3,452 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Simple environments fail as illustrations of intelligence: A review of R. Pfeifer and C. Scheier
The field of cognitive science has always supported a variety of modes of research, often polarised into those seeking high-level explanations of intelligence and those seeking low-level, perhaps even neuro-physiological, explanations. Each of these research directions permits, at least in part, a similar methodology based around the construction of detailed computational models, which justify their explanatory claims by matching behavioural data. We are fortunate at this time to witness the culmination of several decades of work from each of these research directions, and hopefully to find within them the basic ideas behind a complete theory of human intelligence. It is in this spirit that Rolf Pfeifer and Christian Scheier have written their book Understanding Intelligence. However, their aim is manifestly not to present an overview of all prior work in this field, but instead to argue forcefully for one particular interpretation – a synthetic approach, based around the explicit construction of autonomous agents. This approach is characterised by the Embodiment Hypothesis, which is presented as a complete framework for investigating intelligence, and exemplified by a number of computational models and robots to illustrate just how the field of cognitive science might develop in the future. We first provide an overview of their book, before describing some of our reservations about its contribution towards an understanding of intelligence
Simplicity-Expressiveness Tradeoffs in Mechanism Design
A fundamental result in mechanism design theory, the so-called revelation
principle, asserts that for many questions concerning the existence of
mechanisms with a given outcome one can restrict attention to truthful direct
revelation-mechanisms. In practice, however, many mechanism use a restricted
message space. This motivates the study of the tradeoffs involved in choosing
simplified mechanisms, which can sometimes bring benefits in precluding bad or
promoting good equilibria, and other times impose costs on welfare and revenue.
We study the simplicity-expressiveness tradeoff in two representative settings,
sponsored search auctions and combinatorial auctions, each being a canonical
example for complete information and incomplete information analysis,
respectively. We observe that the amount of information available to the agents
plays an important role for the tradeoff between simplicity and expressiveness
The family of c-bisection auctions: efficiency and running time
In this paper we analyze the performance of a recently proposed sequential auction, called the c-bisection auction, that can be used for a sale of a single indivisible object. We discuss the running time and the e±ciency in the ex-post equilibrium of the auction. We show that by changing the parameter c of the auction we can trade o® e±ciency against running time. Moreover, we show that the auction that gives the desired level of e±ciency in expectation takes the same number of rounds for any number of players.computer science applications;
Gossip, Sexual Recombination and the El Farol Bar: modelling the emergence of heterogeneity
Brian Arthur's `El Farol Bar' model is extended so that the agents also learn and communicate. The learning and communication is implemented using an evolutionary process acting upon a population of mental models inside each agent. The evolutionary process is based on a Genetic Programming algorithm. Each gene is composed of two tree-structures: one to control its action and one to determine its communication. A detailed case-study from the simulations show how the agents have differentiated so that by the end of the run they had taken on very different roles. Thus the introduction of a flexible learning process and an expressive internal representation has allowed the emergence of heterogeneity
Cheat Sensitive Quantum Bit Commitment
We define cheat sensitive cryptographic protocols between mistrustful parties
as protocols which guarantee that, if either cheats, the other has some nonzero
probability of detecting the cheating. We give an example of an unconditionally
secure cheat sensitive non-relativistic bit commitment protocol which uses
quantum information to implement a task which is classically impossible; we
also describe a simple relativistic protocol.Comment: Final version: a slightly shortened version of this will appear in
PRL. Minor corrections from last versio
From corpus-based collocation frequencies to readability measure
This paper provides a broad overview of three separate but related areas of research. Firstly, corpus linguistics is a growing discipline that applies analytical results from large language corpora to a wide variety of problems in linguistics and related disciplines. Secondly, readability research, as the name suggests, seeks to understand what makes texts more or less comprehensible to readers, and aims to apply this understanding to issues such as text rating and matching of texts to readers. Thirdly, collocation is a language feature that occurs when particular words are used frequently together for other than purely grammatical reasons. The intersection of these three aspects provides the basis for on-going research within the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Strathclyde and is the motivation for this overview. Specifically, we aim through analysis of collocation frequencies in major corpora, to afford valuable insight on the content of texts, which we believe will, in turn, provide a novel basis for estimating text readability
Fraction auctions: the tradeoff between effciency and running time
This paper studies the sales of a single indivisible object where bidders have continuous valuations. In Grigorieva et al. [13] it was shown that, in this setting, query auctions necessarily allocate inefficiently in equilibrium. In this paper we propose a new sequential auction, called the c-fraction auction. We show c-fraction auctions guarantee approximate efficiency at any desired level of accuracy, independent of the number of bidders. We discuss the running time and the efficiency in the ex-post equilibrium of the auction. We show that by changing the parameter c of the auction we can trade off efficiency against running time.operations research and management science;
Creationism and evolution
In Tower of Babel, Robert Pennock wrote that
“defenders of evolution would help their case
immeasurably if they would reassure their
audience that morality, purpose, and meaning are
not lost by accepting the truth of evolution.” We
first consider the thesis that the creationists’
movement exploits moral concerns to spread its
ideas against the theory of evolution. We analyze
their arguments and possible reasons why they are
easily accepted. Creationists usually employ two
contradictive strategies to expose the purported
moral degradation that comes with accepting the
theory of evolution. On the one hand they claim
that evolutionary theory is immoral. On the other
hand creationists think of evolutionary theory as
amoral. Both objections come naturally in a
monotheistic view. But we can find similar
conclusions about the supposed moral aspects of
evolution in non-religiously inspired discussions.
Meanwhile, the creationism-evolution debate
mainly focuses — understandably — on what
constitutes good science. We consider the need for
moral reassurance and analyze reassuring
arguments from philosophers. Philosophers may
stress that science does not prescribe and is
therefore not immoral, but this reaction opens the
door for the objection of amorality that evolution
— as a naturalistic world view at least —
supposedly endorses. We consider that the topic of
morality and its relation to the acceptance of
evolution may need more empirical research
- …