Related papers: Doomsday: A Response to Simpson's Second Question
Decisions are often based on imprecise, uncertain or vague information. Likewise, the consequences of an action are often equally unpredictable, thus putting the decision maker into a twofold jeopardy. Assuming that the effects of an action…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
In Bayesian theory, calculating a posterior probability distribution is highly important but usually difficult. Therefore, some methods have been put forward to deal with such problem, among which, the most popular one is the asymptotic…
We present and examine a result related to uncertainty reasoning, namely that a certain plausibility space of Cox's type can be uniquely embedded in a minimal ordered field. This, although a purely mathematical result, can be claimed to…
Physicists have, hitherto, mostly adopted a frequentist conception of probability, according to which probability statements apply only to ensembles. It is argued that we should, instead, adopt an epistemic, or Bayesian conception, in which…
Composite likelihoods are increasingly used in applications where the full likelihood is analytically unknown or computationally prohibitive. Although the maximum composite likelihood estimator has frequentist properties akin to those of…
The concept of time emerges as an ordering structure in a classical statistical ensemble. Probability distributions $p_\tau(t)$ at a given time $t$ obtain by integrating out the past and future. We discuss all-time probability distributions…
Given i.i.d. data from an unknown distribution, we consider the problem of predicting future items. An adaptive way to estimate the probability density is to recursively subdivide the domain to an appropriate data-dependent granularity. A…
In the light of some recent results, it is argued that usual concepts of causality and locality are approximations valid at scales greater than the Compton wavelength and corresponding time scales. It follows that the "spooky" non-locality…
Frank Porter has recently posted a review of "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution" (arXiv:2509.02852). The long, diverse history of such intervals is closely related to that of confidence intervals for the parameter of the…
There is a trend to consider counterfactuals as invariably time-asymmetric. Recently, this trend manifested itself in the controversy about validity of counterfactual application of a time-symmetric quantum probability rule. Kastner (2003)…
Contrary to general relativity, quantum theory treats space and time in fundamentally different ways. In particular, while joint probabilities associated with spacelike separated measurements are defined in terms of the Born rule, joint…
The problem of prediction consists in forecasting the conditional distribution of the next outcome given the past. Assume that the source generating the data is such that there is a stationary ergodic predictor whose error converges to zero…
I discuss three connections between Dummett's writings about time and philosophical aspects of physics. The first connection (Section 2) arises from remarks of Dummett's about the different relations of observation to time and to space. The…
For a stochastic process reset at random times, we discuss to what extent the probabilities of some orderings of observables associated with the intervals of time between resetting events are universal, i.e., independent of the choice of…
How special (or not) is the epoch we are living in? What is the appropriate reference class for embedding the observations made at the present time? How probable -- or else -- is anything we observe in the fulness of time? Contemporary…
Focusing on a continuous-time quantum walk on $\mathbb{Z}=\left\{0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\ldots\right\}$, we analyze a probability distribution with which the quantum walker is observed at a position. The walker launches off at a localized state and…
Phantom dark energy models, with w < -1, are characterized by a future singularity and therefore a finite lifetime for the universe. Because the future singularity is triggered by the onset of dark-energy domination, the universe spends a…
We show how a recently introduced statistics [Patil et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81 5878 (2001)] provides a direct relationship between dimension and predictability in spatiotemporal chaotic systems. Regions of low dimension are identified as…
In the modern quantum mechanics of cosmology observers are physical systems within the universe. They have no preferred role in the formulation of the theory nor in its predictions of third person probabilities of what occurs. However,…