beforeword · English transcription of the sent letter Intended recipient: Judea Pearl Author: Kirill Shebetov · beforeword Sent to: judea@cs.ucla.edu Sending date in the supplied materials: The header shows only “Friday”; the calendar date is not shown. The sending timezone is not supplied. Status: shown in the Sent folder; no reply published. The published materials do not establish receipt or reading by the recipient. Record: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/pearl/en/#record Record data: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/pearl/record.json Russian translation: https://beforeword.xyz/letters/researchers/pearl/#letter Transcribed from author-supplied screenshots. Screen line wraps are joined and overlaps included once; wording and punctuation are retained. beforeword’s context and links to discussed publications are separate on the letter page. --- BEGIN ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION --- Subject: Causal models: the grounds for interpreting evidence Dear Professor Pearl, In Section 3.1 of “Causal inference in statistics: An overview”, you write: “In interpreting this equation one should think of a physical process”. Your discussion explicitly distinguishes the algebraic equation from its causal interpretation. Please indicate whether your framework represents the grounds for reading an experimental report as support for a causal assumption, or treats that justification as separate from the causal model. beforeword proposes keeping three elements separately inspectable: the written record, its selected interpretation, and the grounds offered for accepting that interpretation. This examination includes the records offered as supporting evidence. The phrase “physical process” also remains part of the writing under examination. Written accounts of experiments, expert judgments, and any proposed criterion receive the same treatment. This letter is included. The reading procedure and worked examples: https://beforeword.xyz/model/en/ Kirill Shebetov beforeword + --- END ENGLISH TRANSCRIPTION ---