Sabri wrote:

> Dear Julio,
>
> I was not addressing you only, but thanks for the link.

Yes, I suspected you were addressing everybody here.  But, to be
frank, I find it a bit condescending the way you approach us, readers,
here.   (And I'll rush to pledge guilty of same sin.)  So I was just
making it clear that people on the list may not be completely
misinformed.

> One minor suggestion: you may want to use Scientific Word for presentation,
> unless you did that already. Scientific Word is Latex on Windows. MS Word is
> okay, but math is also about aesthetics, because when things are neat looking,
> they are easier to understand, provided that you don't get obsessed with
> aesthetics, and confuse the ends with the means.

Of course I use LaTeX.  Unless the publishing venue requires another
format.  The particular format of that paper was required by the Czech
university that compiled the proceedings.

> Kalman smoothing was just a tool I wanted to use to explain what I have in
> mind. We associate uncertainty only with the future but even the present and
> the past are uncertain also. It is just an observability/verifiability issue,
> not to mention that interpretations are subjective.

I agree.  This is a point I made in reply to Shane a while ago, here
on PEN-L.  Historians know this well.

I view the Bayes/Laplace (and Ramsey) doctrines of probability -- with
human learning practice at the center -- as the view consistent (with
minor interpretive tweaks here and there) with any attempt to change
the world for good.  For what is the production of knowledge (i.e. the
determination of probabilities or functions thereof) if not the
production of wealth (all knowledge is embedded in wealth, all wealth
is the objectification of knowledge, in spite of all the nonsense
about "digital," "symbolic," etc. goods that one reads here and
there)?  And what is wealth in the last analysis if not ourselves, as
individuals in our interactions?

Try and explain this to a Marxist, who thinks that math or probability
theory is one thing and logic or dialectics something else!  That's
part of the crap of the existing society, that it splits everything
into tiny fragments, seemingly disconnected, when they are not.  And
the Marxists joyfully contribute to the hairsplitting.  That's why I
don't think ideologies are just sets of subjective beliefs -- as you
say.  They are much more than that.  They have deep roots, and -- yes
-- they then reinforce the social garbage that feeds them.

> What is ideology after all: it is just a system of subjective beliefs.
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