Related papers: Why trust a theory? Some further remarks (part 1)

Any system based on axioms is incomplete because the axioms cannot be proven from the system, just believed. But one system can be less-incomplete than other. Neutrosophy is less-incomplete than many other systems because it contains them.…

Much of the controversy about methods for automated decision making has focused on specific calculi for combining beliefs or propagating uncertainty. We broaden the debate by (1) exploring the constellation of secondary tasks surrounding…

String theory is accused by some of its critics to be a purely abstract mathematical discipline, having lost the contact to the simple yet deeply rooted questions which physics provided until the beginning of this century. We argue that, in…

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be…

A fundamental problem in science is how to make logical inferences from scientific data. Mere data does not suffice since additional information is necessary to select a domain of models or hypotheses and thus determine the likelihood of…

This article will be a continuation of our research into self-justifying systems. It will introduce several new theorems and their applications. (One of these results will transform our previous infinite-sized self-verifying formalisms into…

Following Fisher, it is widely believed that randomization "relieves the experimenter from the anxiety of considering innumerable causes by which the data may be disturbed." In particular, it is said to control for known and unknown…

In this talk I make some remarks about the search for the origin of the electroweak scale.

This is a non-standard paper, containing some problems, mainly in model theory, which I have, in various degrees, been interested in. Sometimes with a discussion on what I have to say; sometimes, of what makes them interesting to me,…

Although many investigators affirm a desire to build reasoning systems that behave consistently with the axiomatic basis defined by probability theory and utility theory, limited resources for engineering and computation can make a complete…

It is argued that string theory may pose new conceptual issues for the history and philosophy of science.

The missionary zeal of many Bayesians of old has been matched, in the other direction, by a view among some theoreticians that Bayesian methods are absurd-not merely misguided but obviously wrong in principle. We consider several examples,…

Decision theories offer principled methods for making choices under various types of uncertainty. Algorithms that implement these theories have been successfully applied to a wide range of real-world problems, including materials and drug…

In this chapter, we propose some future directions of work, potentially beneficial to Mathematics and its foundations, based on the recent import of methodology from the theory of programming languages into proof theory. This scientific…

In earlier work, we introduced flexible inference and decision-theoretic metareasoning to address the intractability of normative inference. Here, rather than pursuing the task of computing beliefs and actions with decision models composed…

We argue that the tools of decision theory need to be taken more seriously in the specification and analysis of systems. We illustrate this by considering a simple problem involving reliable communication, showing how considerations of…

Some of the most obviously correct physical theories - namely string theory and the multiverse - make no testable predictions, leading many to question whether we should accept something as scientific even if it makes no testable…

The features of a logically sound approach to a theory of statistical reasoning are discussed. A particular approach that satisfies these criteria is reviewed. This is seen to involve selection of a model, model checking, elicitation of a…

We comment on the relation between string theory and empirical science, grounding our discussion in cosmology, a subject with increasingly precise data in which this connection operates at several levels. It is important to take into…

This article is the rejoinder for the paper "Probabilistic Integration: A Role in Statistical Computation?" to appear in Statistical Science with discussion. We would first like to thank the reviewers and many of our colleagues who helped…