Judea Pearl, Professor

Computer Science Department , Cognitive Systems Lab

University of California, Los Angeles

"From Simpson's Paradox to Actions, Decisions, and Free Will."

Starting with the century-old Simpson's Paradox, I will argue that: 1. Peoople think causally, not probabilistically 2. Decision trees cannot replace causal models 3. The free-will paradox demands a computational resolution that explains: 3.1. What mental activity generates the illusion of acting freely? 3.2. Why/how is such illusion generated from the activity above?. 3.3. How can we survive the distortion generated by the illusion? Is the distortion harmless? Is the illusion dispensible? 3.4. What is the computational usefulness of the illusion?. Some thoughts will be given to questions 3.1-3.4

Thursday, April 17th, 2008
1:10pm -  2:20
IRCS

3401 Walnut Street, Room 400A

For more information regarding our speaker please visit:

http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html