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I'm not sure what you mean by association here then. If you mean to say that there are, say, an infinite number of DAGs that adequately explain reality -- and

I'm not sure what you mean by association here then. If you mean to say that there are, say, an infinite number of DAGs that adequately explain reality -- and in the simplest, for this liver-kideny case, we don't see association ---- but in the "True DAG" we do.. then maybe. But my point is, at least, that we dont have access to this True model. In the context of data analysis, of computing association of any kind, the value we get -- for any reasonable choice of formulae -- is consistent with cause or no cause. Performing analysis as-if you have the true model, and as-if the null rival is just randomness, is pseudoscience in my view. Though, more often, it's called frequentism.

godelski 2y ago
> what you mean by association here then. Mutual information > but in the "True DAG" I'm unconvinced there is a "true" DAG and at best I think there's "the most reasonable DAG given our observations." For all practical purposes I think this won't be meaningfully differentiable in most cases, so I'm fine to work with that. Just want to make sure we're on the same page. > But my point is, at least, that we dont have access to this True model. Then we're in agreement, but it's turtles all the way down. Everything is a model and all models are wrong, right? We definitely have more useful models, but there is always a "truer" model. Why I was pushing against your example is because I think it is important to distinguish lack of association because the data to form the association is missing or unavailable to us (which may be impossibly unavailable; and if we go deep enough, we will always hit this point) vs a lack of association because the two things are actually independent[0]. One can be found via better sampling where the other will never be found (unfortunately indistinguishable from impossibly unavailable information). > as-if you have the true model Which is exactly why I'm making the point. We never have (or even have access to!) the "true" model. Just better models. That's why I say it isn't about being right, but less wrong. Because one is something that's achievable. If you're going to point to one turtle, for this, I think you might as well point to the rest. But there's still things that aren't turtles. [0] I'll concede the to an argument of "at some point" everything is associated tracing back in time. Though I'm not entirely convinced of this argument because meta information.

godelski 2y ago

> what you mean by association here then. Mutual information > but in the "True DAG" I'm unconvinced there is a "true" DAG and at best I think there's "the most reasonable DAG given our observations." For all practical purposes I think this won't be meaningfully differentiable in most cases, so I'm fine to work with that. Just want to make sure we're on the same page. > But my point is, at least, that we dont have access to this True model. Then we're in agreement, but it's turtles all the way down. Everything is a model and all models are wrong, right? We definitely have more useful models, but there is always a "truer" model. Why I was pushing against your example is because I think it is important to distinguish lack of association because the data to form the association is missing or unavailable to us (which may be impossibly unavailable; and if we go deep enough, we will always hit this point) vs a lack of association because the two things are actually independent[0]. One can be found via better sampling where the other will never be found (unfortunately indistinguishable from impossibly unavailable information). > as-if you have the true model Which is exactly why I'm making the point. We never have (or even have access to!) the "true" model. Just better models. That's why I say it isn't about being right, but less wrong. Because one is something that's achievable. If you're going to point to one turtle, for this, I think you might as well point to the rest. But there's still things that aren't turtles. [0] I'll concede the to an argument of "at some point" everything is associated tracing back in time. Though I'm not entirely convinced of this argument because meta information.