Don Fallis

In order to survive and flourish, we all have to acquire knowledge constantly. These days, most of us use the internet to learn about finance, health, movies, popular culture, politics, etc. However, whenever we get information from other people in this way, we have to wonder whether these people really know what they are talking about. For instance, can you trust what you just read in Wikipedia? In addition, we have to consider the possibility that these people might even be trying to deceive us. For instance, did the email message that you just got really come from a Nigerian prince who wants to give you some money?

My research area is Adversarial Epistemology. That is, I study how we can acquire knowledge in a world filled with deceivers. Toward that end, I try to understand the various types of lies and disinformation that we face on the internet and in everyday life.

But I am also interested in the flip-side of Adversarial Epistemology. While we want to keep other people from misleading us, we sometimes do need to mislead other people, or at least keep them in the dark. For instance, how can we protect our credit card numbers and passwords from internet adversaries?

I received my PhD in Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine where I studied the epistemology of mathematical proof. Contrary to conventional wisdom, I argued that probabilistic proofs are just as good as deductive proofs at establishing the truth of mathematical claims. Given that we are human, any method of proof can sometimes mislead us (even if we aren't particularly worried about deceptive mathematicians).

I regularly teach courses on decision making, information economics, information ethics, information quality, and knowledge in the digital world. I am one of the organizers of the annual Information Ethics Roundtable.