[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).