[Ashymad]

Your comment came at a right moment, right after my lecture in ontology yesterday where the proffesor presented the inverted casuality of a controller feedback loop as an example of a 2 types of causes described by aristotle that are lost in modern materialistic thinking, the formal cause and the final cause.

Great examples with the tea and the opamp for how a final cause be in the "future" of the effect, I'll remember them for the exam :)

[throw0101d]

> an example of a 2 types of causes described by aristotle

For the record, Aristotle had a total of four types of causes:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes

[Ashymad]

Yeah i meant the 2 causes that are lost. The other 2 are still in use

[kragen]

I am delighted!

Yet I think of electrical engineering as the epitome of modern materialism, however mystical the jargon about imaginary current phasors and complex permittivity may seem to the uninitiated. Electrical engineers think of electrical fields as material things that exist in the universe and follow probabilistic but all-encompassing laws, not as supernatural spiritual entities. Could your professor be wrong?

[Ashymad]

He wasn't saying that the engineers believe that in ontological sense. Rather he was presenting the difference in how we usually think about complex systems (i.e. the thermostat "wants" to keep a stable temperature). We abstract away the materialism we believe in because it's not practical and in a way we come back to the causes that aristotle wrote about, just metodologically not ontologically.

With vibe coding, one could even say that you can believe in the computer's intent to write the code and the code working through that intent. You might not even know how the code looks after all.

[balamatom]

Modern materialistic thinking is causally downstream from the erasure from language of the distinction between the 2 types of causes -- as exemplified by the following buffonade:

Arlecchino: does something stupid

Pierrot: smacks Arlecchino across the back of the head

Arlecchino: Ow! What for?

Pierrot: Not "what for", but "why", dumbass.

(Been a bacterium btw. Strong emotions all around, as there's nothing to temper them with. Do not recommend. An opamp is nicer - as long as they make sure to keep you within operating parameters, and not put you in a configuration experiencing infinite positive feedback, lmao)

[kragen]

Condolences, glad you got better!