One World Movement … R.I.P.

Posted on July 29, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Today’s Times reports that Garry Davis, a modern-day Quijote and “dean of the One World movement” who renounced his US citizenship in Paris on 25 May 1948, has died.

The moribund One World movement poses two puzzles: why do nation-states still exist, and why do “free countries” still have closed borders?

According to the Times, “… Mr. Davis’s long insistence on the inalienable right of anyone to travel anywhere prefigures the present-day immigration debate by decades. It likewise anticipates the current stateless conditions of Julian Assange and Edward J. Snowden.”

prior probability asks, if “free trade” makes economic sense, then why don’t we have an international treaty for “free peoples” … the free movement of goods and people across open borders?

What do you think?

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Could Watson pass the Turing Test?

Posted on July 28, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Watson, a super-computer built by IBM, is capable of answering questions posed in plain English, an in 2011, Watson competed on the quiz show “Jeopardy!” and won. Assuming the Turing Test is a valid test of artificial intelligence, prior probability asks, what is the probability that Watson could pass such a test?

Postscripts: This youtube video (dated 19 April 2012) poses the same question. Here is another (pre-Jeopardy!) response to this same question.

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Moral risk

Posted on July 28, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

, a lecturer at Keele University, has a great blog called Philosophical Disquisitions. He recently wrote a very helpful review of a thought-provoking paper titled “Abortion and Moral Risk” by Dan Moller, a philosophy professor at the University of Maryland.  Moller’s fascinating paper and Danaher’s two-part review — here is part one, and here is part two — are worth reading on their own merits.

prior probability is fascinated by the problem of moral risk, or the possibility that one’s moral judgements might be wrong, because this possibility appears to open up a probabilistic approach to morality … that is, if people end up making Type I and Type II errors when reasoning about ethics and morality, then by definition there is some positive probability that people’s moral judgements might be wrong!  And this possibility of moral error gives me a whole new way of looking at the ideas of Plato, Kant, Mill, etc.

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Is Private Bradley Manning guilty of “aiding the enemy”?

Posted on July 27, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

The trial of Private Bradley Manning, who has been charged by the US Government with “aiding the enemy,” is coming to an end. Although the Manning case is far more important than the Trayvon Martin case, it has received much less publicity and scrutiny. Why?

In any case, who is the real “enemy” in this case? Isn’t it all those government officials who have tried to hide the truth about the war in Iraq? If so, what is the probability that Private Manning will be acquitted of the charge of “aiding the enemy”?

 

Update (30 July): A military court has just acquitted Private Manning of “aiding the enemy”!

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Forget tenure? (*)

Posted on July 27, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Scientific American recently published this entertaining guest blog from a tenure insider, Ms Radhika Nagpal, a newly-tenured professor at Harvard. Among other things, she advises young scholars to create a “feelgood” email folder, stay away from your emails on the week-end, and have fun. This is great advice, but doesn’t the tenure system create an academic apartheid (academic “haves” and “have-nots”) and produce perverse incentives (job-security for life)? Shouldn’t tenure be abolished, and if so, what’s the probability of the abolition of tenure ever happening?

(*) Hat tip to Tyler Cowen.

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Cuba Libre

Posted on July 26, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Today, July 26, is a national holiday in Cuba commemorating the failed attack by a young group of revolutionaries, led by Fidel and his brother Raul, on an army barracks in the city of Santiago de Cuba on 26 July 1953. Fidel and his men eventually seized power in Cuba and established a military dictatorship worse than the one they replaced. So who are this generation’s revolutionaries? What is the probability that Cuba will one day be free?

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F*ck the police?

Posted on July 26, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

What’s the probability that you won’t get a parking ticket or moving violation this year? This value might just depend on the population of your city, the number of police where you live and work, and the traffic-ticket quota assigned to each officer …

While you try to figure out this value, check out this expose written up by Tracy Oppenheimer for reason.com … The title of her revealing report is “Cop Fired for Speaking Out Against Ticket and Arrest Quotas.”

It is well-known that police officers typically lie on the witness stand in criminal trials (see, e.g., this recent report in the New York Times on why police lie under oath), so why do the police also have such tyrannical authority to impose fines on citizens for mere regulatory offenses?

This is why prior probability thinks that most police officers are just glorified “tax collectors” …

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A-Rod versus the Yankees

Posted on July 25, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Looks like the Yankees’ management made a bad bet when the re-signed star third-baseman Alex Rodriguez several years ago … There are reports that A-Rod wants to return to the Yankees’ lineup this Friday (26 July) but that Brian Cashman, the team’s General Manager, wants to keep his player off the team roster. Some sports pundits have even suggested that Cashman wants to void A-Rod’s multi-million dollar contract with the Yankees. (*) Given that Cashman is the General Manager, while A-Rod is just an unpopular and overpaid player, what is the probability that A-Rod will actually appear in the Yankees’ lineup this Friday?

(*) This possibility, in turn, raises an interesting legal question: what legal remedy would A-Rod be entitled to under New York law for breach of contract?

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Nate Silver’s new gig

Posted on July 24, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Farewell New York Times … Nate Silver is joining ESPN.

Here is Margaret Sullivan, the Times’s “public editor” (whatever that means), contrasting Silver’s approach to politics to that of regular or mainstream journalism:

“His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind of political journalism that The Times specializes in: polling, the horse race, campaign coverage, analysis based on campaign-trail observation, and opinion writing, or ‘punditry,’ as he put it, famously describing it as ‘fundamentally useless.'”

The same could be said for prior probability‘s probabilistic approach to law, life, and love, so we are rooting for Nate Silver, wherever he goes.

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Is the “rule of law” dead?

Posted on July 23, 2013 by F. E. Guerra-Pujol

Secret courts … Secret “kill lists” … Secret drone missions … An intellectually-honest jurist has to ask, what has happened to the rule of law?

prior probability also asks, what is the probability that these secret (and illegal?) tactics will reduce (or increase) the threat of terrorism by some well-defined time period (e.g., the end of this year)?

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