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Why causal maps found by optimization can be misleading

Hazhir Aliahmadi, Irina Babayan, Greg van Anders

June 4, 2026

Finding cause-and-effect relationships in data typically means optimizing a single best network structure. But this misses a crucial problem: different causal maps can fit the same data equally well. This work uses entropy-based inference to generate ensembles of plausible causal graphs rather than picking one winner, then shows that "optimized" networks often include spurious relationships absent from other equally valid structures.
Published as Causal Atlases from Entropic Inference: Bayesian Networks beyond Optimal DAGs arXiv:2606.06440
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