What Are the Odds that Everyone is Depraved?

Why does God allow evil? One hypothesis is that God desires the existence and activity of free creatures but He was unable to create a world with such creatures and such activity without also allowing evil. If Molinism is true, what probability should be assigned to this hypothesis? Some philosophers claim that a low probability should be assigned because there are an infinite number of possible people and because we have no reason to suppose that such creatures will choose one way rather than another. Arguments like this depend on the principle of indifference. But that principle is rejected by most philosophers of probability. Some philosophers claim that a low probability should be assigned because doing otherwise violates intuitions about freewill. But such arguments can be addressed through strategies commonly employed to defend theories with counterintuitive results across ethics and metaphysics

Holding strategies in a bus-route model

A major source of delays in public transportation is the clustering instability, which causes late buses to become progressively later while the buses trailing it become progressively earlier. In this paper, we study this instability and how to neutralize it using the common practices of holding and schedule slack. Starting with an on-time route, we delay one or more buses at a single stop, and determine how these delays grow over time. We compare the effects of two different types of holding on the stability of the system, and briefly investigate how our results change with the use of timepoints.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures v2 has been moderately copyedited, but has no new content Paper has been submitted to Physical Review

Comment: The Essential Role of Pair Matching

Comment on "The Essential Role of Pair Matching in Cluster-Randomized Experiments, with Application to the Mexican Universal Health Insurance Evaluation" [arXiv:0910.3752]Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS274A the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Participation in Universal Prevention Programs

We analyze the decision to participate in community-based universal prevention programs through the framework of prospect theory, with family functionality, and related risk status, providing the reference point. We find that participation probability depends on the relative ratios of the weighting and valuation functions. Using data from the Strengthening Families Program and the Washington Healthy Youth Survey, we empirically test the implications of our model. We find that family functionality affects the participation decision in complex and, in some cases, non-linear ways. We discuss the implication of these findings for cost-effectiveness analysis, and suggest directions for further research.Prospect Theory, Treatment Outcomes, Risk Status

Microwave characteristics of interdigitated photoconductors on a HEMT structure

Interdigitated photoconductive detectors of various geometries were fabricated on AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure material. The processes used in the fabrication of these devices are described, and the results of a study of their optical and electrical characteristics are presented

Portal Workflow Integration: Cardiff University I-WIRE Project

The I-WIRE project is designing and developing an enhanced deposit workflow that will be presented to Cardiff University's researchers via our Modern Working Environment portal. Presenting the workflow in this way gives us opportunities to integrate the deposit process and data with other research-related process and systems. We are also exploring DOI deposit, and a Web of Science import, within the same portal, all of which is aimed at making it easier for academics to deposit their publications

Portal Workflow Integration: Cardiff University I-WIRE Project

The I-WIRE project is designing and developing an enhanced deposit workflow that will be presented to Cardiff University's researchers via our Modern Working Environment portal. Presenting the workflow in this way gives us opportunities to integrate the deposit process and data with other research-related process and systems. We are also exploring DOI deposit, and a Web of Science import, within the same portal, all of which is aimed at making it easier for academics to deposit their publications

Synthetic Reductionism in Moral Philosophy

I defend the view that moral properties are identical to properties that can be expressed without using moral vocabulary