prior probability

And now, back to our regularly-scheduled blogging …

If so, then why hasn’t the IRS prosecuted Trump for tax fraud yet? There are two possible reasons. One is that the line between tax evasion (illegal, if you get caught) and tax avoidance (generally legal) is not always clear. The other is the six-year statute of limitations, which protects big-time tax evaders/avoiders like Trump. (More here, via Irina Ivanova at CBS Money Watch.) Or, in the alternative, is our complicated and convoluted tax code to blame for this eggregious state of affairs? Either way, here is a thread on the legality of Trump’s crude tax avoidance strategies.

This song is about a lost love, but for me, I always think of the Caribbean island of Cuba, the magical archipelago of my ancestors, whenever I listen to this beautiful song because my long lost love is Cuba.

Corporate Governance with Bayesian Voting: The Case of Facebook’s New Supreme Court

F. E. Guerra-Pujol, University of Central Florida

Mark Zuckerberg recently established an ostensibly-independent Oversight Board or private court (“the Facebook Supreme Court”) with the power to review some of Facebook’s content moderation decisions. 

But as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details. 

Without going into all the background history and procedural details of this new private court (due to my time limit), I just want to say up front that I think this is a really cool and exciting idea.

But to stay within my time limit, I will review the following five aspects of this private court (and five potential blind spots) in the remainder of my talk: 

A. JURISDICTION

B. CASE SELECTION COMMITTEE

C. DISCOVERY 

D. REMOVAL OF MEMBERS (BOARD INDEPENDENCE)

E. CHANGING THE RULES (AMENDMENT PROCESS) 

Ok, let’s go …

Today (Sept. 26) is National Love Note Day! Or was it yesterday? Either way, this is for you.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Class #5 is devoted to the Trolley Problem–a classic moral dilemma in which we must make a split-second decision whether to save five innocent lives at the cost of one innocent life. Generally speaking, this dilemma is a no-brainer if you are a “crude consequentialist.” You will simply choose the lesser evil. But what if you are a hardcore “Kantian” or devotee of moral duties; that is, what if you believe that it is always impermissible to take a life unless your own life is being threatened? Or what if you are a moral “contractarian“; in other words, what if you believe that some sort of consent is necessary before you can take an action that would endanger another soul? Either way, whatever your moral intuitions or preferences are, how should the law deal with the Trolley Problem? Also, does the law have any moral foundations, and if so, what are they? These are just some of the questions I will pose in my next class …

I will provide an overview of my next class session in Advanced Topics in Law (Class #5), which will be devoted to the trolley problem, in the next day or two. Today, however, I would like to say one more thing about Class #4, which was about the prisoner’s dilemma and strategic behavior generally. One of the things we discussed during that class was whether the famous “Ignore the Blonde” scene in the movie A Beautiful Mind is a prisoner’s dilemma or not. (See the film clip for yourself, which is posted below.) Many commentators have explained why that scene does not, in fact, depict a prisoner’s dilemma; see, for example, this analysis of the scene by Presh Talwalkar or this essay by James R. Rogers. Putting aside the fact that the blonde in that scene is not really all that hot, and also putting aside the fact that this scene is more sexist than sexy, why is this question worth discussing? Among other things, one reason this question is important is because it invites us to apply game theory to a real life strategic situation. (Note to my readers: a strategic situation is simply any situation in which the outcome depends upon the actions of two or more persons.)

Broadly speaking, the movie scene below definitely depicts a strategic situation, but whether it constitutes a prisoner’s dilemma or not will depend on three variables: the choices available to the players (i.e. whether to cooperate or defect), the “payoffs” or utility generated by these choices, and the rankings of these payoffs or the “payoff structure” of the game. I won’t delve any further into the details of these three variables here; instead, it suffices to say that one major weakness with this scene–from a purely game theory or amoral perspective–is that the John Nash character (played by Russell Crowe) does not even attempt to model the strategy sets of the girls or assign payoffs to them!

Update (9/25): Professor Landsburg wrote up a thoughtful and excellent explanation of his position here (see comment #12). Because I am busy preparing for two different talks this weekend and two sets of law lectures thereafter (one on Monday; the other on Tuesday), I will return to this theoretical question later next week.

My colleague and friend Steven E. Landsburg says “yes” (see below); I, however, say “no” because axioms, by definition, are assumed to be true. Who’s right? Professor Landsburg or me?

Source: Sheree via View from the Back (9/22)

Most of us can only dream about where we’d like to visit next however I would encourage you to do more than just dream. Plan and prepare for when we …

French Riviera: Must See Places

Check out Jonathan Dancy’s short intellectual biography of the late great Derek Parfit (pictured below), an Anglo moral philosopher who developed a new field of “meta-ethics.” Here is an excerpt from Dancy’s tribute to Parfit: “But by the end of the century Parfit’s interests had moved to a focus on two main themes. The first theme is the question of whether three great philosophical understandings of ethics—consequentialism, contractualism, and Kantianism—could not in the end be shown to be different expressions of the same position…. The second theme is an uncompromising realism about the moral and more generally the normative, as evidenced in the title he chose for his great three-volume work On What Matters.” Hat tips: Brian Leiter/Tyler Cowen.