Counterfactuals for the Future
Lucius E. J. Bynum, Joshua R. Loftus, Julia Stoyanovich
Abstract
Counterfactuals are often described as 'retrospective,' focusing on hypothetical alternatives to a realized past. This description relates to an often implicit assumption about the structure and stability of exogenous variables in the system being modeled --- an assumption that is reasonable in many settings where counterfactuals are used. In this work, we consider cases where we might reasonably make a different assumption about exogenous variables; namely, that the exogenous noise terms of each unit do exhibit some unit-specific structure and/or stability. This leads us to a different use of counterfactuals --- a forward-looking rather than retrospective counterfactual. We introduce "counterfactual treatment choice," a type of treatment choice problem that motivates using forward-looking counterfactuals. We then explore how mismatches between interventional versus forward-looking counterfactual approaches to treatment choice, consistent with different assumptions about exogenous noise, can lead to counterintuitive results.
BibTeX
@article{Bynum_Loftus_Stoyanovich_2023, title={Counterfactuals for the Future}, volume={37}, url={https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/26655}, DOI={10.1609/aaai.v37i12.26655}, abstractNote={Counterfactuals are often described as ’retrospective,’ focusing on hypothetical alternatives to a realized past. This description relates to an often implicit assumption about the structure and stability of exogenous variables in the system being modeled --- an assumption that is reasonable in many settings where counterfactuals are used. In this work, we consider cases where we might reasonably make a different assumption about exogenous variables; namely, that the exogenous noise terms of each unit do exhibit some unit-specific structure and/or stability. This leads us to a different use of counterfactuals --- a forward-looking rather than retrospective counterfactual. We introduce "counterfactual treatment choice," a type of treatment choice problem that motivates using forward-looking counterfactuals. We then explore how mismatches between interventional versus forward-looking counterfactual approaches to treatment choice, consistent with different assumptions about exogenous noise, can lead to counterintuitive results.}, number={12}, journal={Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence}, author={Bynum, Lucius E. J. and Loftus, Joshua R. and Stoyanovich, Julia}, year={2023}, month={Jun.}, pages={14144-14152} }