Dozens of fields are concerned with "identifying causal effects from data", pretty much all the natural sciences and all their myriad subspecializations can be viewed through such a lense. That's the crux, can be viewed as such. Yet, I doubt you'll find all that many medical studies, physical experiments, etc. invoking, understanding or even being aware of do-calculus. That does not void their results, there are ways of interpreting the results that do not rely on grasping - or even be aware of - the math behind the curtain.
A biologist can make valid observations about a meadow without being concerned about wave functions; gwern can do internally valid studies without being concerned about the math of do-calculus. Thankfully, or else nothing would get done. Like, ever.
It's nice to be enthusiastic about what you do, but be careful of an apotheosis of your specific field of study.
Dozens of fields are concerned with "identifying causal effects from data", pretty much all the natural sciences and all their myriad subspecializations can be viewed through such a lense.
Indeed.
That's the crux, can be viewed as such. Yet, I doubt you'll find all that many medical studies, physical experiments, etc. invoking do-calculus. That does not void their results, there are ways of interpreting the results that do not rely on grasping - or even be aware of - the math behind the curtain.
"That's just like, your opinion, man.&...
http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2013/02/04/four-hours-of-concentration/
And since this is the Internet, and facts are involved, our gwern turns up there also.