causality

We understand a story’s meaning, in part, by tracking its causality, and a story’s power stems from our sense that its causality is truthful, which is to say, that its internal logic is solid.

“causation” is simple, if a little metaphorical: a variable X is a cause of Y if Y “listens” to X and determines its value in response to what it hears.

Causation is always more difficult to prove than Correlation. When analyzing complex Systems with many variables and Interdependencies, it’s often extremely difficult to find true causality.

As rational animals, human beings naturally desire to know the truth about reality. As Aristotle puts it at the beginning of The Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.”

Causality is to the writer what melody is to the songwriter: a superpower that the audience feels as the crux of the matter; the thing the audience actually shows up for; the hardest thing to do; that which distinguishes the competent practitioner from the extraordinary one.

One thing is said to be the cause of another thing because (a) it explains the very existence of that thing, or (b) it explains why the thing exists in this or that particular way, the “mode” of its existence.

Causality, broadly interpreted, includes any kind of knowledge about how the world changes over time.*1