GLUT, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
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