Fall 2024, Rationality (Undergrad)
Syllabus
Textbook: Titelbaum, Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology volume 1 and volume 2.  MIT gives online access to all students: search "Fundamentals of Bayesian Epistemology" on the MIT libraries website.
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​Readings (.zip file)

Papers
Paper advice
​Argument-Summary Prompts
Paper 1 Prompts
Paper 2 Prompts
Schedule:

  1. (Sept 5) Gershman 2021, pp 1–6 [Handout]
  2. (Sept 10) Degrees of belief, Titelbaum Ch. 1   [Handout]
  3. (Sept 12) (Conditional) Probability, Titelbaum Ch. 2–3
  4. (Sept 17) Conditionalization, Titelbaum Ch. 4 and Assaad and Hahn 2024
  5. (Sept 19) The Conjunction Fallacy, Tversky and Kahneman 1983  [Handout]
  6. (Sept 24) The Conjunction Fallacy, Dorst and Mandelkern 2022 (skip §3.3, 4.1, and 4.2)  [Handout]
  7. (Sept 26) Hindsight bias, Hedden 2019 [Handout]
  8. (Oct 1) Hindsight bias, Dorst_HB blog posts [Handout]
    Argument-summary prompts distributed. [Prompts]
  9. (Oct 3) Deference Principles, Titelbaum sections 5.1–5.3
  10. (Oct 8) The law of small numbers, Tversky and Kahneman 1971 [Handout]
    1. ​[OOPS—I assigned the wrong reading. Correct one: K&T 1972 (pages 430–437). Sorry!]
  11. (Oct 10) The gambler’s fallacy, Dorst_GF  [Handout]
    Argument summary due at 11:59pm. Share google doc permissions.
  12. (Oct 15) No class (student holiday)
  13. (Oct 17) Hierarchical Models, Kemp et al. 2007  [Handout]
    Paper 1 prompts distributed
  14. (Oct 22) Overconfidence, Dorst_OC [Handout]
  15. (Oct 24) Overprecision, Moore et al. 2015 [Handout]
  16. (Oct 29) Decision Theory, Titelbaum Ch. 7
  17. (Oct 31) Motivated Ignorance, Kinney and Bright 2022 [Handout]
  18. (Nov 5) Wishful thinking, Melnikoff and Strohminger 2023 [Handout]
    Paper 1 due at 11:59pm. Share google doc permissions.
  19. (Nov 7) No class (Kevin traveling)
  20. (Nov 12) Polarization, No reading
    Paper 2 prompts distributed
  21. (Nov 14) No class (Kevin traveling)
  22. (Nov 19) Polarization, Nielsen and Stewart 2018 [Handout]
  23. (Nov 21) Polarization, Kelly 2008  [Handout]
  24. (Nov 26) Confirmation bias. Hahn and Harris 2014, pages 59–76  [Handout]
  25. (Nov 28) No class (Thanksgiving)
  26. (Dec 3) Confirmation bias, Salow 2018 (section 1) and Dorst_RP (sections 1–2)  [Handout]
  27. (Dec 5) Polarization, Dorst_RP, sections 3–8
  28. (Dec 10) Selective memory, Wilson 2014
  29. (Dec 11) No class. Paper 2 due at 11:59pm. Share google doc permissions. ​