prior probability

I first saw this thought-provoking autobiographical tribute to Thanksgiving Day by Comanche author Paul Chaat Smith when I visited the American Indian Museum in Washington, D.C. earlier this year (see here). Alas, I could not find this excellent and entertaining video on YouTube, but it is up and running on Facebook (here) and Instragram (below):

What a difference a day makes four or five days make!

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

Sherlock Homes

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the day President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas: 22 November 1963. To mark this somber occasion, check out the seven pop culture artifacts mentioned in this report via The Conversation as well as this excellent essay on “The Endless Assassination of John F. Kennedy” by Sean O’Neal, a writer for Texas Monthly. (This Wikipedia page and this report on “The Secrets of the JFK Assassination Archive” by Scott Sayare, a freelance journalist writing for New York Magazine, are also worth reading.)

In addition, check out the short video below, which surveys the history of the Zapruder film, perhaps the single-most important — and lucrative — piece of evidence regarding this endless enigma, one that was withheld from the public for years and that the greedy heirs of Abraham Zapruder eventually sold to the government for $16 million (greedy because they wanted even more money!). For a more detailed history of this infamous film clip, I recommend this excellent essay by my colleague and friend Brian Frye as well as David Wrone’s book “The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination“, and for an apology of the Zapruder family’s abject greed, see Chapters 13 & 14 of “Twenty-Six Seconds: A Personal History of the Zapruder Film” by Alexandra Zapruder, who is the granddaughter of Abraham Zapruder.

(Bonus confession: For my part, the JFK case has fascinated me since I was in middle school, when I first learned about the Warren Commission’s shoddy investigation and likely cover-up of what really happened that fateful day.)

Bonus video: “Andy Warhol, Nine Jackies | Videos in American Sign Language (ASL)”

Moonlight #1 [Dept (뎁트), featuring Sonny Zero (오넷) and OoOo]:

Moonlight #2 (Kali Uchis):

Moonlight #3 (Ludwig van Beethoven, featuring Anastasia Huppman on the piano):

I have featured Cuban surrealist street artist Yulier Rodríguez (a/k/a Yulier P.) on this blog several times before. Now, I just discovered his Instagram page; in addition, award-winning Cuban author and blogger Yoani Sánchez interviewed the grafitti artist in August of 2023. Her interview is in Spanish and is available here. (Bonus link: a 2020 profile of Yulier P., which is also in Spanish.)

Yesterday (17 November), the board of directors of OpenAI unceremoniously fired Silicon Valley legend and ChatGPT boy wonder Sam Altman. According to the official announcement, Mr Altman was fired for his deceit and chicanery: “A deliberative review process by the board […] concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board …” Wait, what?! Everybody lies (see here, for example), and OpenAI is the third most valuable startup in the world, so what is the real reason why evil genius Sam Altman was fired? Was it about money or “politics“, or was it the result of a bona fide dispute over A.I. safety? Alas, I wish there were a truth market for days like these! File under “truth is stranger than fiction” (hat tip: Mark Twain.)

I am now in the Twin Cities to attend the Journal of Law & Public Policy‘s fall symposium on “Free Speech and the U.S. Constitution” and present my work-in-progress “Solving the Free Speech Dilemma.” Note: Although the symposium will take place in person at the University of St Thomas School of Law in downtown Minneapolis, it will also be telecast for free (register here). The full program is below the fold (all times Central):

That is the new title of my newly revised work-in-progress, which I will be presenting this Friday (17 November) at a daylong symposium on “Free Speech and the U.S. Constitution” (see here) at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis. Below is an excerpt from the introduction to my paper; my footnotes are below the fold:

What is the free speech dilemma? On the one hand, if we adopt a laissez faire attitude toward speech, how do we screen out disinformation or lies?[1] If, on the other hand, we attempt to screen out bad information via content moderation policies or other forms of censorship, how do we distinguish falsehoods from truth?[2] Was Lee Harvey Oswald, for example, part of a conspiracy to assassinate JFK?[3] Did COVID-19 originate from a lab in Wuhan, China?[4] Were the 2020 U.S. presidential elections stolen.[5]

In principle, three types of responses to this dilemma are possible: hardcore government censorship (the Communist China model), soft censorship or content moderation (the Mark Zuckerberg model), and absolute free speech (the Elon Musk model).[6] Under the Chinese model, the government strictly monitors Internet access and blocks website content,[7] while the Zuckerberg or soft censorship approach consists of some combination of content moderation, deplatforming, shadow-banning, and other forms of speech suppression.[8] Free speech absolutism, by contrast, is the most permissive or laissez faire approach to the problem of disinformation: everyone is free to post whatever information they want as long as no laws are being violated.[9]

Alas, none of these “solutions” is capable of distinguishing truth from lies in a reliable or consistent manner. The main problem with the Chinese model—and with any type of content moderation approach more generally—is that one cannot always determine ahead of time which conspiracy theories or disputed news stories are true and which are false.[10] By the same token, with free speech absolutism there is no real disincentive for posting false information on the Internet, since the marginal cost of Internet speech is virtually costless.[11] Also, to the extent many Internet users are engaged in “motivated reasoning,”[12] free speech absolutism might exacerbate the problem of false information.

So, what is to be done? What if we promoted a “truth market model” instead of censorship, content moderation, or costless speech? As explained in the remainder of this Article, a truth market would operate as a retrodiction market and would specialize in conspiracy theories, fake news, urban legends, and other forms of disputed information. On this market, people could buy or sell belief contracts, allowing them to bet on the truth values of their favorite conspiracy theories. With enough bettors representing a wide variety of views, the price of each belief contract should reflect the truth value of the conspiracy theory being bet on.

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Below is the next-to-last excerpt from my new work “Gödel’s Interbellum”; footnotes are below the fold:

Following the Anschluss–Nazi Germany’s annexation of the Republic of Austria in March 1938–German law displaced Austrian law and the position of Privatdozent–Gödel’s official position at the University of Vienna since March 1933–was officially abolished.[1] Former “private lecturers” like Gödel were now required to apply for the position of “Lecturer of the New Order” (Dozent neuer Ordnung) if they wished to maintain their academic careers under the new regime.[2] This new requirement was not directed at Gödel personally; instead, it was part of a general reorganization of educational institutions in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power. (As an aside, the main reason why the Nazis abolished the position of Privatdozent was that, although the state had exercised administrative control of the universities in Germany and Austria prior to Hitler’s rise to power, it did not have any direct control over private lecturers.)

Did the ex post revocation of Gödel’s lectureship inform his subsequent discovery of a loophole in the U.S. Constitution? In the case of the Anschluss, one country’s laws and constitution swallowed up or displaced the laws and constitution of another country. For the mathematical logician, this meant the rules that applied to his lectureship were replaced wholesale with a new set of rules, and by all accounts, Gödel himself was “outraged” and “incensed” when his position was revoked by university officials in the spring of 1938.[3] Karl Menger, who knew Gödel personally from their days at the University of Vienna and who was co-teaching a course with Gödel at the University of Notre Dame during the spring of 1939 (one year after Gödel’s position was abolished),[4] describes Gödel’s reaction to the revocation of his lectureship thus:

In the second half of the semester, Gödel also, who until then had been his usual dispassionate self, appeared to be restless. Remarks of his indicated longing for his family. For this and other reasons he wanted to return to Vienna at the end of the semester. Even earlier he had complained about the revocation of dozentship in the university by the Nazi regime and had spoken about violated rights.[5]

Menger had tried to reason with Gödel, asking him: “‘How can one speak of rights in the present situation? … And what practical value can even rights at the University of Vienna have for you under such circumstances’,”[6] but to no avail. Although Gödel had requested a leave of absence for the 1938-1939 academic year (he visited the IAS in the fall of 1938 and then co-taught a course with Menger at the University of Notre Dame in the spring of 1939), he had every intention of returning to the University of Vienna and resuming his academic career there.[7]

The handling of Gödel’s leave of absence request, however, represents an almost comic case of bureaucratic bungling and ineptitude. To begin with, Gödel had submitted his request for a leave of absence to the University of Vienna in a letter dated October 31, 1938.[8] In response, the dean of the School of Philosophy forwarded Gödel’s request to the Ministry of Instruction, which in turn forwarded the matter to the Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs.[9] According to John Dawson, “no further action was taken [on Gödel’s request for a leave of absence] until 4 July [1939].”[10] On that date, an official at Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs wrote back to the rector of the University of Vienna to inquire about Gödel’s reasons for requesting a leave of absence. The rector, in turn, forwarded this matter back to the dean (!), who “proposed that Gödel’s Lehrbefugnis (his official authorization to teach) be rescinded since Gödel had not requested a leave of absence for the summer semester.”[11] The dean’s harsh recommendation was sent back to the Ministry of Internal and Cultural Affairs, where yet another official then advised the rector that the dean’s recommendation was moot because “Gödel’s Lehrbefugnis … was already in abeyance [since April 1938], and it would officially expire on 1 October unless Gödel submitted an application in the meantime to be named Dozent neuer Ordnung.”[12]

Although it is unclear whether Gödel himself was aware of this bureaucratic back-and-forth,[13] the evidence suggests that at a minimum he must have known that his lectureship had now lapsed and that he would lose the right to lecture permanently unless he applied for the new position of Dozent neuer Ordnung before the October 1st deadline, for as it happens, Gödel not only returned to Austria in June 1939;[14] he apparently he had every intention of remaining in his home country and continuing his scholarly endeavors at the University of Vienna. In fact, according to his biographer John Dawson, Gödel still did not seriously expect to emigrate as late as November 1939.[15] Among other things, Gödel closed out his bank account in Princeton, New Jersey,[16] moved into a new apartment in the center of Vienna,[17] and signed a new lease on his old apartment in the suburb of Grinzing.[18] In addition, Gödel finally applied on September 25, 1939 for the new position of Dozent neuer Ordnung,[19] less than one week before the October 1st deadline.

Political reality, however, would derail Gödel’s aspirations. Germany had invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and Gödel himself was declared fit for military service in the German Army shortly thereafter.[20] All the while, Gödel’s academic status at the University of Vienna was still in limbo, since his previous position of private lecturer had been suspended and his application to become a Dozent neuer Ordnung was still under review by the relevant university and ministry officials by the time Gödel and his wife Adele decided to flee their beloved Vienna in January 1940, resettling in Princeton, New Jersey, where they would live the rest of their lives.[21]

Ironically, Gödel was finally awarded the title of Dozent neuer Ordnung in June 1940,[22] and the University continued to keep his name in its records until 1945, accompanied by a terse announcement that “Dozent Gödel shall not lecture.”[23]