论文标题
因果几何形状
Causal Geometry
论文作者
论文摘要
信息几何形状通过量化模型参数对预测效应的影响,提供了一种正式研究科学模型功效的方法。但是,尽管因果模型是科学和解释的基本组成部分,但在该框架中几乎没有正式调查因果关系。在这里,我们介绍了因果几何形状,它不仅形式化了结果如何受到参数影响,还可以如何将模型的参数进行干预。因此,我们介绍了“有效信息”的几何版本,这是因果关系信息的已知衡量标准。我们表明,它是由效果空间与干预空间之间的匹配以它们的几何一致性的形式给出的。因此,鉴于固定的干预能力,有效的因果模型是与这些干预措施相匹配的模型。这是“因果出现”的结果,其中宏观因果关系可能比“基本”显微镜具有更多的信息。因此,我们认为,矛盾的是,粗粒模型可能比微观模型更具信息性,尤其是当它更好地匹配可访问干预措施的规模时,正如我们在玩具示例中所说明的那样。
Information geometry has offered a way to formally study the efficacy of scientific models by quantifying the impact of model parameters on the predicted effects. However, there has been little formal investigation of causation in this framework, despite causal models being a fundamental part of science and explanation. Here we introduce causal geometry, which formalizes not only how outcomes are impacted by parameters, but also how the parameters of a model can be intervened upon. Therefore we introduce a geometric version of "effective information" -- a known measure of the informativeness of a causal relationship. We show that it is given by the matching between the space of effects and the space of interventions, in the form of their geometric congruence. Therefore, given a fixed intervention capability, an effective causal model is one that matches those interventions. This is a consequence of "causal emergence," wherein macroscopic causal relationships may carry more information than "fundamental" microscopic ones. We thus argue that a coarse-grained model may, paradoxically, be more informative than the microscopic one, especially when it better matches the scale of accessible interventions -- as we illustrate on toy examples.