Category Archives: Uncategorized

Subtitle: Just compensation for staying at home, part one (by F. E. Guerra-Pujol) While I agree with consequentialists (like my colleague Romans Pancs) that the costs of a worldwide economic shutdown are probably too high relative to the modest (but … Continue reading →

I featured in my previous post my colleague Romans Pancs’s consequentialist critique of the “lockdown” approach to the current virus. Although I tend to agree with Professor Pancs’s provocative conclusion that the risk a 1% mortality rate does not justify … Continue reading →

… and of Adam Silver’s drastic decision to suspend the rest of the NBA season? Check out this consequentialist critique of the “lockdown” or “shelter in place” approach to the current virus. The author of this critique is Romans Pancs, … Continue reading →

Growing up, the other Mr Rogers introduced me to Country Western music and thus changed my life forever. (The video above showcases one of my all-time favorite songs.) Rest in peace, Kenny Rogers …

Are we overreacting to the current pandemic? If not, what is the “optimal level” of precautions we should be taking to minimize the spread of any given disease? According to Nicholas LePan (via Visual Capitalist): “Scientists use a basic measure … Continue reading →

My last few blog posts have reviewed Cheryl Misak’s intellectual autobiography of Frank Ramsey. Because of my own scholarly interests in Bayesian methods, my review has been devoted mostly to Ramsey’s contributions to probability theory. I now want to conclude … Continue reading →

In my previous post, I presented the core insight of Frank Ramsey’s “betting paradigm”: probabilities are based on beliefs, and beliefs, in turn, are like bets. I now want to take a “time out” from my extended review of Cheryl … Continue reading →

Thus far, I have presented Ramsey’s 1922 critique of Keynes’s objective theory of probability and recounted some memorable episodes from Ramsey’s personal life. I now want to move into the third and last part of Cheryl Misak’s beautiful biography of … Continue reading →

Previously, I described Frank Ramsey’s powerful critique of John Maynard Keynes’s logical or objective approach to probability. (For the record, Ramsey published his review of Keynes’s Treatise on Probability in the January 1922 issue of Cambridge Magazine, while he was still an … Continue reading →