Probability theory, understood meta-rationally
Ask: how and why to use it; and whether some other approach to uncertainty would be better.
Meta-rationality
Leveling up technical work with context and purpose
Latest posts
A fully meta-rational workplace
A meta-rational organization may appear chaotic (although productive and innovative), until you notice how smoothly routine rational work gets done.
Resisting or embracing meta-rationality
It's natural to react to meta-rationalism with skepticism or hostility initially. You may come to delight in it.
Maps, the territory, and meta-rationality
“The map is not the territory”—what is it then? How do rational models actually work?
Reasonable believings
The epistemological categories—truth, belief, inference—are richer, more complex, diverse, and nebulous than rationalism supposes.
Now with Django!
Please let me know about web site problems; I've changed the underlying tech.
How we refer
We accomplish reference by any means necessary: observable, improvised work that makes it clear what we are talking about in context.
The purpose of meaning
Peculiar features of language make sense as tools to enable collaboration, rather than to express objective truths.
Meaningful perception
We actively work to perceive aspects of the world as meaningful, in terms of our purposes, in context.
Reasonableness is routine
Routine activity usually goes smoothly overall, despite frequent minor glitches, because we have methods for repairing trouble.
You are accountable for reasonableness
Accountability is the key concept in understanding mere reasonableness, as contrasted with systematic rationality.
Reasonableness is meaningful activity
Understanding concrete, purposeful activity is a prerequisite to understanding the formal rationality that depends on it.
Aspects of reasonableness
A summary explanation of everyday reasonable activity, with a tabular guide and a concrete example.
The ethnomethodological flip
A dramatic perspective shift: understanding rationality as dependent on mere reasonableness to connect it with reality.
This is not cognitive science
The Eggplant is neither cognitive nor science, although it seeks a better understanding of some phenomena cognitive science has studied.
Part Two: Taking reasonableness seriously
Everyday reasonableness is the foundation of technical, formal, and systematic rationality.
Acting on the truth
Rationalist theories of action try to deduce optimal choices from true beliefs. This is rarely possible in practice.
Statistics and the replication crisis
The mistaken belief that statistical methods can tell you what to believe drove the science replication crisis.
The probability of green cheese
A thought experiment shows why probability theory and statistics cannot address uncertainty in general.
What probability can’t do
If probability theory were an epistemology, we’d want it to tell us how confident to be in our beliefs. Unfortunately, it can’t do that.