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Category Archives: Academia
In memory of Thomas Schelling, the errant economist
Update (1/22/17): check out this touching tribute to Schelling by Glenn Loury. (Hat tip: Garrett Jones, via Twitter.) We have been trying to stay away from the Internet during our “Christmas sabbatical” to spend more time with our family, attend to … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Cooperation, Economics, Game Theory
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The Bayesian solution to the preface paradox
In our previous post, we presented Kenny Easwaran’s vivid description of the paradox of the preface. Briefly, the paradox is this: when a scholar writes up an academic paper, he would like to believe that every claim or proposition in … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Paradoxes, Philosophy, Truth
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The Paradox of the Preface
Kenny Easwaran, a philosopher at Texas A&M, recently published in the journal Nous this beautiful paper on Bayesian probabilities (hat tip: Brian Leiter). Among other things, Easwaran’s paper contains the best and most succinct explanation of the “paradox of the … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Paradoxes, Philosophy, Truth
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Kant vs. Strauss vs. postmodernism
If you had to choose, would you rather read 300 pages on Kantian nonsense, on Straussian esotericism, or on postmodernist garbage? Our colleague Jason Brennan, a philosophy professor at Georgetown University, wrote up this sarcastic taxonomy of the most common … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Philosophy
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When to use the passive voice
As faculty editor of the UCF Undergraduate Journal, we are constantly on “passive voice search & destroy missions” when we edit manuscripts: hunting for awkward sentences written in the passive voice and converting them into simple and straightforward active voice … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Culture, Language
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Daniel Dennett’s four rules
We recently stumbled upon this short post by Maria Popova (“How to criticize with kindness”) explaining philosopher Daniel Dennett’s “four rules” of fair-minded, scholarly criticism. In brief, before you begin to refute or criticize someone else’s ideas, you should do … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning, Cooperation, Philosophy, Truth
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The Sith buy out the Jedi
In the fictional world of Star Wars, the Jedi are the good guys; the Sith, the bad guys. The evil Sith use the dark side of the Force to destroy the Jedi Order and to rule the galaxy for themselves. … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Current Affairs
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A “CV of failures”
A Princeton psychology professor has posted his CV of failures online (2016) https://t.co/6C6xkzH6ro — tolu ogunlesi (@toluogunlesi) June 19, 2019 What would yours look like?
Posted in Academia, Bayesian Reasoning
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New Papers on Health Apps and Misogynistic Humor
In addition to our regular teaching and research duties, we have been serving as faculty editor of the Undergraduate Research Journal (URJ) at our home institution, the University of Central Florida (UCF). (By the way, the URJ is not only … Continue reading
Posted in Academia
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prior probability 