a blog on potentially game-changing ideas in science and philosophy
Bayes’ Theorem tells us how to rationally assess the probability of a certain statement of interest being true, given some evidence. Insofar as science consists in creating hypotheses, collecting evidence for and against them, and updating our credence in these hypotheses in the face of the collected evidence, Bayes’ Theorem formalizes the very process of doing science.
It’s in the interest of agents to achieve their own goals as well as possible. When we implement this in our behavior, we are acting rationally. But what does this mean in an applied setting, acting so as to best achieve our goals?
Each day every one of us faces decision problems. Many of these decision problems are not solved consciously – we simply choose an option intuitively, without thinking much about it. But we better not rely on this approach when it comes to high-stakes decisions.
Among philosophers specialized on philosophy of religion only 19.1% accept or lean toward atheism while 72.3% accept or lean toward theism. What should we make of this?
The human brain is a liar that relentlessly sabotages our success. For all its complex brilliance, the brain stumbles into a number of cognitive traps with astonishing regularity. The more often it does so, the less often we are able to achieve what we truly want.
The idea of Anti-Epistemology revolves around three basic elements: the distinction between cherished beliefs and ordinary beliefs, the claim that beliefs are not isolated but stand in confirmation and disconfirmation relations to each other, and the idea that there are bad ways of resolving tension between beliefs…