Summary of The Book of Why by Judea Pearl and Dana MacKenzie

As humans, our instinct is to ask the questions “why” and “what if?” As you go about your day, you might ask yourself, “If I take this aspirin, will my headache go away?” or “What did I eat that made my stomach hurt?” You might even ask questions about the past too like, “What if I left my house just a few minutes earlier, would I have made my flight?” Whenever we ask questions like these, we are dealing with cause and effect relationships, or how certain factors lead to various results. In the scientific community, “Correlation is not causation” has been the mantra chanted by scientists for more than a century, prohibiting causal talk in many classrooms and scientific studies. Today, however, we have gone through a Causal Revolution instigated by author Judea Pearl and his colleagues. Through The Book of Why, Pearl shows us how his work in causal relationships will allow us to explore the world in more ways than one. It also shows us that the key to artificial intelligence is human thought and creating machines that can determine causes and effects. As you read, you’ll learn how the human brain is the most advanced tool in the world, how misunderstood data can lead to protests of the smallpox vaccine, and how controlled experiments have been around for as long as humans. 

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