These are my links for February 22nd through February 24th:
- Logic and Formal Semantics for Epistemology Longversion.pdf (application/pdf Object) – This essay introduces some of the formal apparatus of epistemic logic and discusses its applicability to epistemological questions. The literature on knowability and belief revision are discussed in other chapters in this volume and so they will not be treated in detail here.
- How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? – NYTimes.com – It’s hard to believe now, but not long ago economists were congratulating themselves over the success of their field. Those successes — or so they believed — were both theoretical and practical, leading to a golden era for the profession. On the theoretical side, they thought that they had resolved their internal disputes.. in the real world, economists believed they had things under control: the “central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association. In 2004, Ben Bernanke, a former Princeton professor who is now the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, celebrated the Great Moderation in economic performance over the previous two decades, which he attributed in part to improved economic policy making.Last year, everything came apart.
- How Google’s Algorithm Rules the Web | Magazine – [Google] has used its mysterious, seemingly omniscient algorithm to, as its mission statement puts it, “organize the world’s information.” But over the past five years, a slew of companies have challenged Google’s central premise: that a single search engine, through technological wizardry and constant refinement, can satisfy any possible query. Facebook launched an early attack with its implication that some people would rather get information from their friends than from an anonymous formula. Twitter’s ability to parse its constant stream of updates introduced the concept of real-time search, a way of tapping into the latest chatter and conversation as it unfolds. Yelp helps people find restaurants, dry cleaners, and babysitters by crowdsourcing the ratings. None of these upstarts individually presents much of a threat, but together they hint at a wide-open, messier future of search — one that isn’t dominated by a single engine but rather incorporates a grab bag of services.
- PROFESSIONALS DO NOT PLAY MINIMAX: EVIDENCE FROM MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL AND THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE.pdf (application/pdf Object) – We observe more than three million pitches in baseball and 125,000 play choices for football. We find systematic deviations from minimax play in both data sets. Pitchers appear to throw too many fastballs; football teams pass less than they should. In both sports, there is negative serial correlation in play calling. Back of the envelope calculations suggest that correcting these decision making errors could be worth as many as two additional victories a year to a Major League Baseball franchise, and more than a half win per season for a professional football team.
These are my links for December 14th from 10:36 to 10:53:
- The PhilPapers Surveys – The PhilPapers Survey was a survey of professional philosophers and others on their philosophical views, carried out in November 2009. The Survey was taken by 3226 respondents, including 1803 philosophy faculty members and/or PhDs and 829 philosophy graduate students.
The PhilPapers Metasurvey was a concurrent survey of professional philosophers and other concerning their predictions of the results of the Survey. The Metasurvey was taken by 727 respondents including 438 professional philosophers and PhDs and 210 philosophy graduate students.
Preliminary results and discussion are included below. Further results and analysis will be made available in coming months.
- UC Davis Philosophy 102, Theory of Knowledge: Table of Contents for Lecture Notes – The subject of this course is what has come to be called "theory of knowledge" or "epistemology." The two names are interchangeable in common use. (A similar pair of terms for philosophical disciplines is 'theory of value' (or 'value theory') and the little-used 'axiology.') Until the nineteenth century, there had been no special term to indicate the study of knowledge as such, even though knowledge had been studied from the very beginning of Western philosophy . The word "epistemology" was coined by James Ferrier in his 1856 book Institutes of Metaphysics. The root word 'episteme' in Greek means 'knowledge,' while the '-ology' suffix signifies, roughly, 'study of.' Compare terms such as 'biology' (study of life), 'geology' (study of the earth), etc. Shortly after Ferrier, Eduard Zeller in 1862 introduced the German word 'Erkenntnistheorie' in Ueber Aufgabe und Bedeutung der Erkenntnistheorie. This word is translated into English as "theory of knowledge."
- Human or Cylon? Group testing on Battlestar Galactica (application/pdf Object) – Does statistics have a place though in the world of science fiction? Because science fiction writers try to merge the sci-fi world with the real world in a believable way, one might think that statistics could make a significant contribution to solving sci-fi problems.
In the hit Sci Fi Network television show, the new Battlestar Galactica (a re-imagined version of the 1970’s show), there is an attempt to use science to solve a very important problem. Due to the excessive amount of time the proposed solution would take to complete, it is deemed impractical and never implemented. This paper shows how the problem could have been solved instead using a statistical technique called “group testing.” Scientists use this technique to solve many real-world problems, including the screening of blood donations for diseases. When applied to the problem on Battlestar Galactica, it will be shown that group testing could have a made dramatic difference to the course of the show
- The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas – Magazine – NYTimes.com – Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas. Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 — the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather. Unlike birds, we can also alphabetize. And so we hereby present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. To offer a nonalphabetical option for navigating the entries, this year we have attached tags to each item indicating subject matter.
These are my links for November 16th through December 14th:
- UC Davis Philosophy 102, Theory of Knowledge: Table of Contents for Lecture Notes – The subject of this course is what has come to be called “theory of knowledge” or “epistemology.” The two names are interchangeable in common use. (A similar pair of terms for philosophical disciplines is ‘theory of value’ (or ‘value theory’) and the little-used ‘axiology.’) Until the nineteenth century, there had been no special term to indicate the study of knowledge as such, even though knowledge had been studied from the very beginning of Western philosophy . The word “epistemology” was coined by James Ferrier in his 1856 book Institutes of Metaphysics. The root word ‘episteme’ in Greek means ‘knowledge,’ while the ‘-ology’ suffix signifies, roughly, ‘study of.’ Compare terms such as ‘biology’ (study of life), ‘geology’ (study of the earth), etc. Shortly after Ferrier, Eduard Zeller in 1862 introduced the German word ‘Erkenntnistheorie’ in Ueber Aufgabe und Bedeutung der Erkenntnistheorie. This word is translated into English as “theory of knowledge.”
- Human or Cylon? Group testing on Battlestar Galactica (application/pdf Object) – Does statistics have a place though in the world of science fiction? Because science fiction writers try to merge the sci-fi world with the real world in a believable way, one might think that statistics could make a significant contribution to solving sci-fi problems.In the hit Sci Fi Network television show, the new Battlestar Galactica (a re-imagined version of the 1970’s show), there is an attempt to use science to solve a very important problem. Due to the excessive amount of time the proposed solution would take to complete, it is deemed impractical and never implemented. This paper shows how the problem could have been solved instead using a statistical technique called “group testing.” Scientists use this technique to solve many real-world problems, including the screening of blood donations for diseases. When applied to the problem on Battlestar Galactica, it will be shown that group testing could have a made dramatic difference to the course of the show
- The Ninth Annual Year in Ideas – Magazine – NYTimes.com – Once again, The Times Magazine looks back on the past year from our favored perch: ideas. Like a magpie building its nest, we have hunted eclectically, though not without discrimination, for noteworthy notions of 2009 — the twigs and sticks and shiny paper scraps of human ingenuity, which, when collected and woven together, form a sort of cognitive shelter, in which the curious mind can incubate, hatch and feather. Unlike birds, we can also alphabetize. And so we hereby present, from A to Z, the most clever, important, silly and just plain weird innovations we carried back from all corners of the thinking world. To offer a nonalphabetical option for navigating the entries, this year we have attached tags to each item indicating subject matter.
- [quant-ph/0204088] The Wave Function: It or Bit? – Schroedinger’s wave function shows many aspects of a state of incomplete knowledge or information (“bit”): (1) it is usually defined on a space of classical configurations, (2) its generic entanglement is, therefore, analogous to statistical correlations, and (3) it determines probabilities of measurement outcomes. Nonetheless, quantum superpositions (such as represented by a wave function) define individual physical states (“it”). This conceptual dilemma may have its origin in the conventional operational foundation of physical concepts, successful in classical physics, but inappropriate in quantum theory because of the existence of mutually exclusive operations (used for the definition of concepts). In contrast, a hypothetical realism, based on concepts that are justified only by their universal and consistent applicability, favors the wave function as a description of (thus nonlocal) physical reality. The (conceptually local) classical world then appears as an illusion…
- Computer Laboratory – Technical reports: UCAM-CL-TR-754 – The success of many attacks on computer systems can be traced back to the security engineers not understanding the psychology of the system users they meant to protect. We examine a variety of scams and “short cons” that were investigated, documented and recreated for the BBC TV programme The Real Hustle and we extract from them some general principles about the recurring behavioural patterns of victims that hustlers have learnt to exploit.We argue that an understanding of these inherent “human factors” vulnerabilities, and the necessity to take them into account during design rather than naïvely shifting the blame onto the “gullible users”, is a fundamental paradigm shift for the security engineer which, if adopted, will lead to stronger and more resilient systems security.
- Memristor – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – On April 30, 2008 a team at HP Labs announced the development of a switching memristor. Based on a thin film of titanium dioxide, it has a regime of operation with an approximately linear charge-resistance relationship.[5][6][7] These devices are being developed for application in nanoelectronic memories, computer logic, and neuromorphic computer architectures.
- December 2009: Christopher Hitchens on Stieg Larsson | vanityfair.com – Just when Stieg Larsson was about to make his fortune with the mega-selling thriller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the crusading journalist dropped dead. Now some are asking how much of his fiction–which exposes Sweden’s dark currents of Fascism and sexual predation–is fact.
These are my links for August 17th through August 20th:
- Mark Colyvan, A topological sorites | PhilPapers – This paper considers a generalisation of the sorites paradox, in which only topological notions are employed. We argue that by increasing the level of abstraction in this way, we see the sorites paradox in a new, more revealing light—a light that forces attention on cut-off points of vague predicates. The generalised sorites paradox presented here also gives rise to a new, more tractable definition of vagueness.
- Vincent F. Hendricks, The Bain of two truths | PhilPapers – A view among methodologists is that truth and convergence are related in such a way that scientific theories in their historical order of appearance contribute to the convergence to an ultimate ideal theory. It is not a fact that science develops accordingly but rather a hypothetical thought experiment to explain why science develops at all. Here, a simple formal model is presented for scrutinizing the relations between two truths and convergence.
- Risk (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) – Since the 1970s, studies of risk have grown into a major interdisciplinary field of research. Although relatively few philosophers have focused their work on risk, there are important connections between risk studies and several philosophical subdisciplines. This entry summarizes the most well-developed of these connections and introduces some of the major topics in the philosophy of risk. It consists of five sections dealing with the definition of risk and with treatments of risk related to epistemology, the philosophy of science, ethics, and the philosophy of economics.
- The Management Myth – The Atlantic (June 2006) – Most of management theory is inane, writes our correspondent, the founder of a consulting firm. If you want to succeed in business, don’t get an M.B.A. Study philosophy instead
These are my links for June 18th through June 19th:
- Blind Search – Welcome to BlindSearch, the search engine taste test.Type in a search query above, hit search then vote for the column which you believe best matches your query. The columns are randomised with every query.The goal of this site is simple, we want to see what happens when you remove the branding from search engines. How differently will you perceive the results?
- Is There Reason to Be Theoretically Rational? (application/pdf Object) – An important advance in normativity research over the last decade is an increased understanding of the distinction, and difference, between normativity and rationality. Normativity concerns or picks out a broad set of concepts that have in common that they are, put loosely, guiding. For example, consider two commonly used normative concepts: that of a normative reason and that of ought. To have a normative reason to perform some action is for there to be something that counts in favour of performing that action. Likewise with ought, when there is sufficient evidence for something, one ought to believe it (at least under normal circumstances). Not all guidance need be directed towards a specific state or a specific action. Subject to the requirements of normativity, too, are relations. It is commonly believed, for example, that we ought not to hold contradictory beliefs.
- Atlas Obscura | Wondrous, curious, and bizarre locations around the world – Welcome to the Atlas Obscura, a compendium of this age’s wonders, curiosities, and esoterica. The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you’re looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you’ll find them.
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