basically i just agree with borsboom's "attack of the psychometricians" http://www.stat.cmu.edu/~brian/Pmka-Attack-V71-N3/pmka-2006-71.3-425-440-borsboom.pdf …
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and i think the "not a nonsense variable" criterion is hiding some casual theorizing on our part
correlation between a "nonsense var" and (say) income would be uninteresting bc we'd know it wasn't causal
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so when we grant "existence" we're saying "this seems like a good candidate for a node in a causal model"
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if we go from pure descriptive stats to "this exists," we've smuggled in some causal claims under the radar
End of conversation
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