Cephalopod molluscs, causal models, and curious minds

Causal , Casual and Curious

In this issue of the Causal, Casual, and Curious column, I compare several ways of extracting information from post-treatment variables and call attention to some peculiar relationships among them. In particular, I contrast do-calculus conditioning with counterfactual conditioning and discuss their interpretations and scopes of applications. These relationships have come up in conversations wit...

Causal , Casual and Curious Judea Pearl

Conventional wisdom dictates that the more we know about a problem domain the easier it is to predict the effects of policies in that domain. Strangely, this wisdom is not sanctioned by formal analysis, when the notions of “knowledge” and “policy” are given concrete definitions in the context of nonparametric causal analysis. This note describes this peculiarity and speculates on its implications.

Early Mode of Life and Hatchling Size in Cephalopod Molluscs: Influence on the Species Distributional Ranges

Cephalopods (nautiluses, cuttlefishes, squids and octopuses) exhibit direct development and display two major developmental modes: planktonic and benthic. Planktonic hatchlings are small and go through some degree of morphological changes during the planktonic phase, which can last from days to months, with ocean currents enhancing their dispersal capacity. Benthic hatchlings are usually large,...

Neural regulation of a complex behavior: body patterning in cephalopod molluscs.

Unshelled cephalopods have a remarkable ability to alter their appearance, using textural, postural, and chromatic elements to generate a myriad of body patterns. Of the unshelled cephalopods, it is generally acknowledged that cuttlefish express the most detailed and widest range of body patterns, including static and dynamic patterns. In this paper we present data on the neuronal mechanisms un...

Studies on the Chemical Composition of Muscle Tissue. 3. the Mantle Muscle of Cephalopod Molluscs.