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