Counter-conjecture: Philosophers pretend to only like the philosophy/art although in fact they're in love with the philosopher/artist. This is because they're trained to view anyone who has the Wrong Opinions or did some bad things as allround assholes. It's the only way to appear consistent.
Paper by Andreas and Günther here: www.mario-guenther.com/_files/ugd/7....
Just accepted by Australasian Philosophical Review: "Factual Difference-Making is Equivalent to a Counterfactual Theory". philsci-archive.pitt.edu/25508/. A commentary to a theory of actual causation by Mario Günther and Holger Andreas.
But we might ask what this tells us about science and scientists. This is just one example showing that scientists are spineless. Scientists in general are super concerned about their reputation. But this is to be expected given how science is organised.
I'm on the side of Zurich's ERB: small ethics violations are acceptable when conducting important research. The real ethics violation is not to publish the results (under their own name).
What's so special about experience attributions such that they are "different facts" under different representations (indexical/non-indexical), whereas a laptop's computing attributions are the same fact under different representations?
Thanks for your thoughts. I share this account of consciousness. But I have trouble making sense of the irreducibility argument. I can't see why "I see red" is different from "Lennart sees red" any more than "I'm computing √2" for the laptop is different from "The laptop is computing √2".
Does this mean that there are first-person facts from the perspective of laptops that are irreducible to third-person facts about laptops?
This version of the "distinctness argument" seems to work for non-conscious entities too. My laptop can use a word like "I" to refer to itself – the physical processor doing its thinking. My laptop can be certain that *it* is calculating √2 while uncertain that *Lennart's laptop* is calculating √2.
The distinctness argument seems to rely on uncertainty of what names refer to: I might be unsure that "I" and "Lennart" have the same referent. It does not seem to follow that facts about "me" and "Lennart" are different.
Interesting! But I'm not convinced by your response to the objection. I think the fact "Lennart has experience X" *does* determine that I have experience X: It's clearly impossible for me to have experiences that Lennart does not have.
I don't quite understand why "separate books" are necessary. Isn't the proposition "I have experience X" the same proposition as "Lennart has experience X"? If so, all first-personal facts can be formulated as third-personal facts.
At the same time, there is a rich methodological tradition in economics; in empirical economics, especially since the 1980s' credibility crisis and the subsequent debate on causal methodology. See my paper in EJPE: doi.org/10.23941/ejp....
Lots of jabs taken at philosophers in this paper. Ouch...
When reading the literature on the Two-Envelope "Paradox" I got annoyed by how much confusion is created by treating probabilities very informally. Glad to see that my former maths teacher @gill1109.bsky.social agrees! (doi.org/10.1111/anzs...)
I think this is also why pseudoscientific personality tests such as MBTI are still quite useful. People put them in their dating profile and it facilitates learning about each other's personality.
I appreciate the thoughts! But instead of the stated conclusion, I think it establishes that the three discussed accounts of temporally indexical belief are inadequate. (Since there are cases where Bayesian conditionalization on temporal evidence is possible and rational.)
Trying to get Deepseek to talk about Xi Jinping proves challenging...
Could you add me? Thanks!
I don't understand yet how causal variables and *causal* parameters are different. But there is an obvious sense in which causal variables are different from non-causal parameters (say, parameters for which interventions don't make sense). You're saying there is something in between these?
And never proof by contradiction if you can avoid it!
![Theorem. If $n$ is an integer and $n^2$ is even, then $n$ is itself even.
Proof. Contrapositives are for cowards, so assume $n$ is an integer and $n^2$ is even. Then $n^2=2k$ for some integer $k$, and thus $n^2-2k=0$. Behold:
\[ n = n + (n^2-2k) = n(n+1)-2k. \]
Both $n(n+1)$ and $2k$ are even, so $n$ is even.
QED.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4wrxafbsjycxbpjo4e42ht6q/bafkreihucnue4bdyzulcrzddytan5ttdx56rg5ci6cn4vhxw5lebnbdzma)
Theorem. If $n$ is an integer and $n^2$ is even, then $n$ is itself even. Proof. Contrapositives are for cowards, so assume $n$ is an integer and $n^2$ is even. Then $n^2=2k$ for some integer $k$, and thus $n^2-2k=0$. Behold: \[ n = n + (n^2-2k) = n(n+1)-2k. \] Both $n(n+1)$ and $2k$ are even, so $n$ is even. QED.
Contrapositives are for cowards. Behold.
My PhD thesis was about both causation and interpretation of probability, without really connecting the two. In the conclusion I announced my plans to do so, but I haven't got round to it.
I'm not saying we need to retain this idea of objective accuracy. But it's an interesting corollary that we (probably) can't.
Ah, but "learning from frequencies" (to create DAGs) is easy to retain on subjective interpretations. What we can't retain is the notion of accuracy. When two rational and informed agents create different DAGs describing the same situation, we can't say that at least one of them must be wrong.
Thanks for bringing this up! I think it's probably not intentional and can be fixed easily if hiring committees are made aware of it.
One way to respond would be that we should not talk about DAGs being "accurate" in the metaphysical sense, but instead talk about DAGs being "rational". A rational DAG would be such that a rational credence function assigns a high credence to observing the statistical (in)dependencies implied.
It seems that an important feature of "accurate" causal DAGs is that they imply objective facts about statistical (in)dependencies that you would observe if you obtain data. How do you retain this with a subjective interpretation?
Good read. But how do we get probabilistic explanation without metaphysical chances? On the below account "The ice cube melted because the chance of this happening was high" becomes "The ice cube melted because my beliefs have certain symmetries leading to a high credence". That can't be right!
