Updated Quote
Original quote:
Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.
Albert Einstein, October 26th, 1929
My updated version:
Counterfactuals are more important than data. Data is limited. Counterfactuals encircle the world.
Data can only show you what was, what actually happened, a single thread through time. Counterfactuals can generate an infinite number of alternative threads.
Imagination and counterfactuals share the same promise and problem. The promise is “one item of infinite value”. The problem is “billions of items of no value”. This is why brainstorming sessions usually generate hundreds of ideas, but exactly zero next steps. “Build a time machine” is very imaginative, but completely impractical. The sentiment is very correct, but turning it into something practical is very hard.
In my understanding, my modified quotation is just an offshoot of the “Model War” aka “Causuality War”, that has been going on since the 1920s.
People References
- Bertrand Russell on causality: "... a relic of a bygone age,..." referenced in this paper.
- Fischer: "The theory of inverse probability is founded upon an error, and must be wholly rejected" quoted from this paper.
- Neyman
- Pearson
- Karl R. Popper
- Nancy Cartwright: "... two kinds of laws of nature: laws of association and causal laws." Book Causal Laws and Effective Strategies.
- Stephen Morgan, Christopher Winship - "Counterfactual Causal Analysis"
- Ferenc Huszar - Cambridge Machine Learning - "Causal Inference 3"
- Unknown - "An Outline of the History of Methods of Discovering Causality"
