That paper had no proof attached, because it's a heuristic and can easily be fooled by a bad setting. So maybe some causal relationship that are obvious can be

That paper had no proof attached, because it's a heuristic and can easily be fooled by a bad setting. So maybe some causal relationship that are obvious can be learnt passively. But what I am saying is entirely consistent with what Pearl is saying in the article. To get to the next level of ai you need an experimenting agent. Passive methods in general are impossible for untangling causal relationship.