Related papers: Anna Karenina and The Two Envelopes Problem
The axiomatic structure of the $\kappa$-statistcal theory is proven. In addition to the first three standard Khinchin--Shannon axioms of continuity, maximality, and expansibility, two further axioms are identified, namely the self-duality…
The longstanding nonnegative inverse eigenvalue problem (NIEP) is to determine which multisets of complex numbers occur as the spectrum of an entry-wise nonnegative matrix. Although there are some well-known necessary conditions, a solution…
We present a toy theory that is based on a simple principle: the number of questions about the physical state of a system that are answered must always be equal to the number that are unanswered in a state of maximal knowledge. A wide…
We consolidate two widely believed conjectures about tautologies -- no optimal proof system exists, and most require superpolynomial size proofs in any system -- into a $p$-isomorphism-invariant condition satisfied by all paddable…
How to distribute welfare in a society is a key issue in the subject of distributional justice, which is deeply involved with notions of fairness. Following a thought experiment by Dworkin, this work considers a society of individuals with…
We propose a semantic foundation for logics for reasoning in settings that possess a distinction between equality of variables, a coarser equivalence of variables, and a notion of conditional independence between variables. We show that…
We give a new proof for Godel's second incompleteness theorem, based on Kolmogorov complexity, Chaitin's incompleteness theorem, and an argument that resembles the surprise examination paradox. We then go the other way around and suggest…
In a recent paper Andrei N. Soklakov explained the foundations of the Lagrangian formulation of classical particle mechanics by means of Kolmogorov complexity. In the present paper we use some of Soklakov ideas in order to derive the second…
Any strategy and prior probability together are a coherent conditional probability that can be extended, generally not in a unique way, to a full conditional probability. The corresponding class of extensions is studied and a closed form…
This short note introduces a formal system of truth and paradoxicality, outlining the main motivation, and proving its $\omega$-consistency. The system is called TP, for 'Truth and Paradoxicality'.
Consider the following story: A teacher announces to her students a test for the following week, such that the test will be ``surprising''. The students use this as the basis for a ``logical derivation'' and reach a contradiction, which…
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…
The universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics is widely attributed to a finely tuned initial condition of the universe. This creates a problem: why is the universe atypical? We suggest that the problem is an artefact created by…
In extremal set theory our usual goal is to find the maximal size of a family of subsets of an $n$-element set satisfying a condition. A condition is called chain-dependent, if it is satisfied for a family if and only if it is satisfied for…
We consider the infinite one-sided sequence generated by the period-doubling substitution $\sigma(a,b)=(ab,aa)$, denoted by $\mathbb{D}$. Since $\mathbb{D}$ is uniformly recurrent, each factor $\omega$ appears infinite many times in the…
Possibility theory offers a framework where both Lehmann's "preferential inference" and the more productive (but less cautious) "rational closure inference" can be represented. However, there are situations where the second inference does…
A puzzle about prisoners trying to identify the color of a hat on their head leads to a version where there are k more hats than prisoners. This generalized puzzle is related to the independence number of the arrangement graph A(m, n) and…
It is traditionally assumed that Zipf's law implies the power-law growth of the number of different elements with the total number of elements in a system - the so-called Heaps' law. We show that a careful definition of Zipf's law leads to…
The maximum entropy principle (MEP) is a method for obtaining the most likely distribution functions of observables from statistical systems, by maximizing entropy under constraints. The MEP has found hundreds of applications in ergodic and…
We prove a conjecture of Gy\'arf\'as (1976), which asserts that any family of trees $T_1, \dots, T_{n}$ where each $T_k$ has $k$ vertices packs into $K_n$. We do so by translating the decomposition problem into a labeling problem, namely…