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bildramer t1_iyzm2m7 wrote

Reply to comment by owlthatissuperb in Causal Explanations Considered Harmful: On the logical fallacy of causal projection by owlthatissuperb

Obviously you can infer causation from raw "passive" data. What else could our brains possibly be doing when they learn? We don't affect most things.

One way imagine how it's possible is to contrast the DAGs A->C, A->D, B->C, B->D, C->E, C->F, D->E, D->F and the one with arrows flipped. Then think about conditional dependence, P(C|D,A,B) = P(C|A,B) vs. P(C|D,E,F) != P(C|E,F). Knowing everything about effects can increase mutual information between C and D; knowing everything about causes can't. That's how you can distinguish between this DAG and the backwards one using only correlations. No need to intervene anywhere.

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owlthatissuperb OP t1_iz0fsy9 wrote

I haven't followed your technical example yet but I plan on it. Thanks for that!

> What else could our brains possibly be doing when they learn?

I don't think this argument says much--our brains use fuzzy heuristics all the time, and people were really bad at understanding causality (see things like raindances and voodoo) before experimental science came along (which manipulates the world to see how it reacts).

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