[HN Gopher] Review: The Book of Why ___________________________________________________________________ Review: The Book of Why Author : pizzicato Score : 35 points Date : 2021-03-07 20:57 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (tachy.org) (TXT) w3m dump (tachy.org) | breck wrote: | I like the "Ladder of causation": Rung 1: | Associations, observational data (seeing) Rung 2: | Intervention (doing) Rung 3: Counterfactuals (imagining) | | I often go in reverse order--let's figure out the cheapest clever | ways to prove ship will sink (imagining). Then if it seems like | it might float let's build it and throw it on the pond (doing). | Then if it seems to float let's hop on board and see what | happens. | kenjackson wrote: | I feel like I've tried to read several writings on this topic, | mostly by Pearl. I feel like I'm good during the intro and | motivation, but once it gets to the meat I'm completely lost. I | feel like this is an area that would provide rich value if I | could ever understand it. | neatze wrote: | Does Judea Pearl other books overlap with The Book of Why ? | michelpp wrote: | Yes. To me The Book of Why is sort of an approachable summary | of his whole career culminating in his work on causal | inference. | michelpp wrote: | Brady Neal has a great video course on the subject with slides | and readings including Pearl and others: | | https://www.bradyneal.com/causal-inference-course | bachmeier wrote: | > This book dwells on the history of statistics a lot, and | statisticians, as the authors would have you believe, are zealots | who have conspired to keep causal thinking out of their field | right from the start. That is, until Pearl instigated the "Causal | Revolution", as he dubs it, the latest and greatest gift to | modern science. I have no dog in this fight, but Pearl (whom I | assume is the source of most of these opinions put to paper by | Mackenzie) often comes across as wildly biased and grandiose. For | what it's worth, I doubt that statisticians as a whole are | anywhere as malicious or ignorant as they're portrayed in this | book. | | This is correct AFAICT (I'm not a statistician even though I read | a lot of the statistics literature). The strange thing is that | I've never seen any obvious benefits to his comments of this | nature. In the most generous possible reading, they are a | distraction, with a less generous reading being that you can't | trust his interpretation of anything. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-07 23:00 UTC)