See also a review by Andrew Gelman: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/01/08/book-pearl...
Well, his a priori is rather skewed, though.
A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
11–20 of 43 posts
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#12I like the review, but the criticism of distinguishing causality from counterfactual reasoning feels weak to me. Do we actually care about the counterfactual reasoning most? Of course. But establishing causality as its own thing before counterfactuals is necessary in the way that Pearl has structured his math. And even the grammar of human languages enforces this separation of concepts. Do you need causality to even…
I have only read part of this book, so far. I think counter factual reasoning or thought experiments are fundamental to the way we humans think about the world.
As I understand it, that counterfactual reasoning is fundamental to human thought seems to be one of the main motivating factors of Pearl's entire causality push, and precisely why it's not OK to ignore causality in science and statistics and machine learning.
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#13I like the review, but the criticism of distinguishing causality from counterfactual reasoning feels weak to me. Do we actually care about the counterfactual reasoning most? Of course. But establishing causality as its own thing before counterfactuals is necessary in the way that Pearl has structured his math. And even the grammar of human languages enforces this separation of concepts. Do you need causality to even…
The DAG, directed graph, or time based DAG question is quite interesting.
It seems to me though that time is so interwoven with causality that it is superfluous to include it. Hence, at a glance, I would argue for normal Directed graphs (allowing cycles) with the implicit understanding that following edges means time increases
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure how to define "cause" without introducing counterfactuals. "This happened because I did that" seems to imply "Had I not done that, this would not have happened" -- a counterfactual.
I'm not sure that's always the case. Couldn't you have a scenario where your action was the direct cause of an outcome that might have come about some other way without your involvement at all? For instance, if a ball rolls down a hill because you pushed it, but a breeze blows a moment after you pushed the ball, if that breeze was strong enough to push the ball down the hill too, then you have a scenario where "that…
Yes, what you're describing is basically an "or" gate. The counterfactual is "what if neither cause happened?"
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#15I like the review, but the criticism of distinguishing causality from counterfactual reasoning feels weak to me. Do we actually care about the counterfactual reasoning most? Of course. But establishing causality as its own thing before counterfactuals is necessary in the way that Pearl has structured his math. And even the grammar of human languages enforces this separation of concepts. Do you need causality to even…
I am not sure Maudlin's example of counterfactual causal reasoning is counterfactual -- though, for all I know, it might be rung-three causal reasoning by Pearl's definition. All the subject seems to be doing is searching the tree of possible outcomes in order to select the most desirable one. She could only say “had I let go of the lamp it would have shattered” after having chosen an alternative course of action and then done it, and by then, of course, it can have no causal role in the decision-making.
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure that's always the case. Couldn't you have a scenario where your action was the direct cause of an outcome that might have come about some other way without your involvement at all? For instance, if a ball rolls down a hill because you pushed it, but a breeze blows a moment after you pushed the ball, if that breeze was strong enough to push the ball down the hill too, then you have a scenario where "that…
Yes, what you're describing is basically an "or" gate. The counterfactual is "what if neither cause happened?"
right, but the potential existence of multiple potential causes (an "or" gate) is what makes this reasoning a fallacy:
> "This happened because I did that" seems to imply "Had I not done that, this would not have happened" -- a counterfactual.
The point is that constructing the counterfactual requires a more than just knowledge of a single causal link, but a broader set of causal knowledge about many causal links.
Language is messy and ambiguous and we do often colloquially use "X caused Y" to imply the truth of the counter factual "If X had not happened Y would not have happened". Interestingly, a different tense such as "X causes Y" generally does not have the same counter factual implication.
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#17>Well, there are some caveats even here. The real gold standard is a double-blind experiment, in which neither the subjects nor the experimenters know who is in which group. In the case of car color, we would literally have to blind the drivers, which would of course raise the accident rate considerably.
Not really. It's just enough that we don't tell the red car drivers that they're part of a special group. Just let them think we have equal number of different colors assigned to different drivers (and don't let them see what the others got). Then, the fact that their assigned color happens to be red will hold no significance to them related to the test then...
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#18Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not sure how to define "cause" without introducing counterfactuals. "This happened because I did that" seems to imply "Had I not done that, this would not have happened" -- a counterfactual.
I'm not sure that's always the case. Couldn't you have a scenario where your action was the direct cause of an outcome that might have come about some other way without your involvement at all? For instance, if a ball rolls down a hill because you pushed it, but a breeze blows a moment after you pushed the ball, if that breeze was strong enough to push the ball down the hill too, then you have a scenario where "that…
You're 100% correct.
The point isn't just about causality. As an undergraduate, one of my philosophy professors (Bill Lycan) told a class "never attempt to define anything in terms of counterfactuals. No matter what it is, there will be decisive counterexamples."
To be super-clear, this is not a statement about Pearl, and it's not denying that counterfactuals are interesting, just a claim that you can't define much of anything in terms of them.
P.S. He actually said "analyze", but the way philosophers use that term, it's appropriate to make the substitution to avoid confusion.
Re: A Philosopher Reviews Judea Pearl's “The Book of Why”
#20I’m 30 pages into the book. It hasn’t grabbed me yet.
Worth finishing?