 On a traditional picture, there is a broad, indiscriminate notion of causation which makes no appeal to normality; considerations of normality are used, pragmatically, to “select” which of the indiscriminate causes we call “causes” and which we call “background conditions”. The isomorphism between early preemption and short circuit challenges this picture, for two reasons. Firstly, c’s firing is presumably just as deviant in early preemption as it is in short circuit, so it can’t just be the normality of the putative cause which makes the difference. Secondly, those who want to deny that c’s firing is a cause of e’s failure to fire in short circuit do not want to claim that c’s firing was even a background condition for e’s failure to fire. The inclination is to say that c’s firing had nothing at all to do with e’s failure to fire.