Causal Discovery in Action: Learning Chain-Reaction Mechanisms from Interventions

Panayiotis Panayiotou; Özgür Şimşek

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arXiv · 2603.22620

Causal Discovery in Action: Learning Chain-Reaction Mechanisms from Interventions

Panayiotis Panayiotou·Özgür Şimşek

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Abstract

Causal discovery is challenging in general dynamical systems because, without strong structural assumptions, the underlying causal graph may not be identifiable even from interventional data. However, many real-world systems exhibit directional, cascade-like structure, in which components activate sequentially and upstream failures suppress downstream effects. We study causal discovery in such chain-reaction systems and show that the causal structure is uniquely identifiable from blocking interventions that prevent individual components from activating. We propose a minimal estimator with finite-sample guarantees, achieving exponential error decay and logarithmic sample complexity. Experiments on synthetic models and diverse chain-reaction environments demonstrate reliable recovery from a few interventions, while observational heuristics fail in regimes with delayed or overlapping causal effects.

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Panayiotis Panayiotou, Özgür Şimşek. 2026-04-03. Causal Discovery in Action: Learning Chain-Reaction Mechanisms from Interventions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.22620

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