Transcript
Accessible transcript
What happens in the demonstration, chapter by chapter.
0:00–0:32 · Data and provisional graph
This is the Asia benchmark. Its eight binary variables describe recent travel to Asia, tuberculosis, smoking, lung cancer, bronchitis, a constructed either-disease indicator, X-ray results, and dyspnoea, or shortness of breath. This is Causal ABA's candidate causal graph. Node details provide variable meanings; the run summary records the data, settings, and provenance. The graph is provisional: a set of hypotheses open to challenge and revision.
0:32–1:05 · Causal ABA and the CI ledger
Causal ABA begins with 163 conditional-independence statements derived from the data. Eighty-seven currently survive the argumentative fact loop as facts, while 76 are released as assumptions. In and out answer a different question: whether the displayed graph satisfies each statement. Here 127 are in and 36 are out. Both groups remain inspectable rather than being hidden behind the summary. The interface keeps those two classifications separate.
1:05–1:50 · Inspect and adopt language-model proposals
The language-model panel contains proposals, not edits. Focusing bronchitis and dyspnoea makes their local alternatives legible. The bronchitis-to-dyspnoea direction has five-out-of-five agreement, but remains an assumption until the reviewer adopts it. The green state records that provisional acceptance. We then focus smoking and bronchitis. Clicking their arrow joins the language-model judgement with the pair's evidence. The upper rows are facts; the final lung-conditioned statement is an assumption that is out. We inspect without contesting, then adopt smoking-to-bronchitis. Adoption means provisionally accepting the assumption as fact, subject to checking full coherence.
1:50–2:15 · Add a competing expert judgement
A clinical reviewer adds a different, mechanism-based input: a bronchitis diagnosis can change subsequent smoking behaviour. That later-time influence is plausible, but it cannot coexist with smoking-to-bronchitis in one static acyclic graph. We record the proposal at full confidence and deliberately defer the conflict to Check. Once again, the old graph is not manually redrawn.
2:15–2:50 · Challenge tuberculosis directions
The clinical reviewer now rejects the displayed dyspnoea-to-tuberculosis direction. Dyspnoea is a downstream symptom and cannot cause the bacterial infection, so this is a hard prohibition and the direct disagreement appears in red. A broader, softer rule says that alternative non-Asia parents of tuberculosis remain under clinical contestation. It is guidance rather than an absolute veto. These rules constrain the next evaluation; they do not silently rewrite the current graph. The confidence value makes that difference explicit.
2:50–3:02 · Joint contestation log
Show all constraints exposes the scope. The log combines language-model and clinical-review inputs, each with its source, confidence and rationale.
3:02–3:43 · Expose and resolve the conflict
Check now finds a real blocker. Three hard required edges include both smoking-to-bronchitis and bronchitis-to-smoking, which form a directed cycle. The red resolution panel does not silently privilege either source: it places the adopted language-model direction and the clinical reviewer's later-time argument side by side. The review chair fixes the temporal scope. Smoking is treated as pre-diagnosis exposure in this static graph, while the reverse influence is retained as a softer later-time preference. The green result confirms that the hard inputs are now jointly coherent. The weaker claim remains visible for later review.
3:43–4:02 · Principled Causal ABA rerun
Causal ABA now recomputes over the saved data-derived statements and the resolved language-model and expert inputs. It searches again for a graph and fact loop that survive together. This is principled revision of both the causal output and its evidential basis, not a drawing command.
4:02–4:38 · Explain changes and unresolved preferences
The immediate-change view shows the result. Bronchitis-to-dyspnoea is added, and dyspnoea-to-tuberculosis is removed. The rerun also proposes lung-cancer-to-tuberculosis against the softer rule. The summary keeps two unresolved preferences visible: that clinical prohibition and the later-time bronchitis-to-smoking influence. Disagreement remains attributable. This is managed disagreement, not automatic obedience. The newly added lung-cancer-to-tuberculosis edge can itself be contested in a later iteration if new evidence emerges.
4:38–5:00 · Revised fact loop and takeaway
The evidence changes too. One statement is released, so 163 tests now divide into 86 facts and 77 assumptions. Causal ABA makes every input contestable: conflicts are resolved explicitly, while conclusions and unresolved judgements remain auditable and open to review.