Let’s say there are two conditions X and Y. Neither sole-X nor lonesome-Y, cause the disaster, but when X+Y happen together, they produce a very negative outcome.

It would seem that both are equally “root” of the cause. But human brain desires to declare one as primary.

In situation where disaster was “human died”, with conditions X=“bullet was shot at the human”, Y=“humans are squishy”, we naturally would lean towards X being the root cause, while Y would be treated as ”that’s just the way it is”.

On the other hand we could construct ”human died” situation with reverse root cause assignment, ie. X=“bullet was shot at human” is taken as a constant, while root cause is Y=“ humans are squishy” (employing some grotesque reader can construct a better one, but something like “The journalist should have followed the process and used a bulletproof vest. It is a war zone after all” seem to work)

“Root case” usually is the smallest and most easily changable part of situation that can prevent disaster.

Though the “ease of change” is not fixed. (“People must follow process” vs “invest milions to change process”)

I just wanted to ramble a bit on the concept of “root cause”. To highlight that on precision-of-terminology-spectrum that spans between mathemathics and astrology, “root cause” falls somewhere in the middle. (probably bit to the right of engineering)