About the Power to Enforce and Prevent Consensus by Manipulating Communication Rules

We explore the possibilities of enforcing and preventing consensus in continuous opinion dynamics that result from modifications in the communication rules. We refer to the model of Weisbuch and Deffuant, where $n$ agents adjust their continuous opinions as a result of random pairwise encounters whenever their opinions differ not more than a given bound of confidence \eps. A high \eps leads to consensus, while a lower \eps leads to a fragmentation into several opinion clusters. We drop the random encounter assumption and ask: How small may \eps be such that consensus is still possible with a certain communication plan for the entire group? Mathematical analysis shows that \eps may be significantly smaller than in the random pairwise case. On the other hand we ask: How large may \eps be such that preventing consensus is still possible? In answering this question we prove Fortunato's simulation result that consensus cannot be prevented for \eps>0.5 for large groups. % Next we consider opinion dynamics under different individual strategies and examine their power to increase the chances of consensus. One result is that balancing agents increase chances of consensus, especially if the agents are cautious in adapting their opinions. However, curious agents increase chances of consensus only if those agents are not cautious in adapting their opinions.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure

Illegal Marijuana Cultivation on Public Lands: Our Federalism on a Very Bad Trip

Fueled by increasing demand for marijuana, illegal cultivation of the drug on public lands is causing massive environmental harm. The federal government lacks the resources to wage what would be a difficult and costly campaign to eradicate these illegal grow sites and instead focuses its limited resources on enforcing the federal marijuana ban. Marijuana decriminalization might allow legally grown marijuana to squeeze out its illegal counterpart, but the political likelihood of decriminalization is low. The key is reducing demand for the illegal drug by changing public buying preferences. However, doing this depends on an available legal alternative. This Article discusses several behavioral modification approaches as a way of changing consumer preferences and possible ways to resolve the current conflict between state marijuana legalization and its federal criminalization

Self-triggered Coordination over a Shared Network under Denial-of-Service

The issue of security has become ever more prevalent in the analysis and design of cyber-physical systems. In this paper, we analyze a consensus network in the presence of Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks, namely attacks that prevent communication among the network agents. By introducing a notion of Persistency-of-Communication (PoC), we provide a characterization of DoS frequency and duration such that consensus is not destroyed. An example is given to substantiate the analysis

The Right to “Do Politics” and Not Just to Speak: Thinking About the Constitutional Protections for Political Action

Syfte: Det övergripande syftet med avhandlingen är att utveckla en intressentbaseradutvärderingsmetod för att utvärdera informationssystem. Jag har valt attkalla utvärderingsmetoden för VISU (Verksamhetsutvecklande InformationssystemUtvärdering). I VISU uppfattas utvärderingsprocessen som en socialprocess där människor arbetar tillsammans för att bestämma sig för egenskaperoch värden hos det informationssystem som utvärderas. Utgångspunkten förutvärderingsprocessen enligt VISU är att utvärdering ska användas praktiskt avmänniskor för att skapa utveckling och förbättring i verksamheter. Frågor: Tvåövergripande forskningsfrågor har drivit avhandlingsarbetet: 1. Hur bör en metodför utvärdering av informationssystem vara utformad för att bidra till enverksamhets utveckling? 2. Vad innebär en pragmatiskt grundad modell för ISUtvärdering? Forskningsmetod: I avhandlingsarbetet utvecklar jag VISU ochundersöker hur metoden fungerar samt vilka konsekvenser som användandet avVISU ger i praktiska utvärderingssammanhang. Forskningsarbetet har bedrivitsenligt Canonical Action Research. Aktionsforskningsstrategin har valts för attmotsvara undersökningsbehovet vid metodutveckling - behovet av att prövametoden i praktiska utvärderingsprocesser där metoden är avsedd att användas.Vidare grundas och förankras VISU i pragmatiska kunskapsteorier och teorier omutvärdering (särskilt intressentmodellen). VISU är också grundad i forskning omIS-utvärdering och förankrad i skolan om interpretativ IS-utvärdering. Kunskapsbidrag: Det praktiska bidraget från avhandlingen är en metod, VISU,för att utvärdera informationssystem. De teoretiska kunskapsbidragen är:rationalitet för en pragmatisk utvärderingsprocess, en multiparadigmmodell förIS-utvärdering samt en modell för utvärderingsbruk.Purpose: The purpose of the study is to develop an evaluation method forevaluating information systems based on the stakeholder model for evaluation.The method is called VISU (Swedish acronym for IS evaluation for workpracticedevelopment). In VISU, the evaluation process is recognised as a social processwhere people are working together in order to determine the qualities and valuesof the IS under evaluation. The point of departure is that evaluation is to be usedby people in order to make change and betterment. Questions: Two questionshave guided the study: 1) How should a method for evaluation of informationsystems be designed in order to contribute to the development of an organisation? and 2) What is the significance of a pragmatic grounded evaluation model? and 2) What is the significance of a pragmatic grounded evaluation model? Method: The research process has been conducted according to Canonical ActionResearch. The Action Research strategy has been chosen in order to satisfy theresearch needs when doing method development – the need to try the method outin non trivial situations. Further, VISU is grounded in pragmatic knowledgetheories, evaluation theories (stakeholder model) and IS evaluation theories andanchored in the school of interpretive IS evaluation. Contribution: The practicalcontribution from the study is VISU, a method for evaluation informationsystems. The theoretical contributions are rationality for pragmatic IS evaluation,a multiparadigm model for IS evaluation and a model for evaluation use

The Question Concerning Technology in Compliance

In this symposium Essay, I apply insights from philosophy and psychology to argue that modes of achieving compliance that focus on technology undermine, and are undermined by, modes of achieving compliance that focus on culture. Insisting on both may mean succeeding at neither. How an organization resolves this apparent contradiction in program design, like the broader question of optimal corporate governance arrangements, is highly idiosyncratic. Firms should therefore be accorded maximum freedom in designing their compliance programs, rather than being forced by enforcement authorities into a set of de facto mandatory compliance structures

Internet Giants as Quasi-Governmental Actors and the Limits of Contractual Consent

Although the government’s data-mining program relied heavily on information and technology that the government received from private companies, relatively little of the public outrage generated by Edward Snowden’s revelations was directed at those private companies. We argue that the mystique of the Internet giants and the myth of contractual consent combine to mute criticisms that otherwise might be directed at the real data-mining masterminds. As a result, consumers are deemed to have consented to the use of their private information in ways that they would not agree to had they known the purposes to which their information would be put and the entities – including the federal government – with whom their information would be shared. We also call into question the distinction between governmental actors and private actors in this realm, as the Internet giants increasingly exploit contractual mechanisms to operate with quasi-governmental powers in their relations with consumers. As regulators and policymakers focus on how to better protect consumer data, we propose that solutions that rely upon consumer permission adopt a more exacting and limited concept of the consent required before private entities may collect or make use of consumer’s information where such uses touch upon privacy interests

The Stability Pact - Rationales, Problems, Alternatives

We analyze economic rationales for, and possible alternatives to, the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). We identify various cross-country spillover effects and domestic policy failures as potential rationales. The two sets of problems suggest different corrective measures, and different measures than those applied in the context of SGP. We contrast the “legalistic” perspective adopted in the Pact with a more incentive-based approach and discuss how the legalistic perspective gives rise to enforcement problems in connection with the implementation of the SGP’s sanctions.

How friends and non-determinism affect opinion dynamics

The Hegselmann-Krause system (HK system for short) is one of the most popular models for the dynamics of opinion formation in multiagent systems. Agents are modeled as points in opinion space, and at every time step, each agent moves to the mass center of all the agents within unit distance. The rate of convergence of HK systems has been the subject of several recent works. In this work, we investigate two natural variations of the HK system and their effect on the dynamics. In the first variation, we only allow pairs of agents who are friends in an underlying social network to communicate with each other. In the second variation, agents may not move exactly to the mass center but somewhere close to it. The dynamics of both variants are qualitatively very different from that of the classical HK system. Nevertheless, we prove that both these systems converge in polynomial number of non-trivial steps, regardless of the social network in the first variant and noise patterns in the second variant.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figure