Scott Cunningham | Causal Inference (The Mixtape)

Scott Cunningham | Causal Inference (The Mixtape)

Scott Cunningham (Baylor University) discusses the ideas of his book "Causal Inference: The Mixtape". Topics include trusting inference in the absence of counterfactuals and the challenges of apply scientific methods to social phenomena. 

Watch it on...

YouTube: https://youtu.be/yNaCudDVTkY

Podbean: https://dataandsciencepodcast.podbean.com/e/scott-cunningham-causal-inference-the-mixtape/

0:00 - COMING UP...

0:35 - What makes it into the mixed tape?

7:10 - Coding to learn

11:15 - More people are expected to work with data & code

12:50 - Design vs program vs estimators

20:40 - Causation with zero correlation

27:00 - Optimization make everything endogenous

28:45 - The hospital example

29:30 - Credible scientific discovery vs motivated discovery

39:55 - Different meanings of causality

43:30 - The impossible counterfactual 

47:00 Counterfactual nihilism

49:20 Social experiments / Defund the police

53:35 - Skepticism about the science of social phenomena

1:05:20 - The Italian crime example

1:16:30 - Scientific debate