Lars P. Syll

The quest​ for certainty — a new substitute for religion In this post-rationalist age of ours, more and more books are written in symbolic languages, and it becomes more and more difficult to see why: what it is all about, and why it should be necessary, or advantageous, to allow oneself to be bored by volumes of symbolic trivialities. It almost seems as if the symbolism were becoming a value in itself, to be revered for its sublime ‘exactness’: a new...

Machine learning — puzzling Big Data nonsense If we wanted highly probable claims, scientists would stick to​​ low-level observables and not seek generalizations, much less theories with high explanatory content. In this day​ of fascination with Big data’s ability to predict​ what book I’ll buy next, a healthy Popperian reminder is due: humans also want to understand and to explain. We want bold ‘improbable’ theories. I’m a little puzzled when I hear...

Understanding government debts and deficits [embedded content] The balanced budget paradox is probably one of the most devastating phenomena haunting our modern economies. The harder politicians — usually on the advice of establishment economists — try to achieve balanced budgets for the public sector, the less likely they are to succeed in their endeavour. And the more the citizens have to pay for the concomitant austerity policies these wrong-headed...

Bayesian ‘old evidence’ problems Why is the subjective Bayesian supposed to have an old evidence problem? The allegation … goes like this: If probability is a measure of degree of belief, then if an agent already knows that e has occurred, the agent must assign P(e) the value 1. Hence P(e|H) is assigned a value of 1. But this means no Bayesian support accrues from e. For if P(e) = P(e|H) = 1, then P(H|e) = P(H). The Bayesian condition for support is not met...

Den tysta majoriteten gör rent hus  [embedded content] Till alla kvinnliga studenter som under årens lopp fått stå ut med att professorn kallat dem för Marie-Fifi …

But once, we were here  [embedded content] In loving memory of my brother, Peter ‘Uncas’ Pålsson.

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Förra veckan presenterade SVT en uppmärksammad kartläggning över den svenska skolsegregationenen. Resultatet var nedslående. I kommun efter kommun kunde man visa på hur segregationen ökat i svensk skola. Den segregation som det ‘fria’ skolvalet och kommunaliseringen av skolan gett upphov till är i sig illa nog, men följderna vi kan se i samhället av att elever med samma etnisk-socio-ekonomiska bakgrund koncentreras till vissa skolor är ännu mer förödande. Skolresultaten...

Gibbs sampling (student stuff)  [embedded content]

En dag ringde Indira Gandhi  [embedded content]