

What If Counterfactuals Never Existed? - samclemens
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119357/altered-pasts-reviewed-cass-r-sunstein

======
Jun8
Irrelevant to the content of this article, which discusses historical What If
scenarios, but this title and another front page story today
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8353881))
reminded me of the following:

Not all languages have built in counterfactual constructions, an example is
Chinese (Mandarin). Starting in the 80s and continuing into the 90s, there was
a big debate about whether Chinese speakers were at a disadvantage in quickly
understanding complex counterfactual statements. During those times such
suggestions were relatively taboo (especially due to Chomsky's strong anti-
linguistics relativism stance) but that has relaxed considerably due to the
work of many researchers. A recent paper summarizing the debate on Chinese
counterfactuals can be found here
([http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/gentner/papers/YehGentn...](http://groups.psych.northwestern.edu/gentner/papers/YehGentner05.pdf)).

An example from that paper that compares a counterfactual statements in
English and Chinese:

“If I had gone to the movies that evening, I could not have had dinner with my
mom.”

The counterfactual mode is signaled by having the verb of the suppositional
clause in the past perfect tense and that of the main clause in the
conditional form.

The Chinese equivalent is

“Ru guo wo na tien wan shan qu kan le dien ying, wo jiu bu neng gen wo ma qu
chi wan fan.”

This translates roughly to the English: If that night I go watch (past
particle) a movie, I then cannot accompany my mom to go eat dinner.

In Chinese, which lacks verb inflections, a counterfactual is signaled by
comparing the tense information—e.g., the past tense particle (le) after the
verb—with contextual information as to whether the event actually occurred.
The second clause is simply a consequence clause; it has no internal marker of
counterfactuality.

~~~
Tloewald
The question is whether the listener understands that the statement is
counterfactual. E.g. If an English speaker says, if Gore had been elected in
2000 we never invaded Iraq, most English speakers would get the meaning
anyway.

~~~
Jun8
It's not that Chinese listeners do not understand counterfactuals. The
original researcher's (Bloom) hypothesis was that Chinese speakers have more
cognitive load analyzing such statements so if asked to analyze complicated
small counterfactual stories under time pressure they would perform worse than
English speakers.

~~~
Tloewald
That's probably debatable too. Most of the exotic tenses in English are wordy
constructs "building" the tense out of simpler tenses. He wound have gone to
dinner with mom vs. he went(hypothetical tense, assuming previous clause) to
dinner with mom.

A chinese speaker might say I go to movie tomorrow, versus. I will go to the
movie tomorrow. Which is harder to parse?

Is parsing English "tenses" so much easier? OTOH is needing to remember even
more tenses for more irregular verbs easier? It's an interesting hypothesis,
but hardly a foregone conclusion.

------
jameshart
It seems strange to see all the historians' objections to the exploration of
counterfactuals. Much as they may protest that they are only interested in
cataloguing what actually happened, to make a jusgement over whether or not a
particular event is _significant_ , one has surely to consider what the world
might have been like if it _hadn 't happened_. If you can't explore the
counterfactual realm at all, then you're unable to make any judgement at all
about how important a particular event was, and so as a historian you might as
well study what Al Gore had for breakfast the morning of the 2000 election as
what led the supreme court to its decision on the Florida recount. We take
interest in the Supreme Court decision because history would be very different
if it had gone another way. Exploring that counterfactual lets you figure out
just how different: it is a worthy question for historians to determine how
significant the choice of president was in 2000. Would it even have mattered,
since politics for the next decade and beyond would be changed, within a year,
by 9/11 anyway?

~~~
onion2k
_to make a jusgement over whether or not a particular event is significant,
one has surely to consider what the world might have been like if it hadn 't
happened_

I don't see why that would be the case.

 _If you can 't explore the counterfactual realm at all, then you're unable to
make any judgement at all about how important a particular event was, and so
as a historian you might as well study what Al Gore had for breakfast the
morning of the 2000 election as what led the supreme court to its decision on
the Florida recount._

Yes you can. You can see what impact each event _actually had_ , and determine
the more important one from that. You don't need to explore things that didn't
happen.

 _We take interest in the Supreme Court decision because history would be very
different if it had gone another way._

We do, but I'm not sure that's true of professional historians. They try to
determine the actual reasons for things that happen that are based in fact.
Speculation is more the realm of politicians and philosophers.

~~~
jameshart
So how do you determine whether something was a 'reason' for something,
without considering a counterfactual? The very nature of a 'reason' is, it's
something which had to happen in order for the consequence to follow. If the
consequence would have happened anyway, then it's not a reason.

The impact an event has can only be determined by imagining what would have
happened if the event didn't take place, surely?

Did America's use of the atomic bomb cause Japan to surrender? Can you answer
that question without considering how Japan's leadership would have behaved if
the bombs hadn't been dropped?

------
nkurz
The blog "Unqualified Reservations" (a defunct blog you should probably be
familiar with, although not necessarily read or agree with) offered an
interesting thought extension to the counterfactual:

    
    
      If we want to get really imaginative, we can imagine what I 
      call a "reverse counterfactual." First, imagine that the 
      military dice had fallen otherwise and the American 
      Rebellion was suppressed. Second, perform the standard 
      counterfactual exercise of imagining what an intact British 
      Empire would look like in 2009. Third, imagine the 
      counterfactual universe invents some device that can send 
      invisible observers into our 2009, and make a documentary 
      for the edification of the Imperial audience - showing this 
      awful alternate 2009, in which the Massachusetts 
      disturbances of the 1770s were not quashed with firm, manly 
      vigour.
    
      What's neat is that such a documentary could be made, with 
      existing technology, in the real 2009. 
    

As a means of changing helping the reader see another perspective, I think
it's a brilliant extension: [http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-...](http://unqualified-
reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified_22.html)

~~~
Apocryphon
Less wordily:
[http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/alternate_history/...](http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/alternate_history/double_blind_what_if)

~~~
nkurz
Nice link. I'm not familiar with that community, although I think they might
be describing something slightly different. Moldbug is asking how an audience
from the ATL would interpret the actual fixed events of today ("a
documentary"). But I think this link is more about how the ATL group would
imagine OTL, without actually being constrained to it. Less wordy, but I think
it's different exercise?

~~~
Apocryphon
Ah, I see. Moldbug's second point is what DBWI's are about- speculating on
real world events from the point of view of an alternate history inhabitant.
His third point takes it into the realm of further fantasy, of having those
inhabitants actually cross into our world to see their reactions.

Cross-timeline adventures are not exactly unknown in alternate history sci-fi,
and they're quite fun as well, to see the very different cultures interact.
Cheap irony is the lifeblood of althist.

------
confluence
The title on this article is very clever. I can just see the journalist
leaping up in glee when he figured it out.

