[mlthoughts2018]

Can you cite any parts of the article that support your view on this? I’ve read it a few times now and don’t see any. The author describes glossing past do-calculus before but for practical reasons, and doesn’t mention anything about “harsh or arrogant criticism” — and in fact doesn’t make reference to fair criticisms, like Rubin’s & Gelman’s.

[phkahler]

>> Can you cite any parts of the article that support your view on this?

How about this: "In the interview, Pearl dismisses most of what we do in ML as curve fitting. While I believe that's an overstatement (conveniently ignores RL for example), it's a nice reminder that most productive debates are often triggered by controversial or outright arrogant comments. Calling machine learning alchemy was a great recent example."

When a person is dismissive of an entire field and claims to have a better way, that often comes off as arrogant (even if it is true). My interpretation is "harsh" while the author uses the word "overstatement". You'll also see "arrogant" in there and that last line calling it "alchemy" really has to be interpreted with negative connotations. Perhaps I read more into it than was written, but that was the impression I got.

[mlthoughts2018]

Though the authors mentions that one comment of Pearl, all of the causal inference / graphical model work takes the opposite stance.

The popular academic writing in that field claims everyone else is being arrogant. It’s not a statement that Pearl is arrogant for dismissing huge chunks if ML, rather that since causal inference is such a cure-all, then everyone else is arrogant for not dropping everything to use it everywhere.

There’s no spirit i this article of saying, “boy it looked like a short-sighted criticism of ML, but now that I look at it, the causal inference people are right after all, and ML people are wrong.”

It may try to disingenuously frame it that way, but this is not what they are saying.

[seandougall]

That was what I took away from basically the whole introduction. The first paragraph describes his reaction to the criticism as “harsh” and “arrogant” (author’s words), the second describes his change of heart, and the third describes himself as “embarrassed” at having previously dismissed do-calculus.

It is written in a way that suggests he still regards the criticism as harsh and arrogant, but not incorrect, if that makes sense.

[mlthoughts2018]

It seems like you must have been reading a different article than me, or else are disingenuously describing what you read. When I do a control-f search for "harsh", it is not found anywhere in the article, so it certainly is not the author's own words.

The only part that mentions anything being "arrogant" is this quote:

> "it's a nice reminder that most productive debates are often triggered by controversial or outright arrogant comments"

which would actually be entirely counter to your point (the author is saying that 'arrogant' comments actually promote stimulating debate -- while I disagree with that too, it's clear the author did not at all say the criticism itself was arrogant, only that arrogant comments, many of which are Pearl's own comments, lead to debates).

When I read the introduction (which I have done now about 10 times), I see the author found practical reasons to dismiss do-calculus before (it was not pragmatic or applicable to real work problems). Now coming back to it later, he seems to be academically more interested in it and willing to invest more time in the nuance (while still nothing in the article gives an indication of its larger scale practical applicability). He does say he was 'embarrassed' to not look deeply into it before, but does not say this is because of how effective it is in real-world cases (which no one in this thread seems able to point to).