科学家要用数学来破解因果关系的奥秘

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A Theory of Reality as More Than the Sum of Its Parts

Using the mathematical language of information theory, Hoel and his collaborators claim to show that new causes – things that produce effects – can emerge at macroscopic scales. They say coarse-grained macroscopic states of a physical system (such as the psychological state of a brain) can have more causal power over the system’s future than a more detailed, fine-grained description of the system possibly could.