Audio note: this article contains 88 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description.

(This post draws heavily on earlier writing co-authored with Jesse Clifton, but he's not listed as an author since he hasn’t reviewed this version in detail.)

Should we always be able to say whether one outcome is more likely, less likely, or exactly as likely as another? Or should we sometimes suspend judgment and say “none of the above”, that the answer is indeterminate?

Indeterminate beliefs (often modeled with imprecise probabilities)[1] could have far-reaching implications for anyone who cares about the distant consequences of their actions. Most notably, we might be clueless about how our decisions affect the long-term future, if our estimates of our net effects on long-term welfare ought to be severely indeterminate. Perhaps we [...]

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Outline:

(05:21) Background on degrees of belief and what makes them rational

(08:25) Motivating example

(11:46) The structure of indeterminacy

(14:23) Indeterminate Bayesianism

(19:26) Decision-making: A first pass

(21:00) Practical hallmarks of indeterminacy

(21:42) Insensitivity to mild sweetening

(24:47) Suspending judgment on total effects, and choosing based on other reasons

(31:06) Responses to key objections to indeterminacy

(31:42) Aggregating our representor with higher-order credences uses more information

(32:51) Responses

(38:09) Precise forecasts do better than chance

(39:03) Responses

(42:06) Maximality is too permissive

(44:06) Responses

(45:47) Conclusion

(46:29) Acknowledgments

(46:51) Appendix: Indeterminacy for ideal agents

(50:57) Indeterminate priors

(54:40) The principle of indifference

(58:23) Occam's razor

The original text contained 25 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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