Same Evidence, Different Target: Decoding How Diagnostic Evidence Bears on Causal Questions from Language-Model States
The same diagnostic result can support or challenge one causal claim yet fail to address another when the claims concern different populations, outcomes, estimands, pathways, or identifying assumptions. When the evidence and target vary together, a correct answer may reflect favorable or adverse wording, lexical overlap, or a familiar diagnostic pattern rather than matching the evidence to the causal question. We introduce paired prompts that repeat the same diagnostic evidence verbatim while changing the causal target. Each prompt is labeled Favors, Challenges, Unresolved, or Wrong Target according to how the evidence bears on the causal question. A pair is recovered only when both promp...
| Authors | Weiyi Kong, Zhuoran Li |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CL |
| Published | 29 July 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 29 July 2026 |
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