prior probability

We will jump into Chapter 1 of “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” in the next day or two; in the meantime, below are screenshots of my most recent “Shazams”:

Back in the fall of 2017 and extending off-and-on into the summer of 2018, I wrote up and posted to this blog a page-by-page, chapter-by-chapter review of Robert Nozick’s work “Anarchy, State, and Utopia,” one of the all-time most influential books of political philosophy–and deservedly so! In honor of Nozick’s birthday (16 November 1938), and to commemorate the upcoming 20th anniversary of his death (23 January 2002), I will be re-posting in the days and weeks ahead my in-depth review of Nozick’s classic work. Here is a revised version of Part 1 of my 2017/18 review, “Nozick’s Premise“:

Nozick’s preface in “Anarchy, State, and Utopia” begins with this famous sentence: “Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights).” This Kantian premise is an attractive and appealing one, but is Nozick’s opening gambit simply a sophisticated case of circular reasoning or question begging? At a minimum, Nozick will have to answer the following questions: (1) What do these rights consist of? (2) What remedies are we entitled to when our rights are violated? (3) Who decides when our rights have been violated? (4) Why are violations of our rights, however such rights are defined or enforced, wrong? And (5) are there any exceptions to Nozick’s premise; i.e. when, if ever, can we violate someone else’s rights? In short, Nozick has a lot of explaining to do!

I will further explore Nozick’s thought-provoking preface in my next post …

According to Google Scholar, two of my papers have been cited 10 times by other scholars (my 2014 paper “Goedel’s Loophole” and my 2010 paper “A Game-Theoretic Analysis of the Puerto Rico Status Debate“; see screenshot immediately below this paragraph), but according to SSRN (a popular platform scholars use to post ungated versions of their work), those same two papers have only been cited twice (see the other two screenshots on the bottom of this post). I love SSRN, but what is the source of this discrepancy?

You may have already heard that Netflix will be releasing Season 2 of “Tiger King” on November 17, 2021. (See here, for example.)

In related news, my July 2020 law review article, “Teaching Tiger King“, was recently published in final form in Volume 65 of the Saint Louis University Law Journal. (Shout out to Michael McMahon, the managing editor of the special teaching issue in which my paper was published, for his helpful comments, suggestions, and edits.) You’re welcome!

I attended my fifth and final scholarly conference of the fall semester: two via Zoom (the Central States Law School Association and LatCrit); one in the hybrid format, which I attended in person (the International Adam Smith Society in Madison, Wisconsin); and most recently, two in person (the Florida Statewide Undergraduate Research Symposium in Gainesville, Florida and the Southeastern Academy of Legal Studies in Business or “SEALSB” in Savannah, Georgia). Below are some pictures from my time in Savannah this weekend during the SEALSB conference:

You can find many more mathematical LEGO sculptures here.

The first I ever heard about Chegg was in the spring of 2021, when I discovered that some students were posting the answers to my quiz questions on the Chegg platform — quiz questions that I had created myself, by the way. At that time, Chegg was a $12 billion company, and Chegg’s stock was trading at over $100 per share.

Instead of punishing my students, however, I decided to go after Chegg itself and its corrupt management team. I filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and I wrote a paper called “The Chegg Conspiracy” explaining why Chegg’s officers should be criminally prosecuted for wire fraud. As it happens, I will be presenting my paper this weekend at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Academy of Legal Studies in Savannah, Georgia (#SEALSB2021). But this update doesn’t have to do with my paper; instead, it’s about Chegg itself.

When I first posted the original draft of my Chegg paper to SSRN on August 25, 2021, Chegg’s stock price had gone down to $80. A few weeks later (September 13, 2021), a major multinational publishing company called Pearson initiated a copyright infringement lawsuit against Chegg in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, and since then, Chegg’s shares have steadily declined in value. But on November 1st of this year, Chegg’s stock price took a dramatic plunge — it went from $62 to $32 in a single day!

So, what happened on Nov. 1st? That was the day Chegg released its quarterly financial report. (See here for a summary.). Among other things, Chegg announced that its paid subscribers fell to 4.4 million, an unexpected decline from 4.86 million in the previous quarter and a small fraction of the almost 20 million college and university students overall. (See here, for example.) Is this the beginning of the end for Chegg? Let’s hope so …

Below the fold is a small sample of English-language dailies marking the end of “the war to end all wars” — the original Armistice Day (11 November 1919).