Universal Voting Protocol Tweaks to Make Manipulation Hard

Voting is a general method for preference aggregation in multiagent settings, but seminal results have shown that all (nondictatorial) voting protocols are manipulable. One could try to avoid manipulation by using voting protocols where determining a beneficial manipulation is hard computationally. A number of recent papers study the complexity of manipulating existing protocols. This paper is the first work to take the next step of designing new protocols that are especially hard to manipulate. Rather than designing these new protocols from scratch, we instead show how to tweak existing protocols to make manipulation hard, while leaving much of the original nature of the protocol intact. The tweak studied consists of adding one elimination preround to the election. Surprisingly, this extremely simple and universal tweak makes typical protocols hard to manipulate! The protocols become NP-hard, #P-hard, or PSPACE-hard to manipulate, depending on whether the schedule of the preround is determined before the votes are collected, after the votes are collected, or the scheduling and the vote collecting are interleaved, respectively. We prove general sufficient conditions on the protocols for this tweak to introduce the hardness, and show that the most common voting protocols satisfy those conditions. These are the first results in voting settings where manipulation is in a higher complexity class than NP (presuming PSPACE $\neq$ NP)

Smart Technologies for Environmental Safety and Knowledge Enhancement in Intermodal Transport

International concerns about security in transport systems are leading to a new international regulation in this field. This introduces new requirements for operators and authorities as well as it opens new challenges, in particular when referred to seaports and maritime transport in the Mediterranean area, where many seaport terminals and infrastructures are affected by a noteworthy technological divide from North European contexts. In such contexts, the adoption of the new regulations can represent the right chance for upgrading the local operative standards, increasing latu sensu the quality of maritime transport performances, while conferring a greater level to security and safety checks. This paper explores the chances for increasing the level of Mediterranean seaport competitiveness allowed by technological innovations in transport systems, both in operations and organization of these infrastructures. The aim of the work is to study the effects of the adoption of technological solutions such as wireless communications and radiofrequency identification on the competitiveness of Mediterranean seaport infrastructures. Technological solutions designed to identify good items help operators in organizing activities in terminals and make maritime transport faster in delivering goods, by cutting the handling time and costs in seaport terminals. Seaports that adopt this kind of technologies, and the surrounding economic areas connected to seaports, have a greater attractiveness on shipping companies and operators, since they allow faster handling activities and easier checks on goods. Besides, the analysis of direct and indirect effects of the use of such technologies specifically focuses on the contribution that the use of these solutions gives in ensuring higher security levels, by increasing the level of information and knowledge associated to goods. The different types of security provided (e.g. for people, environment and goods) and the extreme flexibility of the technologies involved give the overall worth of the challenge. It seems to be a great chance of growth for the Mediterranean area, more than a mere compliance to the international security regulations.

Telecommunications 2000 Strategy, HR Practices & Performance

This report constitutes the first benchmarking survey of business and human resource practices among a nationally representative sample of workplaces in the broadly defined telecommunications industry that includes wireline, wireless, cable, and internet providers. It grows out of a multi-year study of organizational change in the industry, and is based on extensive field study, site visits, interviews, and surveys conducted by research teams at Cornell and Rutgers Universities. Managers at 577 establishments across the country gave generously of their time during a lengthy telephone survey. The study was made possible through a generous grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. While this report is based on data collected among workplaces in the U.S., it has implications for the restructuring of the global telecommunications industry. In other research, we have found that the United States has been at the forefront of market deregulation and technology change, but many other countries have followed a similar path and look to the United States as a model for organizational restructuring (Katz 1997). Thus, at least some of the patterns we find here are likely to occur in other countries undergoing similar patterns of deregulation

Telecommunications 2000: Strategy, HR Practices and Performance

This report constitutes the first benchmarking survey of business and human resource practices among a nationally representative sample of workplaces in the broadly defined telecommunications industry that includes wireline, wireless, cable, and internet providers. It grows out of a multi-year study of organizational change in the industry, and is based on extensive field study, site visits, interviews, and surveys conducted by research teams at Cornell and Rutgers Universities. Managers at 577 establishments across the country gave generously of their time during a lengthy telephone survey. The study was made possible through a generous grant by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Extended Agency and the Problem of Diachronic Autonomy

It seems to be a humdrum fact of human agency that we act on intentions or decisions that we have made at an earlier time. At breakfast, you look at the Taco Hut menu online and decide that later today you’ll have one of their avocado burritos for lunch. You’re at your desk and you hear the church bells ring the noon hour. You get up, walk to Taco Hut, and order the burrito as planned. As mundane as this sort of scenario might seem to be, philosophers have raised a problem in understanding it. If you are simply abiding by this morning’s decision, how are you acting autonomously? Your earlier self seems to be calling the shots; if you are just acting accordingly, without thinking through it or in some other way trying to ensure that the past decision conforms to your present standpoint, it is not clear how this amounts to an exercise of your present autonomous agency. It seems, rather, that your earlier self has succeeded in slaving you to her own purposes. She was the one who wanted (intended, judged it to be good, etc.) to have an avocado burrito. In simply following through, your current self seems to be just an automaton performing the commands left behind by your former self. Of course, you might not allow yourself to be shackled by your earlier self. You might refuse to follow anything but your own present judgments: you will only go to Taco Hut if this is what you judge you should do right now, and once at Taco Hut you will only eat the avocado burrito if that is what you want to eat once there. But if this is the way you generally operate, this seems to block your ability to make effective future-directed decisions. The puzzle, then, is one of explaining how the future self can do the bidding of her past self without losing her autonomy. We call this “the Problem of Diachronic Autonomy.” Philosophers raising this problem take it to show that there must be reasons or rational requirements to follow-through with our past decisions. According to these philosophers, we can only make sense of our diachronic autonomy if our past decisions put rational pressure on us to follow through. We argue that there is no Problem of Diachronic Autonomy. There is, in other words, no puzzling situation that needs explaining. Consequently, there is no need coming from this purported puzzle to think that our future-directed decisions generate reasons or rational requirements to follow through. The correct view of our diachronic autonomy is the “naïve” one: the “future self” can do the bidding of the “past self” without giving up its autonomy because, very simply, the past self is the same agent as the future self. I am acting autonomously when I get the avocado burrito, because I was the one who decided to get the burrito. I am acting on my own freely-formed decision

Inconclusive quantum measurements and decisions under uncertainty

We give a mathematical definition for the notion of inconclusive quantum measurements. In physics, such measurements occur at intermediate stages of a complex measurement procedure, with the final measurement result being operationally testable. Since the mathematical structure of Quantum Decision Theory has been developed in analogy with the theory of quantum measurements, the inconclusive quantum measurements correspond, in Quantum Decision Theory, to intermediate stages of decision making in the process of taking decisions under uncertainty. The general form of the quantum probability for a composite event is the sum of a utility factor, describing a rational evaluation of the considered prospect, and of an attraction factor, characterizing irrational, subconscious attitudes of the decision maker. Despite the involved irrationality, the probability of prospects can be evaluated. This is equivalent to the possibility of calculating quantum probabilities without specifying hidden variables. We formulate a general way of evaluation, based on the use of non-informative priors. As an example, we suggest the explanation of the decoy effect. Our quantitative predictions are in very good agreement with experimental data.Comment: Latex file, 16 page