280 research outputs found

    Lessons from Neuroscience and Experimental Psychology for a Partnership Society

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    This century has seen explosive growth in our knowledge about the human brain and mind due to recent advances in neuroscience, experimental psychology, and neural network modeling, and convergence between those fields. The scientific findings that have emerged confirm that humans have evolved for partnership and cooperation at least as much as they have evolved for domination and competition. Moreover, the findings suggest that partnership interactions promote optimal brain functioning

    Significance of log-periodic precursors to financial crashes

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    We clarify the status of log-periodicity associated with speculative bubbles preceding financial crashes. In particular, we address Feigenbaum's [2001] criticism and show how it can be rebuked. Feigenbaum's main result is as follows: ``the hypothesis that the log-periodic component is present in the data cannot be rejected at the 95% confidence level when using all the data prior to the 1987 crash; however, it can be rejected by removing the last year of data.'' (e.g., by removing 15% of the data closest to the critical point). We stress that it is naive to analyze a critical point phenomenon, i.e., a power law divergence, reliably by removing the most important part of the data closest to the critical point. We also present the history of log-periodicity in the present context explaining its essential features and why it may be important. We offer an extension of the rational expectation bubble model for general and arbitrary risk-aversion within the general stochastic discount factor theory. We suggest guidelines for using log-periodicity and explain how to develop and interpret statistical tests of log-periodicity. We discuss the issue of prediction based on our results and the evidence of outliers in the distribution of drawdowns. New statistical tests demonstrate that the 1% to 10% quantile of the largest events of the population of drawdowns of the Nasdaq composite index and of the Dow Jones Industrial Average index belong to a distribution significantly different from the rest of the population. This suggests that very large drawdowns result from an amplification mechanism that may make them more predictable than smaller market moves.Comment: Latex document of 38 pages including 16 eps figures and 3 tables, in press in Quantitative Financ

    Multi-Agent Systems

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    A multi-agent system (MAS) is a system composed of multiple interacting intelligent agents. Multi-agent systems can be used to solve problems which are difficult or impossible for an individual agent or monolithic system to solve. Agent systems are open and extensible systems that allow for the deployment of autonomous and proactive software components. Multi-agent systems have been brought up and used in several application domains

    Oakeshott és a XX. századi antiracionalizmus = Oakeshott and the antirationalism in the 20th century

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    Oakeshott életműve a szabadság és a hagyomány, a szkepticizmus és a nyugati hagyományba vetett bizalom, a konzervatív gondolkodás és a jelen élvezete összekapcsolásával írható le. Nem akart rendet minden áron. El tudta viselni a zűrzavart, és úgy gondolta a politikai gondolkodás egyik feladata az, hogy képessé tegye az embereket a kaotikus világ elfogadására és élvezetére. A kérdés Oakeshott kapcsolata a modernitáshoz és a posztmodernhez. Noha láthatóak közös elemek a posztmodern és a premodern gondolkodásban, nyilvánvaló eltérések is vannak. Az egyik bizonyosan, legalábbis Oakeshott esetében, a törvény uralma. És az autoritás szerepe. A politikai modernizmus igyekszik átalakítani a politikát manager tudománnyá, amely folytonosan harcolna a létezővel, mert tökéletlen, és egy utópikus, harmonikus végállapotra törekszik a nép átnevelése vagy manipulálása révén. Felismerte a modernitás ellentmondásait, de el akarta a kerülni a modernitás utópikus kísértését is (történelem vége). A modernitás ellentétekből áll, és ezek egyensúlyozzák ki. A modernista hiba, ha valaki az egyik szélsőséget választja. A feladat az ellentétek megőrzése és nem a megoldása. A conditio humana lényege az ellentétek egysége. A modern gondolkodás megpróbálta az ellentétek e bonyolult világát leegyszerűsíteni egy egyszerű alapelvre, egyetlen magyarázatra. E paradox felismerése határozza meg a konzervatív gondolkodót. A politika dilemmái végső soron a conditio humana dilemmái. Mindkettő örök. | Oakeshott’s work is a negotiation of freedom and tradition; “skepticism” and confidence in the resources of the Western tradition; conservatism and the celebration of the present. He were never engaged in an irritable search for order. He could accept confusion and he thought that one task of political and moral thinking is to make the people able and enjoy the chaotic world as it is. One aspect of this issue is his relation to modernism and postmodernism. Whilst one may see common points in the pre-modern and post-modern thinking, there are obvious differences, as well. One of them, at least in case of Oakeshott is rule of law and the role of authority. Modernism in politics means the continuous effort to transform politics into a managerial science that struggles against present as imperfect, and aiming an utopical, harmonious end state by means of re-education or managerial manipulation of people, based on hedonistic calculus. He realized the ambivalences within modernity, but he also was keen to avoid the modernist seduction of utopical hope. Modernity is divided yet balanced. Modernist political thought has tried to reduce this incongruous complex in modern order to a single principle, a single explanation. The core of human condition is a fusion of opposites. To realize this paradox of order defines the conservative thinker. The dilemmas of politics are ultimately dilemmas of the human condition

    Failures to Self-Locate: Counterfactual Ontologies in Contemporary Theatre and Physics

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    Failures to Self-Locate examines the overlooked influence of quantum mechanics on the development of contemporary theatre aesthetics. Physicists began openly grappling with the ramifications of quantum theory in 1926. The same year, Bertolt Brecht announced his theatre for a scientific age as an arena for atomic man. Unsatisfied with the metaphysical implications of the first formulation of quantum mechanics, known now as the Copenhagen interpretation, physicists and philosophers of science spent the twentieth century advocating, developing, and testing alternative interpretations of the atomic realm. Throughout that same period, the Western stage witnessed a resonant series of developments on Brechts aesthetic project. Placing the interpretations of quantum mechanics in dialogue with contemporary theatre from North America and Europe, this dissertation uncovers how, after an initial point of direct contact between Brecht and physicists, physics and theatre have developed similar ontological paradigms to interpret experiments and performances respectively. In physics, these paradigms fall into two distinct camps: those that salvage strict determinism at the expense of a singular world (collapse-free interpretations of quantum mechanics) and those that safeguard our worlds uniqueness by accepting fundamental stochasticity in reality (collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics). Experimental evidence supports both options, and so these groups must also explain the apparent validity of the other. Theatremakers actively investigated a similar ontological issue, exacerbated by Brechtian stage techniques and centred on the storied divide between reality and representation. Where the physicists navigated between determinism and locality, playwrights return to the ancient tension between fate and free will. Those crosscurrents may bring ruin to the classical protagonist, but the quantum protagonist experiences one framework (e.g., free will) while secretly being ruled by the other (e.g., determinism). So positioned, these protagonists fail to self-locate among their myriad possibilities. This dissertation maps the resonances between the scientific quest to reconcile determinism and stochasticity and the theatrical quest to reconcile free will and fate within the quantum theoretical paradigm, by analyzing the scientific and theatrical output through the lens of counterfactual analysis

    Non-Equilibrium Social Science and Policy

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    The overall aim of this book, an outcome of the European FP7 FET Open NESS project, is to contribute to the ongoing effort to put the quantitative social sciences on a proper footing for the 21st century. A key focus is economics, and its implications on policy making, where the still dominant traditional approach increasingly struggles to capture the economic realities we observe in the world today - with vested interests getting too often in the way of real advances. Insights into behavioral economics and modern computing techniques have made possible both the integration of larger information sets and the exploration of disequilibrium behavior. The domain-based chapters of this work illustrate how economic theory is the only branch of social sciences which still holds to its old paradigm of an equilibrium science - an assumption that has already been relaxed in all related fields of research in the light of recent advances in complex and dynamical systems theory and related data mining. The other chapters give various takes on policy and decision making in this context. Written in nontechnical style throughout, with a mix of tutorial and essay-like contributions, this book will benefit all researchers, scientists, professionals and practitioners interested in learning about the 'thinking in complexity' to understand how socio-economic systems really work
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