Boris Babic (University of Toronto): ‘Resolute and Correlated Bayesians’

This event will take place online via Zoom.

To join online just follow these instructions:

• Download Zoom
• Join the event using this link: https://umich.zoom.us/j/94960424116 (Passcode: Ramsey)

Please note that these events are routinely recorded, with the edited footage being made publicly available on our website and YouTube channel. We will only record the audio, the slides and the speaker and will not include the Q&A section. However, any question asked during the talk itself will feature in the final edit.

Abstract: This paper suggests a new normative approach for combining beliefs. We call it the evidence-first method. Instead of aggregating credences alone, as the prevailing approaches, we focus instead on eliciting a group’s full probability distribution on the basis of the evidence available to its members. This is an altogether different way of combining beliefs. The method has four main benefits: (1) it captures the weight, or resilience, of a group’s belief; (2) it is sensitive to correlation among its individuals; (3) it is commutative under updating; and (4) it can be seen as a generalization of weighted averaging and likelihood ratio approaches. More generally, it encourages an overall rethinking of the belief combination problem away from aggregating bare credences and toward appropriately combining evidence.

Boris Babic is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, where he has a dual appointment in the Department of Statistics and the Department of Philosophy.