“If X was different then Y wouldn’t have happened” is a useless way to evaluate things that leads one to blame a butterfly flapping its wings for causing a hurricane.

▲

gpm 36 minutes ago | parent [-]

Not useless if you can identify and stop the butterflies that cause hurricanes.

▲

wat10000 29 minutes ago | parent [-]

The point is that they don’t cause hurricanes, despite the fact that some hurricanes might not have happened if not for the flapping.

I can point to at least one fatal crash that wouldn’t have happened if GPS was unavailable. Would it be reasonable to say that crash was caused by a lack of GPS jamming?

	▲	gpm 23 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If I know stopping a particular butterfly from flapping its wings prevents thousands of people from dying and devastating effects on infrastructure (the typical result of a hurricane) I don't particularly care if they "cause" hurricanes I'm still stopping it. Philosophers can debate the meaning of the word "cause" all they want but it really isn't relevant.