Games with Communication: from Belief to Preference Change

International audienceIn this work we consider simple extensive-form games with two players, Player A and Player B, where Player B can make announcements about his strategy. Player A has then to revise her preferences about her strategies, so as to better respond to the strategy she believes Player B will play. We propose a generic framework that combines methods and techniques from belief revision theory and social choice theory to address this problem. Additionally, we design a logic that Player A can use to reason and decide how to play in such games

Three analyses of sour grapes

The phenomenon of adaptive preferences – sometimes also known under the name of sour grapes – has long caused a stir in Social Theory. In this paper, the precise problem posed by adaptive preferences, as seen from the point of view of a theoretician who intends to model or understand the phenomenon, will be clarified, and three models of the phenomenon will be presented and compared. The general intention of the article is to sound out some of the wider consequences of the phenomenon for the project of modelling and understanding the relationship between decisions taken in different situations. Difficulties which arise when several decisions and several situations are involved shall be discussed, and an approach to these difficulties shall be suggested.Adaptive preferences; preference change; belief change; decision theory; belief and utility elicitation; representation theorems.

Techno-Optimism and Farmers’ Attitudes Toward Climate Change Adaptation

In industrialized societies, techno-optimism is a belief that human ingenuity, through improved science and technology, will ultimately provide remedies to most current and future threats to human well-being, such as diseases, climate change, and poverty. Here we examine: (1) whether techno-optimism is found among Midwestern corn and soybean farmers and (2) how this confidence in human ingenuity influences their support for climate change adaptation. By examining data from a survey of nearly 5000 grain farmers in the Midwestern U.S., we found that greater techno-optimism can reduce farmers’ support for climate change adaptation and increase their propensity to express a preference to delay adaptation-related actions. This study advances our understanding of how social and cognitive factors influence farmers’ attitude toward climate change. Findings from this study can also help extension educators to develop outreach programs that are sensitive to farmers’ views about the ability of science and technology to solve climate change-related issues

Preference Change

International audienceMost models of rational action assume that all possible states and actions are pre-defined and that preferences change only when beliefs do. But several decision and game problems lack these features, calling for a dynamic model of preferences: preferences can change when unforeseen possibilities come to light or when there is no specifiable or measurable change in belief. We propose a formally precise dynamic model of preferences that extends an existing static model (Boutilier et al. in J Artif Intell Res 21:135-191, 2004). Our axioms for updating preferences preserve consistency while minimising change, like Hansson's (Theory Decis 38(1):1-28, 1995). But unlike prior models of preference change, ours supports default reasoning with partial preference information, which is essential to handle decision problems where the decision tree isn't surveyable. We also show that our model avoids problems for other models of preference change discussed in Spohn (Preference change: approaches from philosophy. Economics and Psychology: Springer, pp 109-121, 2009)

GENERATION Z PREFERENCE ON LEADERSHIP TRAITS IN INDONESIA & JAPAN: A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Generation Z will crowd the workforce shortly. To prepare for this change, this research aims to identify the Generation’s preference on leadership to enhance effective leadership and maximize their capabilities through motivation, commitment, persistence, productivity, loyalty by meeting this preference. Indonesia and Japan are two very uniquely similar countries in harmony, value, unity, collectiveness, diversity, and high-context communication. Yet, they have distinguished organizational culture and belief. The paper is empirical research done qualitatively through interviews with 16 informants from both countries with their respective languages for those unable to speak English. The conclusion had Leaders in the two countries are preferred to be responsible for the vision they propose, members’ mistakes, the society; solve company’s problems; communicate goals clearly; can say the right thing at the right time; occasionally share knowledge and ideas; listening to members’ ideas; at least slightly more knowledgeable than members; establish target collectively; able to communicate trivial matters besides the formal settings. Furthermore, a correlation between the difference in background and their leadership preference is specified in the paper. The researcher recommends future research to compare between two distinctive countries to conclude deeper about the detailed factors affecting leadership preference in employees

The right to doubt: Climate-change scepticism and asserted rights to private property

Many recent planning decisions, such as planned retreat of coastal settlements from the sea, are premised upon the scientific consensus that climate change is real. Not all local residents accept forced relocation, and some hold a radical form of rights-based belief that is hostile to government intervention into private arenas. This 'deontological libertarian' belief is related to a sceptical view of climate science. Data from an Australian survey are employed to demonstrate that climate scepticism is associated with the tendency to see private-property rights as a fundamental entitlement irredeemable in the prospect of forced retreat, regardless of compensation. The sceptical view has defensible normative elements constructed upon the framework of inviolable rights also underpinning recognised environmental and development imperatives. Appealing to absolute rights generally may be an effective way to approach the sceptical public. Rights offer a generalisable framework in which sceptics which they can see how their non-sceptical counterparts are similarly situated despite expressing a different policy preference. Although consensus is not guaranteed, communication can proceed more easily by making a common ontological terrain explicit. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.postprin

Belief Revision in Expressive Knowledge Representation Formalisms

We live in an era of data and information, where an immeasurable amount of discoveries, findings, events, news, and transactions are generated every second. Governments, companies, or individuals have to employ and process all that data for knowledge-based decision-making (i.e. a decision-making process that uses predetermined criteria to measure and ensure the optimal outcome for a specific topic), which then prompt them to view the knowledge as valuable resource. In this knowledge-based view, the capability to create and utilize knowledge is the key source of an organization or individual’s competitive advantage. This dynamic nature of knowledge leads us to the study of belief revision (or belief change), an area which emerged from work in philosophy and then impacted further developments in computer science and artificial intelligence. In belief revision area, the AGM postulates by Alchourrón, Gärdenfors, and Makinson continue to represent a cornerstone in research related to belief change. Katsuno and Mendelzon (K&M) adopted the AGM postulates for changing belief bases and characterized AGM belief base revision in propositional logic over finite signatures. In this thesis, two research directions are considered. In the first, by considering the semantic point of view, we generalize K&M’s approach to the setting of (multiple) base revision in arbitrary Tarskian logics, covering all logics with a classical model-theoretic semantics and hence a wide variety of logics used in knowledge representation and beyond. Our generic formulation applies to various notions of “base”, such as belief sets, arbitrary or finite sets of sentences, or single sentences. The core result is a representation theorem showing a two-way correspondence between AGM base revision operators and certain “assignments”: functions mapping belief bases to total — yet not transitive — “preference” relations between interpretations. Alongside, we present a companion result for the case when the AGM postulate of syntax-independence is abandoned. We also provide a characterization of all logics for which our result can be strengthened to assignments producing transitive preference relations (as in K&M’s original work), giving rise to two more representation theorems for such logics, according to syntax dependence vs. independence. The second research direction in this thesis explores two approaches for revising description logic knowledge bases under fixed-domain semantics, namely model-based approach and individual-based approach. In this logical setting, models of the knowledge bases can be enumerated and can be computed to produce the revision result, semantically. We show a characterization of the AGM revision operator for this logic and present a concrete model-based revision approach via distance between interpretations. In addition, by weakening the KB based on certain domain elements, a novel individual-based revision operator is provided as an alternative approach

Analyzing the impact of Hurricane Matthew on the housing market in Savannah Georgia

Includes bibliographical references.2022 Summer.This study seeks to shed light on the relationship between destructive hurricanes and public belief in the increasing risk to homeownership from these storms as climate change progresses. We investigate the impact of Hurricane Matthew on transaction prices of properties in the city of Savannah, Georgia because it is an example of a natural disaster which was unique in severity for its era but is characteristic of storms which will become more common with warmer oceans and higher sea levels (IPPC 2021). Hurricane Matthew made landfall in 2016. It was the first category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic since 2007 and occurred late in the season relative to previous hurricanes in the area. We use a hedonic modeling approach to shed light on the perceived risk and vulnerability of owning low elevation real estate by comparing property prices before and after the hurricane. We do this to speculate on whether the impact of a single storm can noticeably change the behavior of market participants in a location. Within our hedonic modeling framework, we employ several econometric specifications including a difference-in-difference regression, an event study model, and a repeated sales model. Our findings indicate that homebuyers were willing to pay a premium for more protected homes, i.e. higher elevation homes, compared with less protected homes, i.e. lower elevation homes, in the two years after the storm. This changing preference for relatively safer homes within a county, at the expense of the amenities available to the low elevation homes such as ocean views, is consistent with increased belief in the immediate dangers of climate change following a destructive event