If you've ever read an incident report where “X occurred because operator failed to perform action Y”…
"Here’s the rub: a counterfactual cannot be a cause. By definition the counterfactual did not happen, therefore it cannot have caused anything. Only events that actually occur can be causes of other events.”
https://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/2021/06/counterfactuals-are-not-causality/