Kevin Dorst

"Rational Polarization" is now forthcoming in The Philosophical Review! philpapers.org/rec/DORRP-2 (Shorter version: kevindorst.com/uploads/8/8/1/…) 5 years in the making; still lots more to figure out. Here's the TLDR, and a detailed summary:

@ben_golub the right multiplicand goes to ∞. So as e–>0, t_mix(e) –> ∞, which is just to say that you can't mix COMPLETELY to the stationary in finite time. Does that work? Still confusing myself about the eigenvalues

@ben_golub Ah gotcha. Okay! I've been thinking that lower bounds on mixing times might generalize the strategy. Here's a result from Levin et al, Markov Chains and Mixing Times Since we have (I think?) from PF that for all λ≠1, |λ|<1, the left multiplicand is positive. And as e–>0,

Philosopher needs math help: Suppose P is an irreducible, aperiodic transition matrix with not all rows equal. Does it follow that P^2 has some unequal rows? What about P^n for finite n? Obviously it's converging to the stationary. Can it reach it in finite time?

@ben_golub Thank you! Not 100% following but this is helpful. How do we know λ_2 is real?

@kevin_dorst Here P = S Λ S^(-1) Is the diagonalization of P.

I think it can't, so that P^n also has unequal rows. But struggling to prove it. References and suggestions welcome!!

Excited to share our second "explainer video"! (Refresher: these are ~5 min animations introducing applied epistemology concepts for a wide audience.) This one's on polarization, feat. script by Kevin Dorst! Please share, consider using in teaching, etc! youtube.com/watch?v=h9ndBi…

With the help of @UNC_AEP and @AWorsnip, just came out with a new explainer-video on the epistemology of polarization. Does polarization provide evidence for irrationality? youtube.com/watch?v=h9ndBi…

...noisy credences, it's harder to say what the right notion of Dutch book is. But on the one that works easily (fixed-option books), Reflection does NOT follow. That's why crazy people saying things like "rational Bayesians can predictably polarize": philpapers.org/rec/DORRPM-3

...assumption will plausibly fail. For instance, we sketch how it would fail if your credences were noisy, perhaps because they are elicited by sampling a la standard cognitive-science models (eg Thomas Icard's paper: philarchive.org/rec/ICASPA) For non-introspective agents with...

New paper! "Reflection, Introspection, and Book". With Kevin Zollman. (Yes, finally a Kevin & Kevin paper.) philpapers.org/rec/ZOLRIA We try to sort out the debate on whether there's a (legit) Dutch book argument for the Reflection principle. It's subtle. Some folks...

Trump won the popular vote. What does that mean about the US electorate? Less than you think. Most people are badly wrong about their political opponents—a finding called the "perception gap". I wrote about why this matters for liberals right now: kevindorst.com/sa_nightmare.h…

@sam_berstler Congrats!!

I'm excited that my paper, "Non-Epistemic Deniability," is now forthcoming in MIND. In it, I offer an analysis of implausible deniability--a kind of deniability that someone can have even when it's perfectly and completely obvious what she did. More: drive.google.com/file/d/1BAyzIH…

Pundits can't predict elections. Does that mean we should dismiss their post-election diagnoses? No. I wrote a piece explaining why: kevindorst.com/sa_punditry.ht…

Pundits can't predict elections. Does that mean we shouldn't take their post-election diagnoses seriously? No. I wrote a piece explaining why: kevindorst.substack.com/p/no-post-elec…

Marie Gluesenkamp Perez Wants Fellow Democrats to Look in the Mirror - The New York Times nytimes.com/2024/11/08/us/…

Where Does This Leave Democrats? nytimes.com/2024/11/07/opi…

@yyyxiang has a new paper with me and @kevin_dorst showing that you don't find a gambler's fallacy in probability judgments (by you do in point predictions): osf.io/preprints/psya… This dissociation suggests that the gambler's fallacy doesn't arise from probabilistic reasoning.