The Book of Why

Phenomenal read. This felt like a chilled glass of water on a summer day. I have always been driven by “why” questions and Pearl beautifully explain why (pun intended) humans go crazy over this question. We are causal thinkers, evolutionarily. Anytime we observe an unexplained process, an inevitable “why” crosses our mind. Curiosity is an innate human facet. But this book is not a philosophical (maybe a little bit) or a neuroscientific one. In fact, Pearl a professor in Computer Science, methodically dissects how we should be careful in out attempts at finding answers to our why’s. Causal Inference.

He invented do-calculus (with its completenesss formally proven), state diagrams and simplified all of that into 3 rungs of the ladder of causation - association (seeing), intervention (doing) and counterfactuals (imagining). Each level provides deeper insights into what really causes something, instead of simply correlating. But at the same time, getting progressing more challenging. For instance, counterfactuals could almost never be performed in real life, only simulated in machines, but to accurately study counterfactuals, the models that simulate a physical process needs to sufficiently robust. Phew, I’m way beyond my depths here, there is a whole field of causal inference and I hope I can learn how to swim in that ocean one day.

Oh, and this book introduced me to Barbara Stoddard Burks. Her story redefined resilience and persistence for me.