SilasBarta comments on Causality does not imply correlation - Less Wrong

13 Post author: RichardKennaway 08 July 2009 12:52AM

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Comment author: SilasBarta 08 July 2009 05:21:08PM 2 points [-]

the impossibility of arriving at A-->B<-->C for this example from any existing algorithms for deriving causal structure from statistical information.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I already know the insight behind what you're going to say.

It's this: there is no fully general way to detect all mutual information between variables, because that would be equivalent to being able to compute Kolmogorov complexity (minimum length to output a string), which would in turn be equivalent to solving the Halting problem.

Comment author: RichardKennaway 08 July 2009 08:46:45PM *  0 points [-]

Correct me if I'm wrong

You're wrong. :-)

Kolmogorov complexity will play no part in the exposition.

Comment author: SilasBarta 08 July 2009 10:17:55PM -1 points [-]

Check my comment: I was only guessing the underlying insight behind your future post, not its content.

I obviously leave room for the possibility that you'll present a more limited or more poorly-defended version of what I just stated. ;-)