Quotes About Causality

In the order of literature, as in others, there is no act that is not the coronation of an infinite series of causes and the source of an infinite series of effects.

In other words, history teaches us to avoid the brand of naive empiricism that consists of learning from casual historical facts.

What is surprising is not the magnitude of our forecast errors, but our absence of awareness of it. This is all the more worrisome when we engage in deadly conflicts: wars are fundamentally unpredictable (and we do not know it). Owing to this misunderstanding of the causal chains between policy and actions, we can easily trigger Black Swans thanks to aggressive ignorance-like a child playing with a chemistry kit.

The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results, and one's role in them.

we are not made to view things as independent from each other. When viewing two events A and B, it is hard not to assume that A causes B, B causes A, or both cause each other. Our bias is immediately to establish a causal link.

Under opacity and in the newfound complexity of the world, people can hide risks and hurt others, with the law incapable of catching them. Iatrogenics has both delayed and invisible consequences. It is hard to see causal links, to fully understand what's going on. Under such epistemic limitations, skin in the game is the only true mitigator of fragility.

Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized.

When you are employed, hence dependent on other people's judgment, looking busy can help you claim responsibility for the results in a random environment. The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results and one's role in them.

complex systems do not have obvious one-dimensional cause-and-effect mechanisms, and that under opacity, you do not mess with such a system.

In the complex world, the notion of "cause" itself is suspect; it is either nearly impossible to detect or not really defined—another reason to ignore newspapers, with their constant supply of causes for things.

Our brain is not cut out for nonlinearities. People think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For

loss of bone density and degradation of the health of the bones also causes aging, diabetes, and, for males, loss of fertility and sexual function. We just cannot isolate any causal relationship in a complex system.

Our tendency to perceive—to impose—narrativity and causality are symptoms of the same disease—dimension reduction.

we are too brainwashed by notions of causality and we think that it is smarter to say because than to accept randomness.

Huet presents arguments against causality that are quite potent—he states, for instance, that any event can have an infinity of possible causes.

illusion of local causal chains—that is, confusing catalysts for causes and assuming that one can know which catalyst will produce which effect.

The appearance of busyness reinforces the perception of causality, of the link between results and one's role in them.

I wonder why people don't realize the simple truism, that is, the fooled by randomness effect: mistaking the merely associative for the causal, that is, if rich countries are educated, immediately inferring that education makes a country rich, without even checking. Epiphenomenon

This does not mean we cannot talk about causes; there are ways to escape the narrative fallacy. How? By making conjectures and running experiments, or as we shall see in Part Two (alas) by making testable predictions. The psychology experiments I am discussing here do so: They suggest a problem, and run a test.

The entire notion of biography is grounded in the arbitrary ascription of a causal relation between specified traits and subsequent events. Now consider the cemetery. The graveyard of failed persons will be full of people who shared the following traits: courage, risk taking, optimism, et cetera. Just like the population of millionaires. There may be some differences in skills, but what truly separates the two is for the most part a single factor: luck. Plain luck.

Reverse-engineering problem: It is easier to predict how an ice cube would melt into a puddle than, looking at a puddle, to guess the shape of the ice cube that may have caused it. This "inverse problem" makes narrative disciplines and accounts (such as histories) suspicious.

It is very difficult to isolate a single cause when there are plenty around.

Besides narrative and causality, journalists and public intellectuals of the sound-bite variety do not make the world simpler. Instead, they almost invariably make it look far more complicated than it is.

Our brain is not cut out for nonlinearities. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. This is why there are routes to success that are nonrandom, but very few people have the mental stamina to follow them.