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Judea Pearl has a new book (with Dana Mackenzie).
amazon.com/Book-Why-Scien…
To me, Judea is an intellectual hero. My life changed after hearing him at Harvard over 20 years ago. Like many of us in #causalinference, I owe so much to him.
And yet I disagree with him on a key issue.
amazon.com/Book-Why-Scien…
To me, Judea is an intellectual hero. My life changed after hearing him at Harvard over 20 years ago. Like many of us in #causalinference, I owe so much to him.
And yet I disagree with him on a key issue.
Pearl believes that any causal effect we can name must also exist.
To him, the meaning of “the causal effect of A on death” is self-evident. He says we can quantify, say, the causal effect of race or the causal effect of obesity.
I don't think we can.
To him, the meaning of “the causal effect of A on death” is self-evident. He says we can quantify, say, the causal effect of race or the causal effect of obesity.
I don't think we can.
We cannot estimate "the causal effect of obesity" because we don't know what that means.
For the causal effect of A to be well defined, we need a common understanding of the interventions that we would use to change A. Otherwise, the effect is undefined.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
For the causal effect of A to be well defined, we need a common understanding of the interventions that we would use to change A. Otherwise, the effect is undefined.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
