The question of causality is in fact attempting to answer #3, and it seems like you’re failing to understand that. This is exactly what “true causality” means. The question being asked is whether the outputs and incomes of the smartest people are coming from the education, or from the environment where colleges exist. (Implicitly comparing to a world where no colleges exist.) The Fed study and others are trying to answer whether and how much of the outputs and incomes of the smartest people can be assigned to college, and implicitly calculating what the outcomes would be if colleges did not exist.
> It might be easier for you to point us to a sentence or paragraph in either paper that envisages a world where no one goes to college.
Ah, so you want a literal mention of no college. See this is where it becomes clear that you don’t understand the causality question and you didn’t understand the connection between what @jletienne asked and what @jedberg asked. They are not different questions. You think they are, but they aren’t.
The question of causality is in fact attempting to answer #3, and it seems like you’re failing to understand that. This is exactly what “true causality” means. The question being asked is whether the outputs and incomes of the smartest people are coming from the education, or from the environment where colleges exist. (Implicitly comparing to a world where no colleges exist.) The Fed study and others are trying to answer whether and how much of the outputs and incomes of the smartest people can be assigned to college, and implicitly calculating what the outcomes would be if colleges did not exist.
> It might be easier for you to point us to a sentence or paragraph in either paper that envisages a world where no one goes to college.
Ah, so you want a literal mention of no college. See this is where it becomes clear that you don’t understand the causality question and you didn’t understand the connection between what @jletienne asked and what @jedberg asked. They are not different questions. You think they are, but they aren’t.