Category Archives: Uncategorized
The costs of quadratic voting
I explained how quadratic voting works in my previous post, where I presented a simple quadratic voting procedure in which voters are allocated an equal number of “vote credits” before going to the polls. Yet, whenever we are evaluating a … Continue reading
Quadratic voting 101
Update (11/3): I develop these ideas more fully in my paper “Weyl Versus Rasmey: A Bayesian Voting Primer,” available here. We stipulated in our previous post how beliefs and preferences can come in degrees. I also mentioned how this simple … Continue reading
Before Ramsey; After Ramsey
I mentioned in my previous post that Frank Ramsey was one of the founding fathers of the subjective interpretation of probability, and I also noted how Ramsey’s approach forever changed my view of the world. Before Ramsey (BR), I used … Continue reading
A sheer excess of powers
That is the subtitle of Cheryl Misak’s intellectual biography of the great British polymath Frank Ramsey, who was born on this day (22 February 1903) twelve decades ago. Among many other things, Ramsey was one of the founders of the … Continue reading
In praise of chalk and blackboards
Check out this beautiful 26-page paper on “Chalk: Materials and Concepts in Mathematics Research” by Michael Barany and Donald MacKenzie. According to one of the authors of the chalk paper (Barany), one of the advantages of blackboards is that they … Continue reading
Kant on Evidence?
Nine years ago (2011), Chief Justice John Roberts (pictured below, left) presented this devastating critique of legal scholarship. Among other things, the Chief made this wisecrack: “Pick up a copy of any law review that you see, and the first … Continue reading
Bayesian Judges
That is the title of my most recent contribution to the literature on judicial voting, a literature that goes back to Frank Easterbrook’s excellent paper “Ways of criticizing the court,” which was published in The Harvard Law Review in 1982. … Continue reading
Here we go again (reclining airplane seat controversy edition)
Originally posted on prior probability:
The Washington Post (via Natalie B. Compton) recently published “The completely correct guide to reclining on an airplane.” The problem with The Post’s guidelines, however, is that they are not only incomplete (what about commuter…
Vicious circle or virtuous spiral? (law and morality feedback loop edition)
Building on the work of Donald Regan, law professor Bert Huang explores the complex relationship between law, ethics, and artificial intelligence in his beautiful paper “Law’s halo and the moral machine” (hat tip: @lsolum). Among other things, Professor Huang describes … Continue reading
Here we go again (reclining airplane seat controversy edition)
The Washington Post (via Natalie B. Compton) recently published “The completely correct guide to reclining on an airplane.” The problem with The Post’s guidelines, however, is that they are not only incomplete (what about commuter flights?); they are also inconsistent … Continue reading

