On agent-based modelling of large scale conflict against a central authority: from mechanisms to complex behaviour

In this work, an Agent-Based model of large scale conflict against a central authority was developed. The model proposed herein is an extension of Epstein's Agent-Based model of civil violence, in which new mechanisms such as deprivation-dependent hardship, generalised vanishing of the risk perception (`massive fear loss') below a critical ratio between deterrence and `group support', legitimacy feedback, network influences and `mass enthusiasm' (contagion) were implemented. The model was explored a set of computer experiments and the results compared with statistical analyses of events in the "Arab Spring". The main contributions of the present work for understanding how mechanisms of large scale conflict lead to complex behaviour were (i ) a quantitative description of the impact of the \Arab Spring" in several countries focused on complexity issues such as peaceful vs violent, spontaneous vs organized, and patterns of size, duration and recurrence of conflict events; (ii ) the explanation of the relationship between the estimated arrest probability and the size of rebellion peaks in Epstein's model; (iii ) a new form of the estimated arrest probability with a mechanism of `massive fear loss'; (iv ) the derivation of a relationship between the legitimacy and action threshold for complex solutions to occur with both low and high values of the legitimacy; (v) a simple representation of political vs economic deprivation with a parameter which controls the `sensitivity' to value; (vi ) the effect of legitimacy feedback; and (vii ) the effect of network influences on the stability of the solutions.Neste trabalho, é apresentado um modelo baseado em agentes para o estudo do conflito massivo contra uma autoridade central. O modelo proposto é uma extensão do modelo baseado em agentes para o estudo da violência civil devido a Epstein, incluindo os mecanismos de relação entre a privação relativa e 'provação' (hardship), desaparecimento generalizado da percepção de risco abaixo de uma relação crítica entre a capacidade de dissuasão e o `apoio colectivo', a retroalimentação da legitimidade em função da contestação, as influências associadas as redes, e o mecanismo do `entusiasmo colectivo' (contágio). O modelo foi explorado através de um conjunto de experiências de simulação, e os resultados comparados com uma análise estatística de eventos ocorridos durante a "Primavera Árabe". Os principais contributos do presente trabalho foram (i ) a descrição quantitativa do impacto da "Primavera Árabe" em diversos países, focada em aspectos de complexidade; (ii ) a explicação da relação entre a função de estimativa de probabilidade de prisão e a magnitude dos picos de revolta social; (iii ) uma nova forma para a função de estimativa de probabilidade de prisão, como mecanismo de `perda generalizada do medo'; (iv ) a dedução de uma relação entre a legitimidade e o limiar de acção para a ocorrência de soluções com comportamento complexo, tanto para valores elevados como baixos da legitimidade; (v) uma representação simples da privação política e da privação económica, com um parâmetro regulador da `sensibilidade' ao valor; (vi ) a introdução do mecanismo de retroalimentação da legitimidade; e (vii ) o efeito das influências devidas a redes na estabilidade das soluções

Foundations of Trusted Autonomy

Trusted Autonomy; Automation Technology; Autonomous Systems; Self-Governance; Trusted Autonomous Systems; Design of Algorithms and Methodologie

Goal Reasoning: Papers from the ACS Workshop

This technical report contains the 14 accepted papers presented at the Workshop on Goal Reasoning, which was held as part of the 2015 Conference on Advances in Cognitive Systems (ACS-15) in Atlanta, Georgia on 28 May 2015. This is the fourth in a series of workshops related to this topic, the first of which was the AAAI-10 Workshop on Goal-Directed Autonomy; the second was the Self-Motivated Agents (SeMoA) Workshop, held at Lehigh University in November 2012; and the third was the Goal Reasoning Workshop at ACS-13 in Baltimore, Maryland in December 2013

The Doors of Visual Perception in Mice.

A fundamental function of the brain is to generate subjective perceptual experiences, otherwise known as conscious awareness. However, in visual neuroscience, it is unclear why stimuli impacting the retina are only sometimes consciously perceived, other times going unseen (such as when viewing a very faint light at a distance, or during distracted driving). Further, it is uncertain which regions in the brain visual information must be routed to in order to enter conscious awareness. However, previous studies have suggested that variation in behavioral state factors such as attention, arousal, and motor activity can impact neural response dynamics and performance on visual tasks - suggesting a role for behavior state in determining the perceptual fate (conscious or unconscious) of visual stimuli. While most studies regarding neural mechanisms of consciousness are performed in human and non-human primates, the mouse is emerging as a model organism for the study of conscious awareness. This dissertation constitutes an exploration of the use of mice to study the neural correlates of visual perception. The literature review and experiments contained within are guided by three motivating questions: (1) Can the use of mice drive forward theories of consciousness developed in primates? (2) Does behavior state impact the neural response to near-threshold visual stimuli in mice? (3) Where does conscious awareness enter along the visual processing hierarchy? Chapter 2 introduces the mouse as a model organism to study consciousness, chapter 3 describes results from an investigation into the role of locomotion and arousal on neural response thresholds, and chapter 4 summarizes results from a study on the role of the visual thalamus in directing selective visual attention. Amongst other findings, I demonstrate that mice are an ideal model organism for the study of consciousness, that behavior state impacts neural thresholds, and that activity in early visual regions is likely sufficient for conscious perception in mice

Speaking and Sensing the Self in Authentic Movement: The Search for Authenticity in a 21st Century White Urban Middle-Class Community

Speaking and Sensing the Self in Authentic Movement The Search for Authenticity in a 21st Century White Urban Middle-Class Community Seran Endrigian Schug Asif Agha and Rebecca Huss-Ashmore This ethnography is about Authentic Movement, a ritual form of dance and self-narrative in which a participant performs free association through trancelike movement in the presence of a “compassionate” witness as a means toward the discovery of an authentic self. Rooted in anti-modernist social movements in late 19th century urban middle- and upper-class communities in the United States, Authentic Movement brings to light a central paradox of modern life—though it is through liberal social institutions of modernity that individuals are purportedly able to achieve the freedom to be who they aspire to be, it is to an imagined non-modern past that many look toward to know and define the authentic self. The dissertation shows how cultural icons of authenticity come to be interpreted as both universal symbols and personal experiences of an authentic self. Performances of authenticity embodied in highly stylized modes of introspection and narration, enhanced by intense alterations in the bodily experiences of space and time, explicitly call participants’ attention to the sensorial experience of movement as the source of the authentic self. In fact, it is the high degree of poetic patterning of performances that is the key to Authentic Movement’s power to evoke emotionally powerful experiences of authenticity. However, this study shows that the search for the authentic self as an imagined private, internal, radically subjective self is not, in actuality, a journey into a private enclosed world. The experience of authenticity is, rather, a public performance. Subjectivity, even when centered in one’s own experience of the body, is intelligible as authentic only insofar as privately felt sensations point to socially circulating discourses of authenticity. The integration of cultural historical research and a multidimensional performance analysis within a reflexive ethnographic project represents a unique approach toward resolving contradictions between older romanticizing and newer constructivist anthropological perspectives on authenticity. Ultimately my analysis reveals how participants, through performance, come to authentically experience and, thus, bring into being the socially constructed ideologies of authenticity they envision

UNSTABLE TERRITORIES OF REPRESENTATION: Architectural Experience and the Behaviour of Forms, Spaces and the Collective Dynamic Environment

This thesis applies an interdisciplinary cybernetic and phenomenological analysis to contemporary theories of representation and interpretation of architecture, resulting in a speculative theoretical model of architectural experience as a behavioural system. The methodological model adopted for this research defines the main structure of the thesis where the narrative and the contributing parts of its complexity emerge. The narrative is presented through objectives and hypotheses that shift and slide between architectural representation and its experience based on three key internal components in architecture: the architectural forms and spaces, the active observers that interact with their environment, and finally, the responsive environment. Three interrelated research questions are considered. The first seeks to define the influence of the theoretical instability between complex life processes, emerging technologies and active perception upon architecture. The second questions the way in which the architectural experience is generated. The third asks: Does architecture behave? And if so, is it possible to define its behavioural characteristics related to its representation, experience and the medium of communication in-between? The thesis begins by exploring the effect of developments in digitally interactive, biological, and hybrid technologies on representation in architecture. An account of architectural examples considers the shift in the meaning of representation in architecture from the actual and literal to the more conceptual and experimental, from the individual human body and its relations to the multifaceted ecosystem of collective and connected cultures. The writings of Kester Rattenbury, Neil Leach, and Peter Cook among others contribute to the transformation of the ordinary perceptual experience of architecture, the development of experimental practices in architectural theory, and the dynamism of our perception. The thesis goes on to suggest that instability in architectural representation does not only depend on the internal components of the architectural system but also on the principles and processes of complex systems as well as changes in active perception and our consciousness that act as the external influences on the system. Established theoretical endeavours in biology of D’Arcy Thompson, Alan Turing, and John Holland and philosophies of Merleau-Ponty, Richard Gregory, and Deleuze and Guattari are discussed in this context. Pre-programmed and computational models, illustrative and generative, are presented throughout the thesis. In the final stage of the development of the thesis architecture is analysed as a system. This is not an unprecedented notion, however defining the main elements and components of this system and their interactions and thereafter identifying that the system behaves and defining its behavioural characteristics, adds to the knowledge in the field of theoretical and experimental architecture. This thesis considers the behavioural characteristics of architecture to be derived from the hypothetical links and unstable thresholds of its non-dualistic notions of materiality and immateriality, reality and virtuality, and finally, intentionality and interpretation

The Deleuzian Cineaste: placing movement at the heart of film analysis

In this thesis, routine interest in visual images as fundamental to film studies is displaced in favor of a focus on movement. Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema books provide the foundation but mediation between their philosophical intentions and the demands of film analysis becomes necessary. The figure of the Deleuzian cineaste is constructed as the means to identify a systematic approach to filmic movement in its many forms and to demonstrate subsequent analysis based on movement

Post Traumatic Stress Disorders in a Global Context

If, as a health care or social service provider, one was called upon to help someone who has experienced terror in the hands of a hostage taker, an irate and chronically abusive spouse or parent, or a has survived a motor vehicle accident, landslide, earthquake, hurricane or even a massive flood, what would be one's priority response? What would be considered as the most pressing need of the individual requiring care? Whatever the answer to each of these questions, people who have experienced terror, suffer considerable psychological injury. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a Global Context offers some answers to meet the needs of health care and socials service providers in all settings, whether in a hospital emergency room, at the war front, or natural disaster site. The take home message is, after providing emergency care, there is always a pressing need to provide mental health care to all victims of traumatic stress

Computational Explorations of Creativity and Innovation in Design

This thesis addresses creativity in design as a property of systems rather than an attribute of isolated individuals. It focuses on the dynamics between generative and evaluative or ascriptive processes. This is in distinction to conventional approaches to the study of creativity which tend to concentrate on the isolated characteristics of person, process and product. Whilst previous research has advanced insights on potentially creative behaviour and on the general dynamics of innovation in groups, little is known about their interaction. A systems view of creativity in design is adopted in our work to broaden the focus of inquiry to incorporate the link between individual and collective change. The work presented in this thesis investigates the relation between creativity and innovation in computational models of design as a social construct. The aim is to define and implement in computer simulations the different actors and components of a system and the rules that may determine their behaviour and interaction. This allows the systematic study of their likely characteristics and effects when the system is run over simulated time. By manipulating the experimental variables of the system at initial time the experimenter is able to extract patterns from the observed results over time and build an understanding of the different types of determinants of creative design. The experiments and findings presented in this thesis relate to artificial societies composed by software agents and the social structures that emerge from their interaction. Inasmuch as these systems aim to capture some aspects of design activity, understanding them is likely to contribute to the understanding of the target system. The first part of this thesis formulates a series of initial computational explorations on cellular automata of social influence and change agency. This simple modelling framework illustrates a number of factors that facilitate change. The potential for a designer to trigger cycles of collective change is demonstrated to depend on the combination of individual and external or situational characteristics. A more comprehensive simulation framework is then introduced to explore the link between designers and their societies based on a systems model of creativity that includes social and epistemological components. In this framework a number of independent variables are set for experimentation including characteristics of individuals, fields, and domains. The effects of these individual and situational parameters are observed in experimental settings. Aspects of relevance in the definition of creativity included in these studies comprise the role of opinion leaders as gatekeepers of the domain, the effects of social organisation, the consequences of public and private access to domain knowledge by designers, and the relation between imitative behaviour and innovation. A number of factors in a social system are identified that contribute to the emergence of phenomena that are normally associated to creativity and innovation in design. At the individual level the role of differences of abilities, persistence, opportunities, imitative behaviour, peer influence, and design strategies are discussed. At the field level determinants under inspection include group structure, social mobility and organisation, emergence of opinion leaders, established rules and norms, and distribution of adoption and quality assessments. Lastly, domain aspects that influence the interaction between designers and their social groups include the generation and access to knowledge, activities of gatekeeping, domain size and distribution, and artefact structure and representation. These insights are discussed in view of current findings and relevant modelling approaches in the literature. Whilst a number of assumptions and results are validated, others contribute to ongoing debates and suggest specific mechanisms and parameters for future experimentation. The thesis concludes by characterising this approach to the study of creativity in design as an alternative 'in silico' method of inquiry that enables simulation with phenomena not amenable to direct manipulation. Lines of development for future work are advanced which promise to contribute to the experimental study of the social dimensions of design