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.
