It’s only natural to place less trust in the judgment of those who disagree with you. After all, from your point of view, those people are mistaken! And making mistakes is a sign of incompetence. This kind of distrust is actually baked into a number of models in social epistemology (for example: here, here, and here). I gave an argument against the rationality of one such model in a previous post.... Read more

Academic philosophers have just been handed a golden ticket. And, as far as I can tell, we’re responding by looking around for the nearest garbage can to toss it away in. LLMs have made MPUs cheap as hell. With a little human guidance, you can crank out the kind of papers that make up 95% of what we publish in a few hours. Soon (already?), human guidance may not even be necessary.... Read more

As Joe Biden cleared 270 last week, some people remarked on how different the narrative would’ve been had the votes been counted in a different order: It's staggering to think about how differently PA would be viewed/covered right now if the EDay/mail ballots were being counted in the opposite order. — Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 5, 2020 The idea that order shouldn’t affect your final take is a classic criterion of rationality.... Read more