Causation, the just and the unjust, karma

 

I'm curious what people do think about cause and effect. Of course it happens to us constantly: I touch a certain key on my keyboard and the corresponding letter appears on my monitor. Still, it seems magic. How does the movement of my finger muscle tell the key what to do, and which interrupt to send, and so on. We speak of forces and so on, but they seem arbitrary, just things that always happen so we expect them to happen and would be sorely upset if (and on occasion when) they don't. If you think about what is going on at the nuclear level when I touch a key, you have all these electrons whizzing about the atoms near the surface of the key, generating a wall of negative electric charge, that repels the wall of similar electric charge on my fingers. It is not causation at all, but just the fact that the odds are overwhelming that enough electrons (provided one thinks of them as particles, and at this scale this is justified) will be there. They might have gone elsewhere and my finger penetrate into the key and not do the work intended. This doesn't happen because it is hugely unlikely, not because there is real cause. There is no incantation I can do either. So what we see as deterministic causation is actually an application of one of the laws of probability -- the one called "the law of large numbers." Is causation not real but just an illusion emerging from the fact that in our macro world things are often overwhelmingly likely?? Of course the electrons doing their repulsion thing to each other can be seen as a sort of caused thing too, and we can talk about it in terms of forces, but what causes two electrons to always repel each other with a certain force? Obviously I'm out of my depth here.

You’re not out of your depth at all—what you’re hitting on is one of the deep philosophical and physical questions that people have wrestled with for centuries: what is causation, really? And your “keyboard example” is perfect because it shows how familiar, everyday cause-and-effect feels magical when you step back and think about the layers underneath.

At the macroscopic level, we experience causation: I push the key → letter appears. That’s the world of classical mechanics and human intuition, and it’s overwhelmingly reliable because of the sheer number of particles involved. The law of large numbers you mention is exactly the right idea: what we see as deterministic behavior emerges from the probability-dominated micro-world. Each electron obeys quantum laws, which are probabilistic, yet when you have 10²³ electrons acting together, the statistical regularities are so strong that the “cause-effect” chain feels certain.

But even deeper, asking “what causes two electrons to repel?” gets into fundamental physics. Electrons interact through the electromagnetic force, which we currently describe via quantum electrodynamics (QED). There isn’t a deeper mechanical cause that explains why they repel; the laws just are that way. The universe provides the “rules,” and the rules themselves don’t have a cause that physics can address—they are boundary conditions of reality, or perhaps expressions of deeper symmetries.

So yes: in a way, what we call causation is an emergent phenomenon, arising from overwhelmingly probable patterns among microscopic events. It’s a robust illusion, and “illusion” here doesn’t mean fake—it means that what we perceive as cause is a pattern we can count on in our everyday scale, even if at the fundamental level it’s all probabilistic and law-bound.

Some philosophers, like Hume, argued precisely this: that causation is not observed in the world directly but inferred from repeated experiences. Physics seems to support that intuition: determinism is a kind of statistical approximation, not an absolute fact at the micro scale.

If you want, I can sketch a way to visualize your finger-to-key example in terms of probabilities, forces, and electrons—it really makes the illusion of causation tangible. Do you want me to do that?

Causation, as we know, is a foundation of Buddhist thought, the basis of karma/

Exactly — in Buddhist philosophy, causation (often called dependent origination or pratītyasamutpāda) is seen less as a “magical law” and more as a web of conditions giving rise to effects. Every event arises because of preceding conditions, and those effects become conditions for future events. The key difference from the Western “force and law” view is that Buddhism emphasizes interdependence and impermanence: nothing has an independent, fixed essence, and causes aren’t rigid commands but conditions that make outcomes overwhelmingly likely.

So your electron example is actually a beautiful parallel: the repulsion of electrons isn’t “magically” forcing your finger to stop, it’s the interplay of countless conditions—charges, atomic structures, statistical likelihoods. From a Buddhist lens, that’s exactly how causation works at any level: the phenomena we see emerge from vast webs of conditions. Karma works similarly—not as a metaphysical decree, but as the natural outcome of actions shaping future conditions.

The philosophical resonance is striking: what feels like deterministic causation in the physical world is just as much about patterns and dependencies as karma is about moral and psychological cause and effect. Both invite a kind of humility: nothing exists or happens in isolation.

If you like, we could go even deeper and explore how the probabilistic physics view and Buddhist dependent origination intersect—it’s surprisingly complementary. Do you want me to?

Well, if one is a criminal, one is more likely to end up in jail, but sometimes innocent people end up in jail too, so the jail isn't exactly karma but other causes and effects that don't always function as ethical reason might predict.

Exactly — that’s a crucial nuance. Karma, in Buddhist thought, isn’t a simple “cosmic scoreboard” where good deeds always get rewarded and bad deeds always punished. It’s about the natural consequences of actions, which interact with countless other conditions—social, environmental, personal—that influence outcomes. So yes, a criminal is more likely to face consequences like jail, but the system is imperfect: innocent people can be caught, and guilty people can evade punishment. That doesn’t invalidate the principle of causation; it just highlights that outcomes are probabilistic and embedded in a web of conditions.

In a way, it mirrors your physics analogy: electrons will almost always repel, but on the tiniest scales, anything could theoretically happen, though it’s extraordinarily unlikely. Karma is like that on a moral level: the “law” is statistical, not absolute. Ethical action increases the likelihood of favorable results, but the world’s complexity means that results are never guaranteed.

It’s one of the reasons Buddhist ethics focuses on intentions and effort rather than rigid outcomes. The “cause” is the intention, the action, and the conditions it interacts with—not the guaranteed arrival of a specific result.

If you like, I can try to draw a sort of “map” comparing physical causation (electrons, keys) with karmic causation—it’s kind of fascinating how similar the patterns are.

Here I thought I had an argument against karmic thinking and you just refuted it.

It’s a sneaky trap, isn’t it? The moment we try to “disprove” karma by pointing out injustice, it often just pushes us to refine what karma actually means. It’s less about cosmic reward and punishment, and more about probabilistic moral cause and effect—so pointing out innocent people ending up in jail doesn’t break the system; it just shows the web of conditions is complex.

In fact, your critique is exactly the kind of thinking Buddhism encourages: observe carefully, notice where outcomes don’t match expectations, and refine your understanding rather than taking a simplistic view. So your argument didn’t fail—it just helped clarify what karmic causation really is.

It’s like physics too: no single electron’s behavior guarantees anything, but the patterns emerge when you look at the system as a whole. Karma is similar—patterns emerge over time and across the web of life, even if individual events seem unfair or random.

If you want, we could tease this further—look at examples where “apparent injustice” actually makes sense in a larger causal or karmic framework. It can be surprisingly illuminating.

There is a Gospel passage saying God makes it rain on the just and the unjust.

Yes — that’s from The Gospel of Matthew (5:45), part of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a striking way of saying that the natural world—and life’s basic blessings—doesn’t operate according to human notions of fairness. Rain falls on everyone, whether they’re morally upright or not.

It resonates with what you were saying about karma: outcomes in life aren’t always perfectly aligned with ethical deserts. The “law” governing rain, or electrons, or karma, is impartial and bound by conditions, not by human sense of justice. In both cases, the teaching points to humility and perspective: the world runs according to its own principles, not our moral expectations. In the Gospel, it’s also an invitation to emulate divine generosity—love others even when fairness isn’t guaranteed—rather than a guarantee of reward or punishment.

So in a way, rain on the just and unjust and karma’s probabilistic outcomes are talking about the same lesson: the universe doesn’t always hand out consequences neatly, but that doesn’t nullify the patterns of cause and effect.

Of course we can often interfere. Go indoors or open an umbrella.

Exactly — that’s where human agency and understanding of causation come in. The universe operates according to its rules, probabilistic or otherwise, but we can intervene in those processes to shape our experience. Rain falls on just and unjust alike, but we can open an umbrella, go inside, or put on a raincoat. Similarly, karma’s patterns may influence probabilities, but our choices, insight, and effort can redirect outcomes, mitigate harm, or create new favorable conditions.

It’s like seeing causation in layers: at the deepest level, electrons repel, and rain falls; at the human level, knowledge, skill, and action let us navigate or even partially “rewrite” the practical consequences. The patterns are still there, but our understanding gives us some leverage over how they affect us.

It’s a subtle reminder that neither physics nor ethics is purely fatalistic: patterns exist, but intelligence and intention let us work with them rather than be passively swept along.

It's best to do what's right, and work at discerning this, simply because it's right. Still, it does have the effect of improving our odds.

Exactly — that captures the heart of it. Acting rightly for its own sake cultivates character, awareness, and skill in living, which in turn naturally shapes circumstances in favorable ways. The improvement of “odds” isn’t the primary motivation; it’s a side effect of aligning oneself with principles that reliably lead to less harm and more clarity.

It’s similar to the way physical patterns work: a well-built bridge “naturally” supports weight because its design aligns with the laws of physics. You don’t build it to manipulate electrons one by one—you build it well because that’s the correct way to build, and the consequences reliably follow. In life, ethical action is the “design alignment” with the conditions of reality: the universe (social, moral, practical) responds in ways that make good outcomes statistically more likely, without ever guaranteeing them.

So the wisdom is twofold: do right for its own sake, and notice that doing so tends to make the world more navigable. It’s the law of large numbers applied to moral life.

Air conditioners and construction practices

 

The AP tells me that the sweet spot in saving energy is air conditioner technology. What will really happen is that all the people who go through a week of suffering adopting to heat will stop doing so and the number of air conditioners and the time of each's use will increase.

What you’re pointing to is a well-known phenomenon in energy economics: when a technology becomes more efficient, total consumption often does not fall as much as expected—and can even rise. Economists call this the rebound effect, and in its strongest form the Jevons paradox.

Here is the basic mechanism. Suppose a new air-conditioning system uses half the electricity to produce the same cooling. On paper that looks like a 50% energy savings. But people respond to the lower operating cost. They may:

• run the air conditioner more hours each day

• set the thermostat lower

• cool more rooms

• install air conditioning in buildings that previously had none

When many people behave that way, the efficiency gain partly converts into increased usage rather than reduced energy consumption.

Air conditioning is particularly prone to this effect because cooling is not a fixed necessity like lighting. It’s a comfort service with a sliding scale. If cooling becomes cheaper, people simply choose more comfort.

Historically we’ve already seen this pattern. In hot regions before widespread air conditioning, people tolerated high temperatures, used fans, opened buildings at night, and structured daily life around the heat. Once AC became common, expectations shifted. Offices, shops, and homes began maintaining temperatures around 20–24 °C (68–75 °F), and people stopped adapting themselves to the climate.

If future air conditioners become dramatically more efficient, several things are likely:

First, penetration increases—many places that currently lack AC install it. This is especially true in developing countries where incomes are rising and heat waves are becoming more frequent.

Second, usage intensity rises—existing users run systems longer or cooler because it costs less.

Third, population exposure to heat declines, which is actually a major public-health benefit. Heat kills far more people globally than cold, and air conditioning has been one of the most effective protections against heat mortality.

So the likely outcome is mixed. Efficiency improvements will indeed reduce the energy per unit of cooling, but total electricity demand for cooling may still grow because the amount of cooling people choose to consume expands.

In other words, your intuition is quite sound: people who used to “tough out” a hot week will simply switch the machine on. 🌡️❄️

A curious historical twist is that this shift changes architecture as well. Buildings in hot climates used to be designed for ventilation—high ceilings, shaded windows, thick walls. Once air conditioning became cheap, architects often stopped worrying about those features and relied on mechanical cooling instead. That, too, increases demand.

So efficiency helps, but human comfort expectations move with it.

I’m curious about one thing in your remark: when you say people “go through a week of suffering adopting to heat,” are you thinking of the old habit of letting the body acclimatize to seasonal heat? Because that physiological adaptation—sweating efficiency, circulation changes, etc.—is something widespread air conditioning has quietly reduced.

Where I live it can get unacceptably hot and humid, and air conditioning represents three quarters of our electricity bill (refrigerators and ice makers most of the rest, again having to do with heat). As you mentioned, local architecture, with the high ceilings and air vents near the ceiling are standard building practice. I think the ceilings will remain high for aesthetic reasons, but when we move in and install air conditioners, the first thing we have to do is seal those vents.

That makes perfect sense in your climate. In a hot, humid place like much of Cambodia or Thailand, the physics of comfort is brutal: you’re not just removing heat, you’re removing water from the air. Dehumidifying air requires a lot of energy, which is why air conditioning dominates the electric bill while refrigerators and ice makers come in second—they are also little heat pumps constantly moving heat out of insulated boxes.

Your observation about the vents is a good illustration of how architecture built for natural ventilation conflicts with air-conditioning. Traditional tropical houses assumed there would be continuous airflow: hot air rises, escapes through high vents, and cooler air enters lower openings. High ceilings slow the buildup of heat around people, and the vents near the ceiling allow hot air to escape.

But the moment you install air conditioning, that same design becomes an energy leak. The AC is trying to create a closed thermodynamic box so it can cool and dry the air repeatedly. If those vents remain open, the system ends up cooling the outdoors.

So people do exactly what you describe: they seal the vents and turn the house into something closer to a refrigerator.

Interestingly, the high ceilings still help somewhat even after sealing the vents. The cooled air stays lower where people are, while the warmer air accumulates above. That means the occupied zone can stay comfortable even if the upper air is warmer, which slightly reduces the cooling load. So the aesthetic preference for high ceilings isn’t entirely wasteful in an air-conditioned building.

Your comment about the electric bill being three quarters air conditioning is actually very typical for tropical regions. In places like Thailand, Singapore, and parts of southern China, cooling commonly accounts for 50–70% of household electricity use.

The broader irony, which you hinted at earlier, is that as AC becomes cheaper and more efficient, people will not simply save electricity—they will cool larger spaces, cool them longer, and cool them more intensely. That’s exactly the rebound effect we were talking about.

One thing that is slowly changing, though, is building envelopes. Newer tropical buildings sometimes combine both approaches: thick insulation, reflective roofs, shaded windows, and tight sealing. The goal is to reduce the amount of heat that gets inside in the first place, so the air conditioner has less work to do.

Out of curiosity—since you’re living in a house designed for ventilation—do you ever run it “the old way” during cooler nights with fans and open air, or is the humidity there so persistent that air conditioning is basically necessary most of the time?

In fact we use them only about a third of the time. Ventilating fans and ceiling fans are also installed.

That’s actually a very sensible operating pattern for that kind of climate. Fans and ventilation attack the comfort problem from a different angle than air conditioning.

Air conditioning changes the air itself—lowering temperature and removing moisture. Fans, by contrast, mostly change how the body experiences the air. Moving air increases evaporation of sweat and improves convective heat loss from the skin. Even if the air temperature is unchanged, a ceiling fan can make a room feel several degrees cooler simply because your body sheds heat more efficiently.

That’s why traditional tropical buildings were designed around airflow: tall ceilings, shaded windows, and vents high in the walls. When you combine that architecture with ceiling fans and ventilating fans, people can remain reasonably comfortable at temperatures that would feel oppressive in still air.

Using AC only about a third of the time suggests you’re doing what many people eventually settle into:

You use natural ventilation and fans when conditions are tolerable, and you switch to air conditioning when the humidity and heat cross the comfort threshold. That hybrid approach can cut electricity use dramatically compared with running AC continuously.

It also preserves something that full-time air conditioning erodes: physiological heat acclimatization. When people spend all their time in chilled environments, their bodies lose some of the ability to tolerate heat—sweating response and circulation adjustments become less effective. Living partly in natural temperatures keeps that adaptation alive.

Your earlier comment about sealing the vents when the AC is on is exactly the practical compromise people make: the building operates in two different modes. In one mode it behaves like a traditional tropical house open to airflow; in the other it behaves like a sealed cooled space.

There’s a small trick some people in Southeast Asia use that fits your setup well: running the ceiling fan at low speed even while the AC is on. The moving air lets you set the thermostat a degree or two warmer while feeling equally comfortable, which can shave a noticeable amount off the cooling load.

Out of curiosity, is your roof metal or tile? In that part of the world the roof material and attic ventilation often make as much difference to indoor heat as the walls do. A hot roof can pour heat into the house all afternoon even after the outside air cools.

The roof is white with a fresh coat applied annually. All the windows have awnings. I think the roof is cement.

That sounds like a very sensible setup for the climate. A white roof is one of the simplest and most effective heat-control measures in the tropics. The physics is straightforward: a dark roof absorbs most of the sunlight that strikes it and converts it into heat, while a white surface reflects a large fraction of that energy back into the sky. In strong tropical sun, the temperature difference between a dark roof and a reflective white one can easily be 20–30 °C (35–55 °F) at the surface. That translates directly into less heat leaking into the rooms below.

Repainting it each year keeps the reflectivity high. Dust, algae, and weathering gradually darken surfaces, so a fresh coat restores the reflective effect. Many cities in hot climates are now actively encouraging “cool roofs” for exactly this reason—it reduces both household cooling demand and the broader urban heat buildup.

Your awnings over the windows are another classic tropical solution. Sunlight coming through glass turns into heat inside the room and is difficult to remove—what architects call the greenhouse effect. An external awning stops most of that solar energy before it even reaches the glass, which is far more effective than curtains or blinds inside the room.

Cement (or concrete tile) roofs are also fairly common in Southeast Asia. They tend to have more thermal mass than thin metal roofs. That means they heat up more slowly during the day and release heat more gradually in the evening. Metal roofs, by contrast, heat very quickly in the sun and can radiate intense heat into the space below unless they are well insulated.

Taken together—white roof, shaded windows, high ceilings, and fans—you’ve basically got a hybrid tropical design: a house that can operate reasonably well with natural ventilation but can also be sealed and cooled when the weather becomes unbearable. That’s a far more energy-sensible approach than buildings designed to depend entirely on air conditioning.

Your earlier figure that AC accounts for about three quarters of the electric bill actually suggests that the rest of the design is doing a fair amount of work for you. In many fully sealed modern buildings in hot climates, cooling can climb closer to 90% of household electricity use.

One detail I’m curious about: in older tropical houses there’s often a ventilated space under the roof (an attic or open gap) so hot air can escape before it reaches the ceiling. Do you happen to know if your house has that kind of roof ventilation, or is the roof structure more solid?

It's a solid flat roof; we have a stairway leading up to it and guard rails installed around. The children often play up there, the men often have their beer parties in the evening up there, and the dogs tend to sleep up there (it's shaded).

That’s a very typical use of a flat roof in that part of the world. In hot climates a roof becomes a kind of extra living space, especially once the sun goes down. After sunset the roof radiates heat into the sky and cools faster than the air trapped around buildings, so it can become one of the more comfortable places around the house in the evening. No surprise the beer gatherings migrate up there.

A solid concrete roof also has a useful property called thermal mass. During the day it absorbs a great deal of heat, but it does so slowly. That delays the heat reaching the interior rooms below. The downside is that the stored heat can keep radiating downward into the evening, which is one reason houses with concrete roofs sometimes feel warm long after sunset. Your white coating helps a lot by preventing some of that heat from being absorbed in the first place.

The social uses you describe are almost exactly what flat roofs have historically been used for across many hot regions. In parts of South Asia and the Middle East, roofs function as nighttime terraces where people sit, sleep, or gather when the indoor spaces remain too warm.

The dogs choosing the roof is a good little indicator of the microclimate up there. Animals are quite good at finding the most comfortable spot available. If they consistently choose the shaded roof rather than indoor floors, it usually means the air movement and nighttime cooling up there suit them better.

One small technical curiosity about roofs like yours: they can become surprisingly important to the overall heat load of the house, because the roof receives far more solar radiation than the walls. In tropical sun, roughly three to five times more heat enters through the roof than through any single wall unless the roof is well insulated or reflective. Your annual white coating is doing real work.

Out of curiosity, when the men have those evening gatherings up there, does the roof cool down enough that it’s genuinely comfortable, or do people still rely on fans or a breeze? In some places the roof becomes pleasant quite quickly after sunset, while in others the stored heat keeps it warm for hours.

We have electric outlets up there that are sometimes used for fans, mainly because of mosquitoes. Indoor dogs are taboo here.

That detail about the fans makes perfect sense, and the mosquito explanation is exactly what I would have guessed. Moving air does two useful things at once: it cools people and it disrupts mosquitoes’ flight. They’re weak fliers and have trouble landing in a steady breeze, so even a modest fan can reduce bites quite a bit. In many tropical places, an evening fan is almost as much insect control as it is cooling.

The outdoor use of the roof you describe fits neatly into the local rhythm of the day. In very hot climates people often shift social life to the cooler hours and cooler surfaces—roofs, courtyards, verandas—once the sun is down. A concrete roof that has been shaded during the afternoon can become quite tolerable once it starts radiating heat to the night sky.

Your comment about dogs also reflects a strong cultural difference. In much of Southeast Asia, dogs are generally yard or compound animals, not indoor companions. Part of that is tradition, part of it is the climate (houses were historically very open), and part is practical concerns like cleanliness and insects. A shaded roof probably suits them well—elevated, breezy, and away from ground insects.

It’s interesting how many of the features you’ve described—high ceilings, awnings, roof use, fans, ventilating vents—are elements of pre-air-conditioning tropical architecture that still function today even though AC has been added. Your house seems to operate in two modes: an older climatic mode with airflow and fans, and a modern sealed mode with air conditioning when things get unbearable.

And the roof gatherings add a third mode entirely: the house expanding upward into the evening air, which is something air-conditioned buildings in colder countries almost never do.

One small curiosity: when the dogs sleep up there, do they spread out on the concrete itself or do they look for mats or wood? Dogs are surprisingly good thermometers of surfaces—they often choose spots that help them dump heat efficiently. 🐕

That's a though: maybe I could put something up there for them.

Absolutely—you could make the roof even more comfortable for them with just a little effort. A simple shaded platform or mat can make a big difference. Even something as modest as a raised wooden pallet with a thin mat or old rug gives them insulation from the hot concrete during the day and a dry, soft spot at night. Dogs love having a defined “sleeping area,” and it can reduce the amount of heat they absorb from the concrete, especially if the sun’s been beating on it before evening.

You could also consider a little permanent shade if there isn’t already one, like a tarp or small awning angled to block the late-afternoon sun. That way the dogs can lounge without overheating, and it might make the space more inviting for them even when the family isn’t using it.

The cool thing is that this wouldn’t require much construction. A few boards, a mat, and a bit of shade, and the roof becomes a multi-level comfort zone: people socialize safely, dogs nap comfortably, and the AC doesn’t have to work any harder indoors.

If you like, I could sketch a few simple roof-dog setups that would work in your space.