1. behavioral epistemology: sort of where neuroeconomics/behavioral economics and social epistemology meet.
2. behavioral game epistemology: add game theory/analysis to the mix. I'm aware of (and I think I blogged about) behavioral game theory, but I'm not aware of much explicit application of game theory analysis to social epistemology (although it's embedded/latent in game theory since some of the earliest days).
3. the "less wrong" blog is moving in a great direction. A lot of credit goes to Yudkowsky and his willingness to apparently be transparent about his own cognitive flaws.
4. I'm interested in what can come out of looking at self-control mechanisms and optimizing participation in social epistemological projects. It seems to me that deformations of social epistemological commons occur as subcomponent participants engage in at least two common forms of rent-seeking: (1) the classic one of reduced effort when detection/punishment mechanisms are too costly for the larger group, and (2) the perhaps more specifically primate one of deforming one's contributions to the social epistemological commons in such a way that optimizes one's internal sense of status (or one's external status performance). The latter seems to be what Professor Hanson bumps up against in dealing with self-described empiricism-based communities such as the medical community.
I've been listening to "The Logic of Life" recently. Your point about "behavioral game theory" reminds me of the distinction Harford makes between Von Neumann's & Schelling's versions of game theory. He's quite openly a fan of the latter. I prefer Supercrunchers (which I listened to right before Logic of Life), which put more of a focus on empiricism and accuracy than merely "explaining" data we're already all aware of. You might be interested in the extended debate between Harford & Ariely.
Posted by: TGGP | May 22, 2009 at 08:00 PM
TGGP, I'll try to check out the link in your last sentence. I checked in on earlier iterations of their debate (I think I favorited some of it in my youtube channel) and while entertaining (particularly Ariely), it seemed at that time to be a bit of a faux debate to me by two people basically occupying the same empirically grounded middle ground -except where in my opinion Harford gets overreductionist and a bit mythological on certain topics like race.
Posted by: Hopefully Anonymous | May 23, 2009 at 03:47 PM
I second your opinion. Who would you like to see debate and on what topics?
Posted by: TGGP | May 24, 2009 at 11:51 AM
lung vs. lung!
on
how many donuts does hopefully anonymous have to feed lung
lung - "lots!"
lung - "more!"
Posted by: lung | June 30, 2009 at 01:57 AM