Do Cause and Effect Really Exist? (Big Picture Ep. 2/5)

44 thoughts on “Do Cause and Effect Really Exist? (Big Picture Ep. 2/5)”

1. Being predictable does not mean time has failed to mark your past and future as past and future. It just means that your movements are repeating themselves. You are describing recursive motion, not a lack of cause and effect. The Earth does one thing, without fail, all the time, provided nothing acts upon it: It orbits the sun while in rotation. We have calendars to mark the days (and leap years to handle the remainder of time accrued each year). Does the Earth have a lack of cause and effect, or does it just repeat itself because conditions in the universe see fit that it should fit the pattern? The answer is the latter. All things have causes and all things have effects, even if the effect appears to be to do nothing or the cause is not apparent or not important. And the patterns? The pattern of measuring things by number was caused by people who wanted to break down what they see and hear and touch into logical constructs of knowledge that can be passed along instead of having to re-measure everything repeatedly. To wit, a progression of learning. We are not in the Dark Ages because we have something which caused us to have fundamental facts built up and edited over time to draw upon. Does it matter on the molecular level that we understand math? Do particles care? Maybe not. Does that mean they lack progression, a series of events that move forwards in reality? Hell no.

2. minutephysics but what about all of the reversible processes ?

3. can you hear it? It's Hume rolling in his grave

4. a very confused video. the author is clearly not philosophically literate and adopts an erroneous, mechanistic model of the world, thus misunderstanding the nature of cause and effect.

5. Be careful, the religous propaganda industrial complex mill(eg. Templeton Foundation & friends) are trying twist this to say "see science proves you're going to hell for your free-will sin nature". I know Sean Carroll is going to be pissed about it. Just put more disclaimers and don't leave people doubting the legitmacy of the social sciences, psychology and true grace(a relationship with what consciousness actually is and the illusions of it and free-will)

6. So there is no cause of this video.youtube made by nature so, Its an accident. Also my comment here is by accident, its not about the cause of my search .

7. me omg new

8. me again love dove markers rule

9. omg dog talkes love you

10. i love you your so cool i want to meet you but i live in guam 116 carlos heights upper tumon guam thats my address will you pls meet me i want your markers and i love your drawing

11. i want your markers

12. hey your mean

13. 42 is a prediction, 43 is the outcome and 41 is the cause of the prediction

14. wrg, singlx desnt matter , wholeheartx no matter what, can be superiox

15. I don't think this is an accurate explanation. Even if particles at the fundamental level can move freely at a certain velocity in the past or in the future without the Restriction of time, that doesn't imply that cause and effect mean anything anymore. Even if the particle was to Flow In Motion back into the past, that would still require the particle to go through a sequence cause and effect for anything to happen in general. I think this applies for the macroscopic and microscopic scale.

16. yup, it's basically life is strange

17. The moment i heard the arrogant jerks voice I knew this was an atheistic promotion.

18. But King Crimson erases the cause and leaves only the effect. An effect without cause. Take that physicians!

19. What a pointless video tbh

20. Could 42 just be the explanation of the Universe,life,and it's meaning? Could it be God's age? Could it be the code of the Universe?

21. What?

22. Actually quantum mechanics forbids this.

23. I see so many comments complaining about the purpose of the video and that it is hard to understand. I'm not special at all and I understand, I just make some effort and repeat some parts and I get amazed by the knowledge. Let's try harder folks, it's completely understandable and logic

24. You need a more precise and detailed model that includes different categories of causes and conditions producing a result. For example, the material cause of an oak tree is the oak seed. But an oak seed cannot produce the result of an oak tree without supporting conditions, such as proper temperature, nutrients, water, freedom from being eaten, etc. Check out Buddhist Abhidharma for a much more detailed explanation, including the inevitable impermanence of all formations.

25. i think this video was a bit too complicated for most people to understand

26. But what about the uncertainty principle. Things aren’t totally certain or predictable

27. What

28. I think I sprained my brain.

29. So if i said that us knowing the position of a particle is the cause of an effect that is us knowing the previous particles position, aswell as its next position, would be false ? As without the position we would not know the previous or the next one. Secondly, lets take numbers 1 2 and 3. 1 is partial cause of an effect 2 and 2 is partial cause of an effect 3. Number 1 existing and the need for somethimg to follow after it is the pair of causes that in the end make an effect that is number 2… Same with number 3. Even patterns have causes and patterns are effects of the cause that is existance. If there was no number 1 we would not have number 2 if there was no current position of a particle then there is no next one nor a previous one. To my mind this videos first few minutes skip one crutial thing that is the cause of it all… existance.

30. Thanks for burning

31. Wut, I didn't learn anything

32. If cause and effect is not real, then why would i press the dislike button?

33. Sean, we don't know enough about quantum systems to make assumptions like this.

34. I’d really love to understand

35. Assumption: "The underlying laws of physics don't care about the direction of time"
    That implies time symmetry holds which is not necessarily true

36. LOL, this is "science", supposedly? Does he understand the difference between the notion of "Abstract Objects" and "Physical Objects"? Numbers do not exist the same as a rock, a planet or a person exists. Numbers are conceptual.
    We don't dig in caves and "discover" the number 2. Abstract objects do not have causal abilities, they are descriptors or aggregates.
    His argument that because the numbers 2,3,4 do not cause anything, that this means that nothing does, shows he needs to go study philosophy if that's what he's interested in instead of science.
    If I go kick a ball, I literally caused the ball to fly through the air. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the number 2 not causing the number 3.

37. Sean Carroll is a really smart guy. But he is human and therefore not perfect. "Yes", Sean, "cause" and "effect" really exist. And the universe (or if you prefer "cosmos") had a cause. And that cause was NOT "itself". The cause was metaphysical since, by definition, the cosmos is ALL of the physical realm.

38. from a certain point of view you just proved that cause and effect is very much real and gave a few examples too , in short , this was one of the worst and just a crappy word-play science video on the internet

39. If the universe is a causal chain, then it must recede infinitely (beyond the 'big bang') to avoid the paradox of a 'first cause'. Is this correct? Can there be a 'starting point' to cause and effect?

40. this is where science brings spirituality!

41. 0:13 why am i single?

42. F'ing cats

43. So basically causation is no more than correlation?

44. 99+1 sheep story – all things are equally important – electron and Earth

Comments are closed.