The Fallacy Fallacy: An Example The fallacy fallacy is weird among its peers. Whereas other logical fallacies refer to poor argumentation, the fallacy fallacy refers to the unwarranted move from noticing an argument is fallacious, to denying the truth claim of an argument. An example: Alice is talking with Bob about climate change. She notes…

Consumer behavior research does not apply to vaccinations. — A recent article published in Bloomberg inspired me to take time away from my Ph.D. studies and write another short essay. …

Or: Against media hype Note: this post was recently picked up in an article written by Katie Herzog for Bari Weiss’ substack. While I have included many disclaimers throughout this post, I want to be clear that I am 1) not a medical researcher, and 2) that you should read…

Or: Why I Hate Business Books Why is every business book so awful? No, really, why are they so consistently bad? I’m a binge reader, and this past week alone I’ve been reading somewhere between 2 and 3 books a day — the one constant in this endeavour is that…

Or: Taking your beliefs to their logical conclusion There’s a concept in philosophy known as the “utility monster”. The basic idea is that there may exist an agent that derives an incalculably large amount of utility from any given unit of resources than all of humanity does. Robert Nozick proposed…

Or: When experts get naïve — I’d like to introduce a concept I’ve found useful when thinking about the scientific community’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic: Gell-Mann Amnesia. I think we’ve all experienced Gell-Mann amnesia in some form before. Here’s how Michael Crichton, who coined the term, describes it: “You open the newspaper to an article…

Or: Good epistemic hygiene is important In an 1877 paper, Cambridge mathematician and philosopher William Clifford describes the case of a shipowner about to make a sale: “A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first…

And may not do what we want them to do A couple weeks ago the American Justice Department found that Yale systematically discriminates against Asian and White applicants on the basis of their race. …

Or: Low frequency events with high impact are difficult to think about Blaise Pascal, a 17th century philosopher and mathematician was struggling with faith. How could he convince himself, and others, to believe in God? In an early application of decision theory, he proposed that having faith was akin to…