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arXiv · 2212.03974

Counterfactuals for the Future

Lucius E. J. Bynum·Joshua R. Loftus·Julia Stoyanovich
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Abstract

Counterfactuals are often described as 'retrospective,' focusing on hypothetical alternatives to a realized past. This description relates to an often implicit assumption about the structure and stability of exogenous variables in the system being modeled -- an assumption that is reasonable in many settings where counterfactuals are used. In this work, we consider cases where we might reasonably make a different assumption about exogenous variables, namely, that the exogenous noise terms of each unit do exhibit some unit-specific structure and/or stability. This leads us to a different use of counterfactuals -- a 'forward-looking' rather than 'retrospective' counterfactual. We introduce "counterfactual treatment choice," a type of treatment choice problem that motivates using forward-looking counterfactuals. We then explore how mismatches between interventional versus forward-looking counterfactual approaches to treatment choice, consistent with different assumptions about exogenous noise, can lead to counterintuitive results.

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Lucius E. J. Bynum, Joshua R. Loftus, Julia Stoyanovich. 2022-12-07. Counterfactuals for the Future. https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.03974

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