10-2e8 Reasoning about causes and effects is reasoning about variants of the causes and effects. What would've happened. How it could've been otherwise.

10-2e9 Variants do exist in the multiverse - not in the past or in the future, but they literally do exist somewhere in the multiverse!

There is nothing in this definition of cause and effect that logically requires causes to precede their effects, and it could be that in very exotic situations, such as very close to the Big Bang or inside black holes, they do not.