Related papers: Doomsday: A Response to Simpson's Second Question
In the standard physical interpretation of quantum theory, prediction and retrodiction are not symmetric. The opposite assertion by some authors results from their use of non-standard interpretations of the theory.
Several Artificial Intelligence schemes for reasoning under uncertainty explore either explicitly or implicitly asymmetries among probabilities of various states of their uncertain domain models. Even though the correct working of these…
The main object of Bayesian statistical inference is the determination of posterior distributions. Sometimes these laws are given for quantities devoid of empirical value. This serious drawback vanishes when one confines oneself to…
Time's apparent passage has long been debated by philosophers, with no decisive argument for or against its objective existence. In this paper we show that introducing the issue of determinism gives the debate a new, empirical twist. We…
We consider the problem of performing predecessor searches in a bounded universe while achieving query times that depend on the distribution of queries. We obtain several data structures with various properties: in particular, we give data…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Standard maximum likelihood estimation cannot be applied to discrete energy-based models in the general case because the computation of exact model probabilities is intractable. Recent research has seen the proposal of several new…
I think we can agree that dealing with uncertainty is not easy. Probability is the main tool for dealing with uncertainty, and we know there are many probability-related puzzles and paradoxes. Here I describe a rather idiosyncratic…
I defend an analog of probabilism that characterizes rationally coherent estimates for chances. Specifically, I demonstrate the following accuracy-dominance result for stochastic theories in the C*-algebraic framework: supposing an…
We introduce a continuous-time quantum walk on an ultrametric space corresponding to the set of p-adic integers and compute its time-averaged probability distribution. It is shown that localization occurs for any location of the ultrametric…
We argue using simple models that all successful practical uses of probabilities originate in quantum fluctuations in the microscopic physical world around us, often propagated to macroscopic scales. Thus we claim there is no physically…
Current observations do not rule out the possibility that the Universe might end up in an abrupt event. Different such scenarios may be explored through suitable parameterizations of the dark energy and then confronted to cosmological…
Reasoning under uncertainty is a fundamental challenge in Artificial Intelligence. As with most of these challenges, there is a harsh dilemma between the expressive power of the language used, and the tractability of the computational…
We investigate power spectra of a randomly sampled stationary stochastic signal, e.g. a spatial component of a turbulent velocity. We extend the methods of previous authors that basically assumed point or delta function sampling by…
In calculations of the probability distribution for the cosmological constant, it has been previously assumed that the a priori probability distribution is essentially constant in the very narrow range that is anthropically allowed. This…
Recent proposal for counterfactual computation [Hosten et al., Nature, 439, 949 (2006)] is analyzed. It is argued that the method does not provide counterfactual computation for all possible outcomes. The explanation involves a novel…
For affine stochastic differential equation with uniformly distributed time delay the local asymptotic properties of the likelihood function are studied. Local asymptotic normality, local asymptotic mixed normality, periodic local…
Statistical learning using imprecise probabilities is gaining more attention because it presents an alternative strategy for reducing irreplicable findings by freeing the user from the task of making up unwarranted high-resolution…
Exponential, and not Gaussian, decay of probability density functions was studied by Laplace in the context of his analysis of errors. Such Laplace propagators for the diffusive motion of single particles in disordered media were recently…
It is often objected that the Everett interpretation of QM cannot make sense of quantum probabilities, in one or both of two ways: either it can't make sense of probability at all, or it can't explain why probability should be governed by…