I've just improved my TrustOPedia vision:
I have an idea for a system for collaborative knowledge construction by skeptics, meant to avoid biases, and to allow the layman to make good decisions in the face of scientific controversies. Our beliefs rest on proverbial towers, which over time tend to either get stronger or collapse. The motivation ( Read more... )

I am all about working with multiple representations, combining induction with deduction, merging probability with logic, etc.

When we write software, we desire it to be correct, and demonstrably so ("demonstrably" in the sense of being able to convince someone: perhaps "demoably" is a better term). There are many ways of doing this:
* empirical ( Read more... )

It has been said that being formal forces one to be honest. But I think it does more than that: by leaving nothing implicit, formal expositions also force the author to really understand what he/she is saying, to iron out one's contradictions and "semi-contradictions" (e.g. the Nixon diamond).

Gerald Sussman and Jack Wisdom, about their ( Read more... )

Kowalski, Toni (1996) - Abstract Argumentation
We outline an abstract approach to defeasible reasoning and argumentation which ( Read more... )

Michael Huemer - Foundations and Coherence looks like a nice, introductory review paper on epistemic regress.

Wikipedia hate: the problem is that no one is accountable for the content of the articles. There have been cases of people getting slandered, who could do nothing about it.

The Wikipedia badly needs a reputation system (which writers/editors do you trust?) or an endorsement system (which reviewers do you trust?), but preferably several parallel ( Read more... )

This entry has been wikified

If experts are rational, then they will assign equal utility to all the worlds in which they are dead. When betting about questions that are related to their death, these experts should therefore be biased towards optimism ( Read more... )

Does anyone actually evaluate weather forecasts? It's not a very hard thing to keep track of.

But, AFAIK, no forecasters publically archive their data...

When are they going to put money where their mouth is? When are we going to check the price of weather futures instead of listening to unaccountable forecasters in the news?

Highly recommended: Michael Huemer - Why People Are Irrational about Politics (even if I disagree with his moral objectivism at first sight)
My highlights:
( Read more... )