Causal Direction from Convergence Time: Faster Training in the True Causal Direction

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.22254v1
• Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 21:34:57 GMT
• Title: Causal Direction from Convergence Time: Faster Training in the True Causal Direction
• Authors: Abdulrahman Tamim,
• Abstract summary: We introduce Causal Computational Asymmetry (CCA), a principle for causal direction identification based on optimization dynamics.<n>CCA operates in optimization-time space, distinguishing it from methods such as RESIT, IGCI, and SkewScore.<n>We further embed CCA into a broader framework termed Causal Compression Learning (CCL), which integrates graph structure learning, causal information compression, and policy optimization.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: We introduce Causal Computational Asymmetry (CCA), a principle for causal direction identification based on optimization dynamics in which one neural network is trained to predict $Y$ from $X$ and another to predict $X$ from $Y$, and the direction that converges faster is inferred to be causal. Under the additive noise model $Y = f(X) + \varepsilon$ with $\varepsilon \perp X$ and $f$ nonlinear and injective, we establish a formal asymmetry: in the reverse direction, residuals remain statistically dependent on the input regardless of approximation quality, inducing a strictly higher irreducible loss floor and non-separable gradient noise in the optimization dynamics, so that the reverse model requires strictly more gradient steps in expectation to reach any fixed loss threshold; consequently, the forward (causal) direction converges in fewer expected optimization steps. CCA operates in optimization-time space, distinguishing it from methods such as RESIT, IGCI, and SkewScore that rely on statistical independence or distributional asymmetries, and proper z-scoring of both variables is required for valid comparison of convergence rates. On synthetic benchmarks, CCA achieves 26/30 correct causal identifications across six neural architectures, including 30/30 on sine and exponential data-generating processes. We further embed CCA into a broader framework termed Causal Compression Learning (CCL), which integrates graph structure learning, causal information compression, and policy optimization, with all theoretical guarantees formally proved and empirically validated on synthetic datasets.

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