[Question] What should I ask Alan Hájek, philosopher of probability, Bayesianism, expected value and counterfatuals?

Next weekend at EAGx Australia I’ll be doing a live 80,000 Hours Podcast recording with philosopher Alan Hájek, who has spent his life studying the nature of probability, counterfactuals, Bayesianism, expected value and more.

What should I ask him?

He’s he author of among other papers:

  • Waging war on Pascal’s wager

  • The reference class problem is your problem too

  • Interpretations of probability

  • Arguments for—or against—Probabilism?

  • Most counterfactuals are false

  • The nature of uncertainty

Topics he’d likely be able to comment on include:

  • problems with orthodox expected utility theory, especially involving infinite and undefined utilities or expectations

  • risk aversion, whether it’s justified, and how best to spell it out

  • how to set base rate priors for unknown quantities

  • his heuristics for doing good philosophy (about which he has lots to say) /​ how to spot bad philosophical arguments

See more about Professor Hájek here: https://​​philosophy.cass.anu.edu.au/​​people/​​professor-alan-h-jek