MMP.15:3 - Forces

• The requested effect versus an unnecessarily complete model. An average contrast may be determined while individual responses or the full intervention distribution remain unknown.
• Usable assumptions versus attractive fit. Temporal ordering, excluded pathways and invariance across populations carry causal meaning that goodness of fit cannot supply.
• Available information versus convenient information. Separate experimental, selected and population laws cannot be treated as one complete joint distribution without a derivation.
• Simple sufficient construction versus broader search. Adjustment is often enough. Mediated identification or a general identification algorithm can succeed where adjustment does not, at the cost of additional structural reasoning.
• A conditional answer versus another investigation. An explicit bound or assumption-dependent result may already suffice. New observations must answer an unresolved consequential question.