Lie
as we have to By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari & Path-specific
Causation Any fool can
tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to lie well. ~
Samuel Butler The
great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.
Dorothy L. Sayers
In Hadith al Qudsi, Allah (swt) says:
In Hadith al Qudsi, Allah (swt) says:
“Oh! Son of Adam! You eat My
provision and still disobey Me; but when you call Me, I still answer you. I
give you whatever you ask Me, but still you go on sinning. I hide these sins,
one after the another, one evil deed after another. I am ashamed of you but you
are not ashamed of Me? You forget Me, but I remember you. You are afraid of
people, but you are careless of Me. You fear enmity of people, but do not fear
My wrath.”
In the territory of lies
·
Journalists are
in the territory of lies with no passport for return and lie as they have to
for the sake of people. Humanity would perish of despair and boredom without
the spice lie adds to their monotonous humdrum existence
·
Don't lie if you don't have to. ~ Leo
Szila rd
Path-specific
Causation
As an illustration, consider a well-known example due to Germund
Hesslow (1976).
Consumption of birth
control pills (B)
is a risk factor for thrombosis (T).
On the other hand, birth control pills are an effective preventer of pregnancy
(P), which is in
turn a powerful risk factor for thrombosis.
Overall, birth control pills lower the probability of
thrombosis. Nonetheless, there seems to be a sense in which it is correct
to say that birth control pills cause thrombosis.
Here is what is going on: The use of birth control pills
affects one's chances of suffering from thrombosis in two different ways, one ‘direct’, and
one via the effect of pills on one's chances of becoming pregnant.
Whether birth control pills raise or lower the probability of
thrombosis overall will depend upon the relative strengths of these two routes.
As it turns out, for many women, the indirect route is
stronger than the direct route, so the overall effect is to prevent
thrombosis. Hitchcock (2001) suggests an analogy with component forces and net
forces in Newtonian physics.
Birth control pill use exerts two distinct component effects
upon thrombosis, one positive (causative), the other negative (preventative). The
net effect is negative. The theories of Cartwright and Eells, which do not hold
fixed any causal intermediates, are designed to detect net effects.
However, if we hold fixed whether a woman becomes pregnant or not, we find
that birth control pills increase the probability of thrombosis both among
those who do become pregnant, and those who do not.
By holding fixed whether or not a woman becomes pregnant, we can
isolate the component effect of pills on thrombosis via the other causal
pathway. More generally, we can determine the component effect of C for E along a causal
pathway by holding fixed (positively or negatively) all factors that are causal
intermediates between C and E that do not lie
along the given the path (together with the other factors required by the
theory).
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