English

Space-time nature of causality

Chaotic Dynamics 2018-07-24 v2

Abstract

In a causal world the direction of the time arrow dictates how past causal events in a variable XX produce future effects in YY. XX is said to cause an effect in YY, if the predictability (uncertainty) about the future states of YY increases (decreases) as its own past and the past of XX are taken into consideration. Causality is thus intrinsic dependent on the observation of the past events of both variables involved, to the prediction (or uncertainty reduction) of future event of the other variable. We will show that this {{temporal}} notion of causality leads to another natural spatio-temporal definition for it, and that can be exploited to detect the arrow of influence from XX to YY, either by considering shorter time-series of XX and longer time-series of YY (an approach that explores the time nature of causality) or lower precision measured time-series in XX and higher precision measured time-series in YY (an approach that explores the spatial nature of causality). Causality has thus space and time signatures, causing a break of symmetry in the topology of the probabilistic space, or causing a break of symmetry in the length of the measured time-series, a consequence of the fact that information flows from XX to YY.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1612.05023,
  title  = {Space-time nature of causality},
  author = {Ezequiel Bianco-Martinez and Murilo S. Baptista},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1612.05023},
  year   = {2018}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T17:24:39.708Z