wow

Great to get an honourable mention in the @thebjps.bsky.social Popper Prize for their best paper in 2025. Doubly great to be there alongside @cmwhiteley.bsky.social. If I remember correctly, we wrote these papers sitting a few metres from each other in grad school @lsephilosophy.bsky.social

One of my fav papers is finally out: "Normative formal epistemology as modelling" is now in @thebjps.bsky.social

In it I argue that formal epistemology is no good for building theories about the epistemic. But that's ok, because actually it builds models
www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/P8FVP...

It is always recorded and will be up on the Institute website soon after!

Looking forward to this talk tomorrow. It is called "Should experts be open and honest?" and I'll be talking about Covid-19, change, and Stephen John's provocative case against these virtues of expert communication.
www.iffs.se/en/calendar/...

Wow SA is dire

I think it has many precursors! I'm trying to pin down what is new about the current version focusing on x-risk and optimism/pessimism about transformative technologies like AI

Do you know if that version of the claim that this moment is uniquely special, which looks forwards and backwards, has precedents?

I'm trying to crystallize a concept that I'm reading about so I'm not super sure yet tbh... One thing that seems unique about these modern authors is that they also think that this is the most important time compared to the future, not just compared to the past.

Thanks Fredrik! Great avenue to explore. I love the phrase Promethean technology

I wondered about that, along with various "end times" ideas. They share the "this is a unique and important time" aspect. One distinct feature of the C20 version is that we're empowered to do something about it though.
But your question makes me realise that I should ask @xriskology.bsky.social

@karimjebari.bsky.social @arenamontanus.bsky.social @erikangner.com could you help share?

Goal 1. Find earlier 20th C sources also talking about the atomic age, space race, etc.
Goal 2. Find much earlier versions of the claim, since it seems likely that many people thought this throughout history.
Cool stretch goal: Historical discussion of the idea and when/why it crops up

Futurists, historians, x-risk people: help!
Several 20th C thinkers said that we live at the most important time in history. Carl Sagan warned that our technological power now exceeds our wisdom, Derek Parfit called it "the hinge of history".
I'm looking for earlier versions of that claim. Ideas?

ngl guys, this made me laugh. Absurd waste of money from a UK perspective but just genuinely funny from an African one

Coherent, perhaps not. United by dubious Bayesian reasoning, definitely.

Oh this looks perfect for something I'm working on!

Hey this is great! There's a lot of similarity in how we see decision theory. On that, you might also like my forthcoming paper on this in BJPS. ("Forthcoming" only because it has been languishing in production for 2 years)
www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

New from the BJPS Review of Books

Idealization in Epistemology
by Daniel Greco

–Reviewed by Joe Roussos (@joeroussos.bsky.social)

Read it here: https://buff.ly/4g5WgaP

#philsci #philsky #epistemology

CfP: What is the appropriate role of climate economics in decision-making and climate policy? What role do value judgments play in its models and methods? How does it relate to other disciplines?
If you have answers, submit them to our topical collection for the EJPS: philsci.eu/Phil-Climate...

Literally all of them

Yes these conditional cases seem like part of having beliefs which are sensitive to the state of the world in exactly the way we want

The conference I was at was on knowledge resistance and they study cases just like this! But I agree that it seems like a different phenomenon... If we soften the language a bit, your case needn't involve any bad behaviour, it is just Quine's web of belief stuff

Ok good to hear. I'm trying to think of a case where someone wants to believe P but is neutral on wanting it to be true. Seems odd...

In philsci talk of wishful thinking is about scientists whose desires influence their results, but presumably they want the results to be true not just to believe so

Both involve a problematic desire->belief pathway, but in my case it is a desire for the world to be some way, rather than a desire to have an attitude.

I can read classic cases, eg Aesop's sour grapes story, both ways. Would be good to find a case where they come apart!

How do you define wishful thinking?
I had a different definition in mind than a speaker at a conference on Friday.
They said wishful thinking is: Ann believes that Kamala will win because she desires to have that belief
I thought: Ann believes that Kamala will win because she wants Kamala to win

Awareness Revision and Belief Extension What norm governs how an agent should change their beliefs when they encounter a completely new possibility? Orthodox Bayesianism has no answer, as it takes all learning to involve updating prior b...

By way of introducing myself, here's a recently published paper! 🔓

It is on unawareness and awareness growth, based on some criticisms of Karni-Vierø "Reverse Bayesianism". I provide a new model of growing awareness and show that it overcomes recent challenges

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....