Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

I notice this has a "The New Science of..." subtitle. I cringe, "The New Science of Causality" was a nightmare.

"A group called "compatibilists" among whom I count myself...Granted that free will is (or may be) an illusion" - Compatabilists usually believe that free will are (causal) determinism are both real. I'm an incompatabilist and tend to think that determinism is the illusion. Why anyone would be worried about the compatability of illusions eludes me.

"To get any further, though, we need to develop a causal model specifying (for example) what variables we think the gene effects, what confounders might exist, and what other causal pathways might bring about the result" - this is actually the core of what this book should be about, you'd never guess from it's position in the text.

"When reading a scientific article. I often catch myself jumping from formula to formula, skipping the words altogether. To me, a formula is a baked idea. Words are ideas in the oven." - Refreshingly honest, but not an advert for sound science writing.

"Thanks to Szent-Györgyi, we now know the actual causal path: Citrus Fruits -> Vitamin C -> Scurvy" - it is not clear how any amount of statistical analysis could replace actual scientific discovery.

"...the English of this class [navvies, dock hands, casual labourers] generally make some attempt to live as decently as they can under these conditions...[The Irish] have settled in the nearest poor quarter and turned it into a slum..." - As a Hungarian might say of Gypsies. The Irish are now richer per capita than the English. Strangely, Priestley is not racist in his views of the other ethic groups in Liverpool.

"We can create a society big and generous enough to give away [a comfortable little home] and to be sorry for the pathetic fellow who receives" - in anticipation of The Welfare State. Generousity, however, didn't past the eighties, and now the provision of welfare is now seen as a business opportunity.

"I wonder if there is a country in Europe in which musicians, painters, authors, philosophers, scientists, count for less than they do in this country" - the 'cult of stupid' strikes again.

"...the probability we want to evaluate... I will later abbreviate it as "PN," the probability of necessity (i.e. the probability that X = 1 is a necessary is a necessary or but-for cause of Y = 1)" - the grand reveal! What is the probability that if this was used to sell the book - rather than 'the causal revolution', I would have bought it. Not high.

"When I was a boy, we had certain wealthy families of manufacturers who came as near to forming an aristocracy as such a democratic community as ours would allow. Now they are gone, and there places have not been taken by other families." - industrialisation is like a forest fire, burns brightly, burns quickly and moves on.

"There is no better country in England. There is everything a man can possibly want in these [Yorkshire] dales. from trout streams to high wild moorland walks, from deep woods to upland miles of heather and ling." - whatever 'ling' is, I must visit.

"Nearly everything possible has been done to spoil [football]: the heavy financial interests; the absurd transfer and player selling system; the lack of any birth or residential qualifications..." - I've seen similar changes introduced into Rugby Union during my lifetime, and I think the playing of the actual game is better for them. The milieu of the sport however...

"The trouble is that a man does not want to work at something he despises in order to enjoy his ample periods of leisure; he would rather work like the blazes that expresses him and shows his skill and resource"...alienated male labour is a big theme here, and male labour is on the way out. WWII gave men a breathing space, perhaps, before the relentless grind of technology throws us onto the scrapheap of history.

"But this still the country of gigantic hobby-horses" - an eccentric is definitely an English stereotype, but a hobbyist? Maybe there's an overlap.

'To Coventry and Birmingham' was a tour de force, it was teeming with political insight (the hidden dangers of Bourneville), religious mockery (Eastern religious poets) and enviromental pathos (Rusty Lane, West Bromwich). But he is a frustratingly inconsistent: God is to be preferred to politics until we attend Church, and the Black Country is worse than West Yorkshire because the countrysid there is horrid too.

"...philosophers tried to rescue Hume's first definition through the theory of probalistic causation" - well, Pearl did. This is strange because Hume's first definition - "...where ALL the objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second..." - is clearly logical, not probable (my caps).

"...[Thucyidedes] was writing at a time in human history when natural disasters were ordinarily ascribed to the will of gods" - how does that reconcile with Pearl's earlier claim that causal reasoning is part of human evolution?

"But so far we are missing the ability about personalized causation at the level of particular events or individuals." - I thought that was the only way of talking about causation, any other way is generalisation.

"With some mathematical trickery we could equally well replace the Demand>Price>Supply chain with a single arrow Demand>Supply...(though it would be less acceptable to economists)" - more trickery than mathematics I suspect, no wonder the economists are concerned, and given the predictive accuracy of economics, I am more so.

"It was not a chartered borough and therefore Nonconformists were free to settle and work there, and as the industrial revolution was largely nonconformist, Birmingham was able to take full advantage of it."

"These variables can be thought of as a context in which the probability is being computed" - the only philosophical account of causality that deals with 'context' I am acquainted with is Nelson Goodman's in "Fact, Fiction and Forecast" but that is a logical account, not a probabilistic one.

"The prospect of making these determinations by purely mathematical means should dazzle anybody who understands the cost and difficulty of running randomized trials" - now economy incentivizes fiddling with a causal model.

"Once scientists are made aware of this fact, they should seek shielded mediators whenever they face incurable confounders" - this sentence suggests the terminological problems I am having with this book, but the bigger problem here is that scientists would be inclined to choose causal models that offer clear results rather than ones that reflect reality.

"And I suspect that the system [i.e. Socialism] that excludes him [i.e. the unproductive eccentric] will prove to be too narrow for the good life" - I think History has proved J.B. right here, but why is he being so elusive?

"...but I know that [manual laborers in the Cotswolds] were not unhappy men. They knew what they could do and they were allowed to do it; they were not taught algebra and chemistry and then flung into a world that did not even want their casual labour." - I'm not convinced education was responsible for unemployment in the 1930s.

"[English prople] do not willingly let go of the country - as the foreign people do - once they have settled in a town; they are or gardeners, perhaps country gentlemen, at heart." - he gets there in the end a flower garden is a status symbol in England, not an expression of love of country. Peasants, foreign or otherwise prefer to grow fruit and vegetables.

Can we assume Lucy Snowe expresses Charlotte Brontë's view of teaching in a 'continental' school? So chauvanistic, so close to my own experience.

"Now that we have a thorough grounding in colliders, confounders, and the perils that both pose..." - can't say that I do, it's obvious I'm going to have to re-read this book. But do I start now, or after I've finished it? The problem seems to be both structural and terminological, a glossary would have been nice.

"The sad truth is that unattractive people are just as mean as attractive - but you'll never realise it, because you'll never realize it, because you'll never somebody who is both mean and unattractive - what's more we want attractiveness to cause meanness, a selection bias reinforced by a causation bias.

"...the cultural shocks that emanate from new scientific findings are eventually settled by cultural realignments that accommodate those findings - not by concealment." - unfortunately the scientist still feels the fullest effects of the shock.