Study in indifference

Ignorance and Indifference*

The epistemic state of complete ignorance is not a probability distribution. In it, we assign the same, unique, ignorance degree of belief to any contingent outcome and each of its contingent, disjunctive parts. That this is the appropriate way to represent complete ignorance is established by two instruments, each individually strong enough to identify this state. They are the principle of ind...

Envelopes and Indifference

On material frame-indifference

Stable Marriage and Indifference

It is well known that every instance of the classical stable marriage problem admits at least one stable matching, and that such a matching can be found in O(n’) time by application of the Gale/Shapley algorithm. In the classical version of the problem, each person must rank the members of the opposite sex in strict order of preference. In practical applications, a person may not wish (or be ab...

The importance of indifference in scientific research.

Current issues regarding scientific ethics have focused for the most part on regulations governing research and publication. I suggest that the internal process by which we separate self interest from the scientific process is a crucial and neglected part of training. Consideration of these issues might help us train better scientists instead of just scientists who adhere to the rules.This is a...