Someone below him has more authority then? — NOS4A2

He's subject to the legislation like everyone else, which says:

(2) The term "Presidential records" means documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion thereof, created or received by the President, the President's immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President, in the course of conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term—

(A) includes any documentary materials relating to the political activities of the President or members of the President's staff, but only if such activities relate to or have a direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; but

(B) does not include any documentary materials that are (i) official records of an agency (as defined in section 552(e) 1 of title 5, United States Code); (ii) personal records; (iii) stocks of publications and stationery; or (iv) extra copies of documents produced only for convenience of reference, when such copies are clearly so identified.

(3) The term "personal records" means all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof,2 of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term includes—

(A) diaries, journals, or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business;

(B) materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; and

(C) materials relating exclusively to the President's own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

Do you think the government can take back personal records of a former president, circumventing the presidential records act, if the next administration deems them illegal to retain? — NOS4A2

They weren't personal records. The Presidential Records Act doesn't given the President authority to declare that agency records are his personal records.

So you’re saying that after the president leaves office, they can retroactively re-classify it and arrest him for having it? — NOS4A2

I'm saying that it can be illegal for him to retain it when subpoenaed to return it even if it is, and remains, declassified.

You mistakenly believe that "unclassified" means "legal to have". That isn't the case. A document can be unclassified and illegal to have.

What are you talking about?

A document being declassified can still be subject to the provisions of legislation. Your claim that if Trump declassified a document then he is legally entitled to it after leaving the Presidency is factually incorrect. Jack Smith and his prosecutors know more about the law than you.

Yes, and?

They cannot re-classify Trump’s documents. — NOS4A2

They can:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/executive-order-classified-national-security-information

Information may not be reclassified after declassification and release to the public under proper authority unless:

(1) the reclassification is personally approved in writing by the agency head based on a document-by-document determination by the agency that reclassification is required to prevent significant and demonstrable damage to the national security;

(2) the information may be reasonably recovered without bringing undue attention to the information;

(3) the reclassification action is reported promptly to the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (National Security Advisor) and the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office; and

(4) for documents in the physical and legal custody of the National Archives and Records Administration (National Archives) that have been available for public use, the agency head has, after making the determinations required by this paragraph, notified the Archivist of the United States (Archivist), who shall suspend public access pending approval of the reclassification action by the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office. Any such decision by the Director may be appealed by the agency head to the President through the National Security Advisor. Public access shall remain suspended pending a prompt decision on the appeal.

And in Trump's case, even if he did declassify it, it was never "release[d] to the public under proper authority", given that "prior to public release, all declassified records shall be appropriately marked to reflect their declassification."

You clearly just don't understand anything about what classification is or how it works.

The documents in question were not automatically declassified. — NOS4A2

Even if manually declassified they may still contain information covered by additional restrictions that would require continued withholding of information from disclosure, such as the Espionage Act and Atomic Energy Act.

Executive Order 13526 doesn't circumvent legislation.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s classified documents or national defense information, which is a distinction without a difference. — NOS4A2

There is a difference. See here:

Classification is but one basis for an agency to withhold the disclosure of records or information. A declassified record may still contain information covered by additional restrictions that would require continued withholding of information from disclosure.

A document being declassified doesn't mean that it is legal for any person to possess it. A declassified document can still be subject to the provisions of other legislation, such as the Espionage Act and Atomic Energy Act.

And as I mentioned in the other discussion, the Presidential Records Act doesn't give Presidents the authority to simply assert that agency documents are their private property.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/us/politics/trump-presidential-records-act.html

To start, presidents also routinely handle documents produced by departments and agencies like the Pentagon and the C.I.A. As agency records, they are instead governed by the Federal Records Act, which has no provision allowing a president to declare any to be his personal property.

The Presidential Records Act states that presidential records do not include “official records of an agency.” A 1993 ruling by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit says the law avoids any “potential definitional overlap” by making clear that if a document qualifies as an agency record, that trumps any possibility it could also be considered a presidential record.

“Certainly anything produced by an agency and given to a president would be considered an agency record,” Ms. Kwoka said.

The Espionage Act has nothing to do with the Archivist.

The ruling is only that:

The Court will grant the motion to dismiss pursuant to Rule 12(b)(1) because plaintiff's claim is not redressable. NARA does not have the authority to designate materials as “Presidential records,” NARA does not have the tapes in question, and NARA lacks any right, duty, or means to seize control of them. In other words, there has been no showing that a remedy would be available to redress plaintiff's alleged injury even if the Court agreed with plaintiff's characterization of the materials. Since plaintiff is completely unable to identify anything the Court could order the agency to do that the agency has any power, much less, a mandatory duty, to do, the case must be dismissed.

Nothing in this says that Trump can avoid being charged under the Espionage Act for retaining documents related to national defence.

But during his presidency, Trump was authorized to posses, declassify, and determine as personal records those documents. — NOS4A2

According to the PRA:

(3) The term “personal records” means all documentary materials, or any reasonably segregable portion therof,[2] of a purely private or nonpublic character which do not relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President. Such term includes—
(A) diaries, journals, or other personal notes serving as the functional equivalent of a diary or journal which are not prepared or utilized for, or circulated or communicated in the course of, transacting Government business;
(B) materials relating to private political associations, and having no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President; and
(C) materials relating exclusively to the President’s own election to the office of the Presidency; and materials directly relating to the election of a particular individual or individuals to Federal, State, or local office, which have no relation to or direct effect upon the carrying out of constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.

There are documents you would be prohibited from sharing even if they had been declassified. Is that your understanding? — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, I believe so. Classification levels are an additional restriction, beyond what else might be restricted by law, and aren't a replacement.

So something can be unclassified but still illegal to retain/share, e.g. issues related to national defence or atomic energy.

It’s not irrelevant if those are his personal records. He can dispose of them as he pleases, according to the constitution and precedent. — NOS4A2

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/donald-trump-presidential-records-act-clintons-sock-drawer-defense-2023-06-09/

Moreover, Moss said, the question of whether the documents were personal or presidential records is beside the point in a case involving the Espionage Act, like the one against Trump.

“Whether as a presidential record or a personal record, the records at issue in this indictment still have classification markings and contain information relating to the national defense,”

Trump could roll a blunt with those documents for all I care. Neither the DOJ nor NARA have the power to designate documents presidential or personal records. That discretion lies solely with the executive. — NOS4A2

He’s being charged under https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793 (section e) so what you say here is irrelevant.

The answer to problem B is clearly 1/3 and I think we both will agree here. The problem A is the same question that is asked to SB - on a given wake up event, she is asked in the moment about the probability of the coin showing heads. SO the answer in problem A is also 1/3. — PhilosophyRunner

It’s not the same because she isn’t given a randomly selected waking after 52 weeks. She’s given either one waking or two, determined by a coin toss.

The manner in which the experiment is conducted matters.

I think it's also worth paying particular attention to the way Elga phrased the problem and the solution:

When you are first awakened, to what degree ought you believe that the outcome of the coin toss is Heads?

...

I've just argued that when you are awakened on Monday, that credence ought to change to 1/3.

...

But you were also certain that upon being awakened on Monday you would have credence 1/3 in H.

The Tuesday interview is actually irrelevant to Elga's argument (which is why he says in that footnote that Sleeping Beauty only needs to believe that the experiment will be conducted in this way).

So Elga argues that on Monday, before the coin has been flipped, Sleeping Beauty's credence (not knowing that it is Monday) should be P(Heads) = $1\over3$.

To ask how probable it is that the coin landed on heads involves a tacit reference to the counterfactual circumstances where you are presently facing a (hidden) coin that didn't land the way it actually did. — Pierre-Normand

Not exactly, because if it's Monday the coin hasn't been flipped at all. It's only hidden if today is Tuesday and the coin is tails.

(2) The setup confounds wagering arguments. That won't matter much to a lot of people, but it's uncomfortable. Annoying. Ramsey used Dutch book arguments from the beginning, and despite their limitations they can be clarifying. Each time I've tried to construct a sane payoff table I've failed. I've wondered lately if there might be a conditional wager that comes out rational, but I can work up enough hope of success to bother. Partial beliefs, within suitable limits, ought to be expressible as wagers, but not in this case, and that blows. — Srap Tasmaner

You might be interested in When betting odds and credences come apart: More worries for Dutch book arguments.

The original statement of the problem fails to specify what constitutes an individual act of verification of her credence, though, such that we can establish the target ratio unambiguously. As I've previously illustrated with various examples, different pragmatic considerations can lead to different verification methods, each yielding different values for P(H), aligning with either the Halfer or Thirder stance. — Pierre-Normand

It sort of addresses this in a footnote:

The precise effect of the drug is to reset your belief-state to what it was just before you were put to sleep at the beginning of the experiment. If the existence of such a drug seems fanciful, note that it is possible to pose the problem without it — all that matters is that the person put to sleep believes that the setup is as I have described it.

The problem (and Elga's solution) have nothing to do with how to "verify" one's credence. It simply asks what a rational person should/would believe were they told the rules of the experiment, woken up, and asked their credence.

So for the sake of the problem we can assert that, unknown to Sleeping Beauty, she's only actually woken up once.

In Elga's paper the question is "to what degree ought you believe that the outcome of the coin toss is Heads?"

I don’t think he broke the law nor do I care if he did. — NOS4A2

Well that just says everything.

He’s the one being persecuted. — NOS4A2

It's spelled "prosecuted".

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.3.0.pdf

37 counts.

The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack, and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack

…

a. In July 2021, at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey ("The Bedminster Club"), during an audio-recorded meeting with a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff, none of whom possessed a security clearance, TRUMP showed and described a "plan of attack" that TRUMP said was prepared for him by the Department of Defense and a senior military official. TRUMP told the individuals that the plan was "highly confidential" and "secret". TRUMP also said "as president I could have declassified it," and, "Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret.

He's on Twitter?

Trump lawyers quit classified documents case

Two lawyers who represented Donald Trump in the months before the former president was indicted on federal charges over his handling of classified documents quit working for him Friday morning.

The attorneys, Jim Trusty and John Rowley, did not explain in detail why they had resigned, other than to say that “this is a logical moment” to do so given his indictment Thursday in U.S. District Court in Miami.

Trusty and Rowley also said they will no longer represent Trump in a pending federal criminal probe into his efforts to overturn his loss in the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

Biden and the deep-state going after their political opponents once again. — NOS4A2

Special Counsel going after a criminal.

I’m sure none of it is to distract from Biden’s bribery scandal. — NOS4A2

Me too. It's not a new investigation.

But we are agreed on the validity of Sue's credences in both scenarios, right? — Pierre-Normand

Yes, I said as much with my extreme example.

Given that $2\over3$ of sitters will sit in on a 100 Heads interview it is rational for each sitter to reason that they are likely sitting in on a 100 Heads interview.

But given that $1\over2^{100}$ of participants will have a 100 Heads interview it is rational for each participant to reason that their interview is likely not a 100 Heads interview.

Neither the sitter nor the participant should update their credence to match the other's. They each belong to a different reference class.

And if they reason this way then 2¹⁰¹ sitters will be right (once) and 2¹⁰⁰ - 1 will be wrong (once), and 2¹⁰⁰ - 1 participants will be right (once) and 1 will be wrong (2¹⁰¹ times).

I'd say that's all the evidence I need to justify my credence.

I would argue that Jane should update her credence in the same way in light of the same information. — Pierre-Normand

Jane should reason as if she is randomly selected from the set of all participants, because she is.
Sue should reason as if she is randomly selected from the set of all sitters, because she is.

Jane shouldn't update her credence to match Sue and Sue shouldn't update her credence to match Jane.

I think my extreme example shows why. It's just not rational for each participant to reason that the coin most likely landed heads 100 times but it is rational for each sitter to reason that they are sitting in on a 100 heads experiment.

Was my rephrasing of it wrong? I'm treating DZ#1 as Monday and DZ#2 as Tuesday. If twice at DZ#1 then twice on Monday, if once at DZ#2 then once on Tuesday. If you know that it's DZ#1 then you know that it's Monday.

Although you linked to my most recent post, I assume you intended to respond to this one. — Pierre-Normand

No, I was just trying to rephrase your secret mission example into a way that I could understand better. Did I misinterpret it?

If not then it appears to be saying the same thing as the above?

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now? — BC

No. I reckon they’d more likely be a threat to us than a help.

So if heads then woken once on Monday and twice on Tuesday, otherwise woken twice on Monday and once on Tuesday.

Sue tells Jane that it's Monday.

What is Jane's credence that the coin landed heads?

I say 1/2.

It's exactly the same reasoning as before.

Sue should reason as if she is randomly selected from the set of all sitters, and 1/3 of sitters sitting in a Monday room are sitting in a heads room.

Jane should reason as it she is randomly selected from the set of all participants, and 1/2 of participants in a Monday room are sitting in a heads room.

This reasoning is much clearer to see in the 100 Heads example, and I don't see how any counterexample example is going to change my mind about 100 Heads. If I'm one of the participants I will only ever reason that P(100 Heads) = $1\over2^{100}$. I am almost certainly not the one participant who will have 2¹⁰¹ interviews.

I should no more update my credence to match my sitter’s than she should update hers to match mine.

Surely, Jane cannot reasonably say: 'Yes, I see you are right to conclude that the probability of the coin having landed on heads is 1/3, based on the information we share. But my belief is that it's actually 1/2.'" — Pierre-Normand

Sue's reasoning is right for Sue but wrong for Jane (and vice versa) given that $2\over3$ of sitters will sit in on a 100 Heads interview but $1\over2^{100}$ of participants will have a 100 Heads interview.

When Sue finds Jane in the assigned room, and assuming she knows the participants and the experimental setup, her prior probabilities would be:

P(Jane awake today) = P(JAT) = 1/2, and P(H) = 1/2

Her updated credence for H is P(H|JAT) = P(JAT|H) * P(H) / P(JAT) = (1/3*1/2) / (1/2) = 1/3

Jane's priors for any random day during the experiment would be exactly the same as Sue's. When Jane is awakened on a day when Sue is assigned to her, Jane has the same information Sue has about herself, and so she can update her credence for H in the same way. She concludes that the probability of this kind of awakening experience, resulting from a heads result, is half as probable, and thus half as frequent, as identical awakening experiences resulting from a tails result. This conclusion doesn't impact the ratio of the frequency of heads-result runs to the total number of experimental runs, which remains at 1/2 from anyone's perspective. — Pierre-Normand

I've already stated why I disagree with this. The manner in which the sitter is assigned a room isn't the manner in which Sleeping Beauty is assigned a room, and so their credences will differ.

Sue should reason as if her room was randomly selected from the set of all rooms, because it was.
Jane should reason as if she was randomly selected from the set of all participants, because she was (via the coin flip).

This is clearer with my extreme example.

$2\over3$ of sitters will sit in on a 100 Heads interview, and so their credence should be P(100 Heads) = $2\over3$.

$1\over2^{100}$ of participants will have a 100 Heads interview, so their credence should be P(100 Heads) = $1\over2^{100}$.

The fact that the one participant who has a 100 Heads interview will have 2¹⁰¹ of them is irrelevant. It is only rational for each participant to reason that they are almost certainly not the participant who will have 2¹⁰¹ interviews, and so that this is almost certainly their first and only interview, and so that the coin almost certainly didn't land heads 100 times. This is, again, what I explained to PhilosophyRunner here.

The claim that because most interviews are a 100 Heads interview then my interview is most likely a 100 Heads interview is a non sequitur. Only if most participants have a 100 Heads interview could it follow that my interview is most likely a 100 Heads interview.

Your calculation seems correct, but it doesn't adequately account for the new capacity Jane gains to refer to her own temporal location using an indexical expression when updating her credence. Instead, you've translated her observation ("I am awake today") into an impersonal overview of the entire experiment ("I am scheduled to be awakened either under circumstances H1, T1, or T2"). The credence you've calculated reflects Sleeping Beauty's opinion on the ratio, over many iterations of the experiment, of (1) the number of runs resulting from a heads result, to (2) the total number of experimental runs. Indeed, this ratio is 1/2, but calculating it doesn't require her to consider the knowledge that today falls within the set {H1, T1, T2}. — Pierre-Normand

I've just taken what Elga said. He says:

Combining results, we have that P(H1) = P(T1) = P(T2). Since these credences sum to 1, P(H1)=1/3.

If P(H1), P(T1), and P(T2) sum to 1 then P(H1 or T1 or T2) = 1.

Where P(H1) means "the coin landed heads and today is Monday", P(T1) means "the coin landed tails and today is Monday", and P(T2) means "the coin landed tails and today is Tuesday".

P(Heads | Mon or Tue) = P(Mon or Tue | Heads) * P(Heads) / P(Mon or Tue)
P(Heads | Mon or Tue) = 1 * 1/2 / 1
P(Heads | Mon or Tue) = 1/2 — Michael

Going back to this for a moment, I think a better way to write this would be:

P(Heads|H₁ or T₁ or T₂) = P(H₁ or T₁ or T₂|Heads) * P(Heads) / P(H₁ or T₁ or T₂)

If Elga is right in saying that P(H₁), P(T₁), and P(T₂) sum to 1 then P(H₁ or T₁ or T₂) = 1.

So P(Heads|H₁ or T₁ or T₂) = $1\over2$.

If he's right when he says that "[you] receiv[e no] new information [but] you have gone from a situation in which you count your own temporal location as irrelevant to the truth of H, to one in which you count your own temporal location as relevant to the truth of H" then it seems correct to say that Sleeping Beauty is just being asked about P(Heads|H₁ or T₁ or T₂).

Good point. Thanks for the correction.