Pasados los sesenta

En este artículo se intenta clarificar la naturaleza paradójica de la ética trágica de Fernando Savater, definida por la difícil coexistencia de nihilismo y acción; paradoja ésa cuya comprensión exige sondear, por una parte, su elemento de negación, es deThis article clarifies the paradoxical nature of the tragic ethics of Fernando Savater, defined by the difficult coexistence of nihilism and action; a paradox that to be understood calls for an analysis of its element of negation or in other words its im

Filosofía, Universidad y Sociedad

The Doxa commonly accepted by the society and the university states that philosophy practiced in Univestity Departments is a socially useless activity. This belief tranquilizes the society and provides to the professionals of philosophy the distinction marks of which they extract his symbolic prestige, but hides an inadvertent reality: the multiple extra-academic informal connections that take place between philosophy and society, and that have fed the birth of hybrid literary-intellectual territories with a strong practical implantation. The reforms that are to undergo in the next years the Spanish educative space demand with increasing insistence the adaptation of university Departments to the necessities of the society and, therefore, the taking in consideration of that inadvertent connection. If, by virtue of the old corporative prejudices, the professional philosophy does not accept the work of critical control of that informal periphery, is possible that it cannot reflectively direct his process of transformation in agreement with the requirements of a democratic society

Optimizing COVID-19 vaccine distribution adding spatio-temporal criteria

Massive vaccination against pandemics such as Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 presents several complexities. The criteria to assess public health policies are fundamental to distribute vaccines in an effective way in order to avoid as many infections and deaths as possible. Usually these policies are focused on determining socio-demographic groups of people and establishing a vaccination order among these groups. This work focuses on optimizing the way of distributing vaccines among the different populations of a region for a period of time once established the priority socio-demographic groups. For this aim we use a SEIR model which takes into account vaccination. Also, for this model we prove theoretical results concerning the convergence of solutions on the long-term and the stability of fixed points and analyze the impact of an hypothetical vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemics in Spain. After that, we introduce a heuristic approach in order to minimize the COVID-19 spreading by planning effective vaccine distributions among the populations of a region over a period of time. As an application, the impact of distributing vaccines in the Valencian Community (Spain) according to this method is computed in terms of the number of saved infected individuals

Risk, Uncertainty, and Super-Risk

Risk is a pervasive feature of law and public policy. Decision-making in these domains often takes place in the absence of certainty and with awareness that errors may be made and predictions may fail. Within law—as within the social and physical sciences, medicine, economics, finance, and countless other domains—a primary focus of practical and scholarly inquiries is the extent to which risks can be measured and managed. In each of these domains, risk analysis typically employs the basic tools of decision theory (probability and utility) to measure the likelihood as well as the costs and benefits associated with possible outcomes. Risk analysis also often makes use of the familiar (but confusing) distinction between decisions made in conditions of “risk” (roughly, the relevant likelihoods and costs are quantifiable) and decisions made in conditions of “uncertainty” (roughly, the possibilities are either unknown or not amenable to quantification). Beginning with the risk-uncertainty distinction, but altering its terminology, we argue that there is a fundamentally important type of risk that has been systematically ignored. We call it “super-risk.” Super-risk occurs when, at the time of decision, decision-makers believe they are in conditions of risk (what we call “actuarial decision-making”), but they do not know whether they are in an actuarial or an uncertain environment. Super-risk gives rise to a particular type of inferential problem, with significant practical consequences, when decision-makers proceed under the assumption that they are in an actuarial environment but they are in fact in an uncertain one. Super-risk has the potential to arise in any decision-making domain with uncertain outcomes, but it is more prone to arise with decision-making in domains such as law, public policy, economics, finance, and the social sciences rather than in domains such as the physical sciences, medicine, and insurance. Our goal in this Article is to introduce the general idea of super-risk and to explain its features and sources

Risk, Uncertainty, and Super-Risk

Risk is a pervasive feature of law and public policy. Decision-making in these domains often takes place in the absence of certainty and with awareness that errors may be made and predictions may fail. Within law—as within the social and physical sciences, medicine, economics, finance, and countless other domains—a primary focus of practical and scholarly inquiries is the extent to which risks can be measured and managed. In each of these domains, risk analysis typically employs the basic tools of decision theory (probability and utility) to measure the likelihood as well as the costs and benefits associated with possible outcomes. Risk analysis also often makes use of the familiar (but confusing) distinction between decisions made in conditions of “risk” (roughly, the relevant likelihoods and costs are quantifiable) and decisions made in conditions of “uncertainty” (roughly, the possibilities are either unknown or not amenable to quantification). Beginning with the risk-uncertainty distinction, but altering its terminology, we argue that there is a fundamentally important type of risk that has been systematically ignored. We call it “super-risk.” Super-risk occurs when, at the time of decision, decision-makers believe they are in conditions of risk (what we call “actuarial decision-making”), but they do not know whether they are in an actuarial or an uncertain environment. Super-risk gives rise to a particular type of inferential problem, with significant practical consequences, when decision-makers proceed under the assumption that they are in an actuarial environment but they are in fact in an uncertain one. Super-risk has the potential to arise in any decision-making domain with uncertain outcomes, but it is more prone to arise with decision-making in domains such as law, public policy, economics, finance, and the social sciences rather than in domains such as the physical sciences, medicine, and insurance. Our goal in this Article is to introduce the general idea of super-risk and to explain its features and sources

A robust comparison of dynamical scenarios in a glass-forming liquid

We use Bayesian inference methods to provide fresh insights into the sub-nanosecond dynamics of glycerol, a prototypical glass-forming liquid. To this end, quasielastic neutron scattering data as a function of temperature have been analyzed using a minimal set of underlying physical assumptions. On the basis of this analysis, we establish the unambiguous presence of three distinct dynamical processes in glycerol, namely, translational diffusion of the molecular centre of mass and two additional localized and temperature-independent modes. The neutron data also provide access to the characteristic length scales associated with these motions in a model-independent manner, from which we conclude that the faster (slower) localized motions probe longer (shorter) length scales. Careful Bayesian analysis of the entire scattering law favors a heterogeneous scenario for the microscopic dynamics of glycerol, where molecules undergo either the faster and longer or the slower and shorter localized motions.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft