Adrian Buck’s Reviews > The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect > Status Update

"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 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.

"...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.

"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.