27 - David Lagnado: How Causal Reasoning Can Help Us Make Better Judgments and Solve Criminal Cases

Bella chats with Prof. Dave Lagnado, a professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences in the Department of Experimental Psychology at UCL. Dave's research focuses on how people use causal models to draw inferences and make decisions. He has written over 100 articles and co-authored a textbook on the psychology of decision making. He has worked with US intelligence, the UK government and various legal and financial institutions, looking at methods to improve reasoning and decision making.

In this episode, Dave discusses his new book on the human capacity for causal reasoning and the challenges we face in evaluating evidence using criminal cases. Bella and Dave talk about how Bayesian Inference and Pearl's hierarchy are applied in the legal domain as well as the pros and cons of using causal models in decision making. Dave also shares his views on how causal models could potentially improve the performance of Artificial Intelligence systems.

Dave's Website: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/experimental-psychology/person/david-lagnado/

Book Explaining the Evidence - How the Mind Investigates the World https://www.amazon.com/Explaining-Evidence-Mind-Investigates-World/dp/0521184819