Class 15: Acausal Effects & Probability's Directionless

Lesson 15: Acausal Effects & Probability's Directionless
Uncertainty & Probability Theory: The Logic of Science

I renamed the video, coming up with a better title only after I had finished recording. I want to emphasize that future knowledge can influence past events! Not the events themselves, but our knowledge of the events. Past events are not caused to change. The change is acausal and with respect to our uncertainty.

This has profound consequences. It means that we can't get cause from probability models. We bring cause TO models. This means the enormous number of causal claims we see based on probability models are not justified. Not to say they are wrong, because modelers may have guessed right. But they can't know it.

https://www.wmbriggs.com/public/briggs_breaking_law_averages.pdf

HOMEWORK: With B = M red balls, N total balls, and so N - M white balls, and with R_i = red drawn on i-th draw, what is Pr(R_3|B)?

All questions will be answered in the following Monday's lecture.

Written lecture: https://www.wmbriggs.com/post/52506/
https://wmbriggs.substack.com/

Permanent class page: https://www.wmbriggs.com/class/