As I understand it: If you draw out events as a DAG with arrows representing causality, then A acausally effects B in the case that there is no path from A to B, and yet a change to A necessitates a change to B, normally because of either a shared ancestor or a logical property.
I most often use it informally to mean “contrary to our intuitive notions of causality, such as the idea that causality must run forward in time”, instead of something formal having to do with DAGs. Because from what I understand, causality theorists still disagree on how to formalize causality (e.g., what constitutes a DAG that correctly represents causality in a given situation), and it seems possible to have a decision theory (like UDT) that doesn’t make use of any formal definition of causality at all.
As I understand it: If you draw out events as a DAG with arrows representing causality, then A acausally effects B in the case that there is no path from A to B, and yet a change to A necessitates a change to B, normally because of either a shared ancestor or a logical property.
I most often use it informally to mean “contrary to our intuitive notions of causality, such as the idea that causality must run forward in time”, instead of something formal having to do with DAGs. Because from what I understand, causality theorists still disagree on how to formalize causality (e.g., what constitutes a DAG that correctly represents causality in a given situation), and it seems possible to have a decision theory (like UDT) that doesn’t make use of any formal definition of causality at all.