Bansky in the loo

merry Xmas

Aqua granda

[Email on my Ca’Foscari account today:]

Le sedi di Ca’ Foscari ubicate nel centro storico di Venezia rimarranno chiuse domani 14 novembre, per le verifiche di ripristino della funzionalità. Pertanto tutte le attività didattiche e amministrative e delle biblioteche nelle nostre sedi del centro storico saranno sospese.

Dutch book for sleeping beauty

After my short foray in Dutch book arguments two weeks ago in Harvard, I spotted a recent arXival by Vincent Conitzer analysing the sleeping beauty paradox from a Dutch book perspective. (The paper “A Dutch book against sleeping beauties who are evidential decision theorists” actually appeared in Synthese two years ago, which makes me wonder why it comes out only now on arXiv. And yes I am aware the above picture is about Bansky’s Cindirella and not sleeping beauty!)

“if Beauty is an evidential decision theorist, then in variants where she does not always have the same information available to her upon waking, she is vulnerable to Dutch books, regardless of whether she is a halfer or a thirder.”

As recalled in the introduction of the paper, there exist ways to construct Dutch book arguments against thirders and halfers alike. Conitzer constructs a variant that also distinguishes between a causal and an evidential decision theorist (sleeping beauty), the later being susceptible to another Dutch book. Which is where I get lost as I have no idea of a distinction between those two types of decision theory. Quickly checking on Wikipedia returned the notion that the latter decision theory maximises the expected utility conditional on the decision, but this does not clarify the issue in that it seems to imply the decision impacts the probability of the event… Hence keeping me unable to judge of the relevance of the arguments therein (which is no surprise since only based on a cursory read).

Calais, a negation of the most basic human rights!

On Friday night, while cooking dinner, I was listening to François Hollande on the French national public radio (France Inter) and I got shocked at how serenely he could made a generic declaration of principles about Calais, after years and years of intentional inaction as a deterrent policy…

“A Calais, nous devons accueillir les personnes dignement” François Hollande, Feb. 19, 2016

“UNHCR remains concerned at the dire living and reception conditions in the makeshift sites around Calais.” Aug. 7, 2015