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Author Archives: F. E. Guerra-Pujol
“When should you show up to a party?”
That is the key question posed in this fun essay by Walt Hickey, who now writes for FiveThirtyEight and who graduated from the College of William and Mary with a degree in applied mathematics. Here is an excerpt from Mr Hickey’s analysis: Nobody wants … Continue reading
Anti-constitutional moments?
In our most recent paper, a work-in-progress titled “Gödel’s Interbellum,” we borrow Bruce Ackerman’s influential theory of “constitutional moments” in order to survey the major extra-constitutional events unfolding in Europe during the interwar period between World War I and World War II. Specifically, … Continue reading
Posted in History, Law
Tagged Anti-Constitutional Moments, constitutional dictatorship, Interbellum Europe, Kurt Gödel
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Do memes exist?
To us, memes are like the luminiferous aether in Newtonian physics–a purely make-believe or hypothetical entity that does not really exist “out there” in space or time. In footnote 56 of our autobiographical essay, for example, we write: … despite my general admiration* … Continue reading
“What scientific idea is ready for retirement?”
That’s the 2014 annual question posted on the website edge.org. (Previous Edge questions include “What is your dangerous idea?” (2006) and “What questions are you asking yourself?” (1998).) As we explain in our post of 8.31.14, we would retire Richard Dawkins’s evolutionary … Continue reading
The economics of parking
Are there too few parking spaces in your city or campus … or too many? Professors Mikhail Chester, Arpad Horvath, and Samer Madanat try to calculate the social costs of parking in their six-page report “Parking Infrastructure and the Environment” published in 2011. … Continue reading
Earth at night
What does this beautiful night map tell us about the relationship between population density and prosperity? Image courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory.
Self-defense?
How many civilians, on average, do police forces in the United States kill each year? Legal scholar Richard Epstein, however, asks a different lethal-force question: Police officer deaths in the line of duty, year to date for 2014, were 67 of which … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Current Affairs, Law, Uncategorized
Tagged Police Killings, Richard Epstein
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100-metre dash
Jamaica’s Usain Bolt is still the fastest man on the planet.
The legal philosophy of red-light cameras
Many cities around the world have installed high-tech red-light cameras at busy intersections to increase safety and raise traffic revenues — although some cities are already starting to phase-out these cameras. The debate over the legality of such cameras not only presupposes that many drivers run red … Continue reading
Posted in Game Theory, Law, Philosophy, Traffic
Tagged H.L.A. Hart, Red Light Cameras
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Who won the Carr-Benkler wager?
The Carr-Benkler wager was a bet made way back in 2006 between Nicholas Carr, an internet critic and 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist who coined the disparaging (but accurate) term “digital sharecropping” to describe Facebook’s exploitative business model, and Yochai Benkler, an internet champion and … Continue reading
Posted in Bayesian Reasoning, Truth, Web/Tech
Tagged Carr-Benkler Wager, Nicholas Carr, Yochai Benkler
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prior probability 