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When local causes are more explanatorily useful.

Pierrick Bourrat
Published in: The Behavioral and brain sciences (2023)
Madole & Harden plead for better integration of causal knowledge of different depths to understand complex human traits. Classically, local causes - a particular type of shallow causes - are considered less useful than more generalisable causes, giving a false impression that the latter causes are more useful and desirable. Using a simple example, I show that sometimes the contrary is true.
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