Causal Interfaces

David A. Eubanks

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arXiv · 1404.4884

Causal Interfaces

David A. Eubanks

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Abstract

The interaction of two binary variables, assumed to be empirical observations, has three degrees of freedom when expressed as a matrix of frequencies. Usually, the size of causal influence of one variable on the other is calculated as a single value, as increase in recovery rate for a medical treatment, for example. We examine what is lost in this simplification, and propose using two interface constants to represent positive and negative implications separately. Given certain assumptions about non-causal outcomes, the set of resulting epistemologies is a continuum. We derive a variety of particular measures and contrast them with the one-dimensional index.

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David A. Eubanks. 2014-04-18. Causal Interfaces. https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.4884

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