VII — Causality

Correlation, confounders, and the causal ladder

Sequence, correlation, prediction, intervention, mechanism, and counterfactual reasoning.

Epistemic status · Well Established

Four rungs

A came before B. A correlates with B. A predicts B. Changing A changes B. Only the last is causation, and usually only intervention shows it.

A third variable can create a correlation from nothing — and controlling for the wrong variable can create one too.

Would B have happened anyway? Every causal claim is secretly a claim about a world that did not occur.

Practice

For any causal headline, name one plausible confounder before accepting it.

Evaluating sources in an age of infinite plausible text