Effect Amplification

You can't really trace the effects of things past the direct causes. We've already established many times that the relationship of cause/effect itself is more or less socially contructed depending on the nature of the event, etc.... but even if you consider cause/effect as standing alone (which I would regardless), once you get past a few generations of effects, those effects are invariably affects of not only your particular cause, but also of many other causes - eventually, so many causes that even if you wanted to say that an event was partially caused by one other event, that part would be something close to 1/infinity. Assuming, of course, that one could distinguish "events" well enough to do the statistics, which is not possible.

You completely lost me...

Well, it's like, say event A can be said to cause event B. But event C also played a part in causing event B. You would have to say that the effect of event A was neccessarily diluted in event B because event C was also a cause. And so forth, ad infinitum. Events that were caused by event B might only be ultimately caused in very small part by event A.

Yet A effects B, and B effects C (a different C) only because of A's influence. Then C effects D, E, and so on and so forth. So couldn't you say that the effects of A continually spread and grow as more and more events depend on the original A?

This is precisely why I am confused.

But B doesn't affect anything else just because of A. It is also because of C (MY C). I would say that as more influences get involved, the original influence gets diluted.

Oh boy, stalemate...

I went through all of this in my head already and couldn't find a good answer.

Re: Effect Amplification


I will presume you to be contemplating the influence of an effect, over time, and answer that such influence can both increase or decrease; an effect could potentially be shown to be of considerable importance, and later on then shown to have waned to a state of inconsiderable importance, while the effect could also be described as chaotic, where then an initial condition of inconsiderable importance would later-on snowball into a condition of great importance. As with biological organisms, influences can be created, or brought to life, and eventually diminished to imperceptibility, or brought to death.

For example, from a historical standpoint, we can consider Albert Einstein's influence today, being popularly seen as a giantic pioneer in the field of physics, as fairly strong, and then compare that influence to his future influence, after his abuse of a clerical position to plagiarise unpublished works and then publish them in his own name becomes more common-knowledge, where the public slowly forgets him.

As an opposing example, consider fractal theory, where a change of a single point of a myriad, could change the entire myriad of points.