Robinson's Podcast - 107 - Kevin Dorst: Bayesian Reasoning, Irrationality, and Political Polarization

107 - Kevin Dorst: Bayesian Reasoning, Irrationality, and Political Polarization

06/27/23 • 105 min

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Kevin Dorst is a professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. He works at the intersection between philosophy and social science, focusing on rationality. In this episode Kevin and Robinson discuss just this: They begin with classical theories of rationality and where they fall short before discussing instances where the empirical literature shows that humans do not reason rationally at all, touching on the gambler’s fallacy, sunk-cost reasoning, and the hindsight bias. They then move on to discuss the phenomenon of political polarization, which draws both on our capacity for rationality and irrationality. Make sure to check out Kevin’s Substack, Stranger Apologies.

Stranger Apologies: https://kevindorst.substack.com

Kevin’s Website: https://www.kevindorst.com

Kevin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin_dorst

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode...

01:02 Introduction

04:14 Rationality and Philosophy

15:14 Bayesian Reasoning

45:10 The Hindsight Bias

56:53 What is Bias?

01:04:03 The Gambler’s Fallacy

01:15:00 Sunk-Cost Reasoning

01:19:07 Political Polarization

01:40:12 Talking Through Disagreement

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.

Stranger Apologies: https://kevindorst.substack.com

Kevin’s Website: https://www.kevindorst.com

Kevin’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin_dorst

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode...

01:02 Introduction

04:14 Rationality and Philosophy

15:14 Bayesian Reasoning

45:10 The Hindsight Bias

56:53 What is Bias?

01:04:03 The Gambler’s Fallacy

01:15:00 Sunk-Cost Reasoning

01:19:07 Political Polarization

01:40:12 Talking Through Disagreement

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Previous Episode

106 - David Albert & Sean Carroll: Quantum Theory, Boltzmann Brains, & The Fine-Tuned Universe

David Albert is the Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University and Director of the Philosophical Foundations of Physics program at Columbia. David is a prior guest of the Robinson’s Podcast multiverse, having appeared on episodes #23 (with Justin Clarke-Doane), #30, and #67 (with Tim Maudlin). Sean Carroll is Homewood Professor of Natural Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and fractal faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. He is also host of Sean Carroll’s Mindscape, a terrific show (that influenced the birth of Robinson’s Podcast ) about science, society, philosophy, culture, arts, and ideas. Sean also had a great conversation with David on Mindscape, linked below. Both David and Sean are rare breeds—philosophers who are physicists, and physicists who are philosophers—and in this episode Robinson, David, and Sean speak about some of the philosophical concerns at the foundations of physics. They first discuss the Many-Worlds theory of quantum mechanics before turning to the apparent fine-tuning of our universe for life and the possibility of Boltzmann Brains, or complex observers in the universe that arise spontaneously due to quantum fluctuations or the random motion of matter.

Preorder David’s A Guess at the Riddle: https://a.co/d/4MUEJZN

Sean’s Website: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com

Sean’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanmcarroll

The Biggest Ideas in the Universe: https://a.co/d/dPKZ40X

David Albert on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape: https://youtu.be/AglOFx6eySE

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode...

00:59 Introduction

08:11 Superposition and The Many-Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics

22:34 Decoherence

27:20 Probability

41:32 Some Thought Experiments Concerning Probability

01:08:35 Parsimony

01:12:03 The Fine-Tuned Universe and Quantum Theory

01:14:52 Entropy

01:45:37 Intelligent Design

01:47:22 Boltzmann Brains Galore

Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com

Next Episode

108 - Chiara Mingarelli: Supermassive Black Holes & the Gravitational Wave Background

Chiara Mingarelli is a gravitational-wave astrophysicist and a professor in the Department of Physics at Yale University. She studies supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies and their mergers using data about gravitational waves that are detected by pulsar timing array experiments. In this episode, Robinson and Chiara discuss PTAs, gravitational waves, black holes, how and why they merge, and the fresh release of NANOgrav’s fifteen-year data set, which gives the first ever evidence of a gravitational wave background in the universe, an unprecedented discovery that marks the dawn of a new era of astrophysical research.

Chiara’s Website: https://www.chiaramingarelli.com/

Chiara’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dr_CMingarelli

OUTLINE

00:00 In This Episode...

00:30 Introduction

02:58 Chiara’s Interest in Black Holes

10:25 What Are Gravitational Waves

15:47 Detecting Gravitational Waves

31:39 How to Visualize Black Holes

40:55 Black Holes and Gravitational Waves

48:51 Two Different Backgrounds

53:46 Collecting and Interpreting Data