This feels right to me. I can't implement it, and I'm not sure I could explain what Eli said, but I understand Pearl well enough (at an intuitive level) to say that it feels like the kind of additions Eli is talking about would clarify and reach the results he's talking about.

Read Pearl. It's not mathy, it's mostly words about graph manipulation.

If you're bothered by math, read Pearl anyway. He doesn't use equations or make you transform symbols. If you can think about information flows or reason visually, Pearl's calculus is for you. You'll understand what it means for something to be a cause or a possible cause or not a possible cause of something else in a deeper way than you do before Pearl.

If you're already comfortable with math, there's nothing hard about the theory, it's just using a different formalism than linear symbols to explain how events are connected causally.

Thanks Eli.