Gates’s words give us an immediate clue that he is engaging in his own brand of magical thinking — which social scientists define as “illogical causal reasoning.

We would not be such competent thinkers if we had to rely only on the limited knowledge stored in our heads and our facility for causal reasoning.

Gates’s words give us an immediate clue that he is engaging in his own brand of magical thinking—which social scientists define as “illogical causal reasoning.

Gates’s words give us an immediate clue that he is engaging in his own brand of magical thinking — which social scientists define as “illogical causal reasoning.

Enumerative induction” (the simple enumeration of instances of association between exposure and disease) is insufficient to describe completely the inductive steps in causal reasoning.

This risk can be managed by complementing new data sources and analytical approaches with sound statistical and hypothesis driven analysis, careful causal reasoning, and expert consultation (1).

Judea Pearl won the 2011 Turing Award "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning.

This is largely due to the work of Judea Pearl (2009) who has received the 2011 Turing Award for “fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning”.