The Book of Why: The New Science of Cause and Effect

having such laws permits us to violate them selectively so as to create worlds

selectively break the rules of logic.

According to the central limit theorem, proven in 1810 by Pierre-Simon Laplace, any such random process—one that amounts to a sum of a large number of coin flips—will lead to the same probability distribution, called the normal distribution (or bell-shaped curve). The Galton board is simply a visual demonstration of Laplace’s theorem.

of the data increases, leaving a single objective conclusion in the end.

Harari posits that our ancestors’ capacity to imagine nonexistent things was the key to everything, for it allowed them to communicate better.

A confounder will make A and C statistically correlated even though there is no direct causal link between them.

Computers are not good at breaking rules,

Nature is like a genie that answers exactly the question we pose, not necessarily the one we intend to ask.

Maybe his Midwestern upbringing and the tiny college he went to encouraged his self-reliance and taught him that the surest kind of knowledge is what you construct yourself.