New Paper Out!

Probabilistic Empiricism, by M. Suarez and myself, examines how probabilistic models representing objective propensities can be confirmed by induction on situations.

Now open access at EJPS
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13194-025-00653-5

The article is based on a fruitful combination of our past work: Mauricio's s Complex Nexus of Chance on the complicated relations between frequencies, probabilities and dispositions, and my Modal Empiricism on the epistemology of modalities.

Jon Baron shared Peter Wakker's annotated bibliography of #decisionTheory

> 9000 entries!

DocX http://personal.eur.nl/wakker/refs/webrfrncs.docx

PDF http://personal.eur.nl/wakker/refs/webrfrncs.pdf

BibTeX (no annotations, I merged redundancies) https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vbkki82h62ydq0fol1g8d/Decision-Theory.bib?rlkey=84m8zx3tyaa4uy6p0zptkybnx&st=qx9myebb&dl=0

[math] Where Does Meaning Live in a Sentence?
https://www.quantamagazine.org/where-does-meaning-live-in-a-sentence-math-might-tell-us-20250409/

Tai-Danae Bradley uses category theory to understand human and AI-generated language
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=UotbaiIAAAAJ&hl=en

Mathematically Gifted & Black
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematically_Gifted_%26_Black

English conflates the concepts of "hear" and "understand." Many conflicts get nowhere because we use the common phrasing, "You're not listening to me!" or "You didn't hear me!" when what we really mean is, "You didn't get me, I want you to make sense of what I'm saying."

The process of comprehending what someone has said is different than hearing their words. How many times have you said, "You're not listening!" and they were in fact "listening" but not getting it? How many times have you said, "No I HEARD you?" when you did not, in fact, understand?

English used to have a snappy word for this: heed. To heed was to both hear AND to understand. And it also meant "obey" which might be why it fell out of favor (which itself reflects an interesting point of cultural values shift). We DO in fact conflate "listen" to obedience, sometimes, especially towards children. But not as much as once was.

The fact that all words mean multiple things, and that English has some issues with which things are conflated, can really influence how we think and interact. It's worth trying to unpack that. Then I start thinking towards how we can change English to be better.

#introduction

Hello, I'm a Social Worker from Mexico City. I'm interested in studying my discipline from a #Science and Technology Studies perspective.

Some other interests are: #philosophy of social sciences, #epistemology, scientific #practices and #community social work.

I want to connect with other people in the social sciences and in the #humanities to broaden my network.

This is my dialnet webpage (in spanish): https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/autor?codigo=5344286

See you all around!!

What is the characteristic wrong of testimonial injustice?
Richard Pettigrew, 2025

"When someone is in a position of power over you, you often need them to have accurate beliefs that only your testimony can reliably supply"

https://academic.oup.com/pq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/pq/pqaf034/8104779

If you understand Virtue Epistomology (VE), you cannot accept any LLM output as "information".

VE is an attempt to correct the various omniscience-problems inherent in classical epistemologies, which all to some extent require a person to know what the Truth is in order to evaluate if some statement is true.

VE prescribes that we should look to how the information was obtained, particularly in two ways:
1) Was the information obtained using a well-understood method that is known to produce good results?
2) Does the method appear to have been applied correctly in this particular case?

LLM output always fails on pt1. An LLM will not look for the truth. It will just look for what is a probable combination of words. This means that an LLM is just as likely to combine a number of true statements in a way that is probable but false, as it is to combine them in a way that is probable and true.

LLMs only sample the probability of word combinations. It doesn't understand the input, and it doesn't understand its own output.

Only a damned fool would use it for anything, ever.

#epistemology #LLM #generativeAI #ArtificialIntelligence #ArtificialStupidity @philosophy

In other words, Generative AI and LLMs lack a sound epistemology and that's very problematic...:

"Bullshit and generative AI are not the same. They are similar, however, in the sense that both mix true, false, and ambiguous statements in ways that make it difficult or impossible to distinguish which is which. ChatGPT has been designed to sound convincing, whether right or wrong. As such, current AI is more about rhetoric and persuasiveness than about truth. Current AI is therefore closer to bullshit than it is to truth. This is a problem because it means that AI will produce faulty and ignorant results, even if unintentionally.
(...)
Judging by the available evidence, current AI – which is generative AI based on large language models – entails artificial ignorance more than artificial intelligence. That needs to change for AI to become a trusted and effective tool in science, technology, policy, and management. AI needs criteria for what truth is and what gets to count as truth. It is not enough to sound right, like current AI does. You need to be right. And to be right, you need to know the truth about things, like AI does not. This is a core problem with today's AI: it is surprisingly bad at distinguishing between truth and untruth – exactly like bullshit – producing artificial ignorance as much as artificial intelligence with little ability to discriminate between the two.
(...)
Nevertheless, the perhaps most fundamental question we can ask of AI is that if it succeeds in getting better than humans, as already happens in some areas, like playing AlphaZero, would that represent the advancement of knowledge, even when humans do not understand how the AI works, which is typical? Or would it represent knowledge receding from humans? If the latter, is that desirable and can we afford it?"

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5119382

Recently, I got several opportunities to discuss the reproducibility crisis in science. To help discuss that complex topic, we need to agree on a vocabulary.

My favorite one has been published by Manuel López-Ibáñez, Juergen Branke and Luis Paquete, and is summarized in the attached diagram, which you can also find here: http://nojhan.net/tfd/vocabulary-of-reproducibility.html

It's good that this topic is not fading away, but is gaining traction. "Slowly, but surely", as we say in French.

If you want a high resolution suitable for impression, do not hesitate to ask!

finally in print, the last puzzle piece in a decade of thinking about communication across social networks from the perspective of ideal rational agents: how do we factor in ‚dependence‘ - the fact that the same underlying evidence may, for example, reach us via multiple different reports, giving rise to double counting?

There is a strong intuition that multiple independent observations should carry more weight than dependent observations. But how much more?

We show that there is no (known) answer to this normative question in the general case. This renders a fundamental feature of human testimony unsolvable, meaning that acquiring knowledge via the testimony of others is much harder than typically assumed

https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s11229-025-04969-w?sharing_token=T_qZZ-qagNeAgHYmwOsO4Pe4RwlQNchNByi7wbcMAY7NNaNx5je-8CbqY3NQbXjm1PJgoB0Fw-IBoMYIKgSDlaiwownlR0py9XbHJBti1v6lLN7PlZ2uZJjf_SE6Z-Nwu8xISFeoc5h9Szl4tzerZtJWZwsR6CbwVDWSPlumzIw%3D

#epistemology #SocialNetworks @philosophy

My favourite online comparative theologian at ESOTERICA Dr. Justin Sledge has put out part four of his Demiurge series, would recommend if you're interested in how humans came up with all the crazy things we believe these days. Turns out wE lIvE iN a SimUlAtIoN is antique and creaky as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq-CoIFf8l0 #Epistemology #Philosophy #ComparativeTheology #Occult #Religion

#dogs understand #ontology: "they do not want me to eat off of the kitchen counter" - things with existence independent of the observer. #cats only #epistemology: "they do not want to observe me walking on the kitchen counter"

Pari tuoretta OA-artikkelia sosiaalisen epistemologian journaalissa.

Pedro Schmechtig pohtii episteemistä paternalismia ja suojelevaa auktoriteettia, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2025.2453942?src=exp-oa, eli millä ehdoin voisi olla oikein auttaa, jopa ohjata jotakuta "tietämään paremmin".

Mark Coeckelbergh puolestaan tarkastelee tekoälyn vaikutusta episteemiseen agenssiin eli tiedonmuodostuksemme itsenäisyyteen ja kriittisyyteen, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02691728.2025.2466164?src=exp-oa#abstract

The two most recent episodes of #BioUnethical with David Thorstad, Emily Largent, and @GovindPersad were very (very!) good.

Hosts Leah Pierson and Sophie Gibert may be doing reflective discussion better than anyone — outstanding stage setting, questioning, improvising, etc.

https://www.biounethical.com

Is religion the only foundation for morality?
#DanMcClellan #Culture #Epistemology #Science #Rhetoric #Humanism #Religion #Christofascism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVN-DTiuwKc