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tgb comments on Causal Diagrams and Causal Models - Less Wrong
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It seems clear to me that it is a very bad example. I find that consistently the worst part of Eliezer's non-fiction writing is that he fails to separate contentious claims from writings on unrelated subjects. Moreover, he usually discards the traditional view as ridiculous rather than admitting that its incorrectness is extremely non-obvious. He goes so far in this piece as to give the standard view a straw-man name and to state only the most laughable of its proponents' justifications. This mars an otherwise excellent piece and I am unwilling to recommend this article to those who are not already reading LW.
Yeah, I didn't even mind the topic, but I thought this particular sentence was pretty sketchy:
This sounds like a Fully General Mockery of any claim that humans can ever affect outcomes. For example:
And selectively applied Fully General Mockeries seem pretty Dark Artsy.
Of course not! The real reason drinkers cause more accidents is that low-conscientiousness people are both more likely to drink before driving and more likely to drive recklessly. (The impairment of reflexes due to alcohol does itself have an effect, but it's not much larger than that due to e.g. sleep deprivation.) If a high-conscientiousness person was randomly assigned to the “drunk driving” condition, they would drive extra cautiously to compensate for their impairment. ;-)
(I'm exaggerating for comical effect, but I do believe a weaker version of this.)
“Extremely non-obvious”? Have you looked at how many calories one hour of exercise burns, and compared that to how many calories foodstuffs common in the First World contain?
I agree that focusing on input has far higher returns than focusing on output. Simple calorie comparison predicts it, and in my personal experience I've noted small appearance and weight changes after changes in exercise level and large appearance and weight changes after changes in intake level. That said, the traditional view- "eat less and exercise more"- has the direction of causation mostly right for both interventions and to represent it as just "exercise more" seems mistaken.