A Practical Approach for Successive Omniscience

The system that we study in this paper contains a set of users that observe a discrete memoryless multiple source and communicate via noise-free channels with the aim of attaining omniscience, the state that all users recover the entire multiple source. We adopt the concept of successive omniscience (SO), i.e., letting the local omniscience in some user subset be attained before the global omniscience in the entire system, and consider the problem of how to efficiently attain omniscience in a successive manner. Based on the existing results on SO, we propose a CompSetSO algorithm for determining a complimentary set, a user subset in which the local omniscience can be attained first without increasing the sum-rate, the total number of communications, for the global omniscience. We also derive a sufficient condition for a user subset to be complimentary so that running the CompSetSO algorithm only requires a lower bound, instead of the exact value, of the minimum sum-rate for attaining global omniscience. The CompSetSO algorithm returns a complimentary user subset in polynomial time. We show by example how to recursively apply the CompSetSO algorithm so that the global omniscience can be attained by multi-stages of SO

Successive Local and Successive Global Omniscience

This paper considers two generalizations of the cooperative data exchange problem, referred to as the successive local omniscience (SLO) and the successive global omniscience (SGO). The users are divided into $\ell$ nested sub-groups. Each user initially knows a subset of packets in a ground set $X$ of size $k$, and all users wish to learn all packets in $X$. The users exchange their packets by broadcasting coded or uncoded packets. In SLO or SGO, in the $l$th ($1\leq l\leq \ell$) round of transmissions, the $l$th smallest sub-group of users need to learn all packets they collectively hold or all packets in $X$, respectively. The problem is to find the minimum sum-rate (i.e., the total transmission rate by all users) for each round, subject to minimizing the sum-rate for the previous round. To solve this problem, we use a linear-programming approach. For the cases in which the packets are randomly distributed among users, we construct a system of linear equations whose solution characterizes the minimum sum-rate for each round with high probability as $k$ tends to infinity. Moreover, for the special case of two nested groups, we derive closed-form expressions, which hold with high probability as $k$ tends to infinity, for the minimum sum-rate for each round.Comment: Accepted for publication in Proc. ISIT 201

Divine and Human Agency from the Standpoint of Historicalism, Scientism, and Phenomenological Realism

Phenomenological realism, in the tradition of Dietrich von Hildebrand, is advanced as a promising methodology for a theistic philosophy of divine and human agency. Phenomenological realism is defended in contrast to the practice of historicalism -- the view that a philosophy of mind and God should always be done as part of a thoroughgoing history of philosophy, e.g. the use of examples in analytic theology should be subordinated to engaging the work of Kant and other great philosophers. The criticism of theism based on forms of naturalism that give exclusive authority to the physical sciences is criticized from a phenomenological, realist perspective

Consequentialism & Machine Ethics: Towards a Foundational Machine Ethic to Ensure the Right Action of Artificial Moral Agents

In this paper, I argue that Consequentialism represents a kind of ethical theory that is the most plausible to serve as a basis for a machine ethic. First, I outline the concept of an artificial moral agent and the essential properties of Consequentialism. Then, I present a scenario involving autonomous vehicles to illustrate how the features of Consequentialism inform agent action. Thirdly, an alternative Deontological approach will be evaluated and the problem of moral conflict discussed. Finally, two bottom-up approaches to the development of machine ethics are presented and briefly challenged

Revisiting the archival finding aid

Archivists have been creating finding aids for generations, and in the last three decades they have done this work via a succession of standardized formats. However, like many other disciplines, they have carried out such work in violation of systems analysis. Although purporting to have the users of finding aids systems first and foremost in their mind, archivists have carried out their descriptive work apart from and with little knowledge of how researchers find and use archival sources. In this article, questions are raised about the utility of archival finding aids and how they will stand the test of time. Indeed, archivists, purportedly concerned with considering how records function and will be used over time, ought to apply the same kind of analysis and thinking to their finding aids. In this article, we explore three ways archival finding aids might be examined by outsiders, namely, those concerned with museum exhibitions, design experts, and accountability advocates. Doing this should assist archivists to reevaluate their next wave of experimentation with descriptive standards and the construction of finding aids. Archivists should expand the notion of what we are representing in archival representation. © 2007 by The Haworth Press