214,909 research outputs found
Unilateral Transfers and a Reinterpretation of Objectivist Ethics
Kathleen Touchstone's Then Athena Said: Unilateral Transfers and the Transformation of Objectivist Ethics is an intriguing book on unilateral transfers within the context of Objectivism. Touchstone examines Rand's primary social ethic, the Trader Principle—the bilateral exchange of value between independent equals. In reconsidering Rand's thoughts, she raises many arguments and provides thought-provoking insights especially on charity, reproductivity, retaliation and rights. Touchstone reinterprets Objectivism through the prism of economics, applying economic tools such as consumer theory, capital theory, game theory, and decision making under uncertainty to address the questions she raise
Test MaxEnt in Social Strategy Transitions with Experimental Two-Person Constant Sum 22 Games
By using laboratory experimental data, we test the uncertainty of social
strategy transitions in various competing environments of fixed paired
two-person constant sum games. It firstly shows that, the
distributions of social strategy transitions are not erratic but obey the
principle of the maximum entropy (MaxEnt). This finding indicates that human
subject social systems and natural systems could have wider common backgrounds.Comment: Keyward: game theory, experimental economics, MaxEnt, mixed strategy
Nash Equilibrium, social dynamics, evolution, social state transition,
evolutionary game theory, cycles; Result in Physics 201
A THEORY OF RATIONAL CHOICE UNDER COMPLETE IGNORANCE
This paper contributes to a theory of rational choice under uncertainty for decision-makers whose preferences are exhaustively described by partial orders representing ""limited information."" Specifically, we consider the limiting case of ""Complete Ignorance"" decision problems characterized by maximally incomplete preferences and important primarily as reduced forms of general decision problems under uncertainty. ""Rationality"" is conceptualized in terms of a ""Principle of Preference-Basedness,"" according to which rational choice should be isomorphic to asserted preference. The main result characterizes axiomatically a new choice-rule called ""Simultaneous Expected Utility Maximization"" which in particular satisfies a choice-functional independence and a context-dependent choice-consistency condition; it can be interpreted as the fair agreement in a bargaining game (Kalai-Smorodinsky solution) whose players correspond to the different possible states (respectively extermal priors in the general case).
Game Theory and Economic Behavior
Until the beginning of 1950s, the economic theory in general, and the microeconomic theory in particular, relied totally on the deterministic character of economic phenomena. Nowadays microeconomic models are built on uncertain elements in a competitive environment that is affected by risk and uncertainty. Two centuries later, traditional microeconomics, also known as derived microeconomics, continues to be based on Adam Smith’s theory. As individuals are interested in participating in commercial transactions, but for these to take place effectively, two essential principles should be observed: the principle of rationality and the principle of pure and perfect competition. The link between Brower’ fixed point theorems on the one hand and John von Neumann’s minimax theorem on the other hand enabled other authors such as McKenzie Arrow and Debreu Uzawa to state and demonstrate simpler but more general theorems than that of Abraham Wald. It was thus supposed that consumer preferences in a pool of possible consumptions are reflexive, transitive and all are comparable. Using game theory as a reference framework to represent the behavior of economic agents, microeconomics strongly renews its scope of investigation. The problem that arises is no longer linked to the study of perfectly competitive markets, but mostly to how agents coordinate their decisions in different strategic configuration circumstances. The use of such concepts as risk, antiselection or coordination limits has opened new scopes to economy in general and to microeconomics in particular.Game Theory, behavior of economic, traditional microeconomics, new microeconomics
Steering is an essential feature of non-locality in quantum theory
A physical theory is called non-local when observers can produce
instantaneous effects over distant systems. Non-local theories rely on two
fundamental effects: local uncertainty relations and steering of physical
states at a distance. In quantum mechanics, the former one dominates the other
in a well-known class of non-local games known as XOR games. In particular,
optimal quantum strategies for XOR games are completely determined by the
uncertainty principle alone. This breakthrough result has yielded the
fundamental open question whether optimal quantum strategies are always
restricted by local uncertainty principles, with entanglement-based steering
playing no role. In this work, we provide a negative answer to the question,
showing that both steering and uncertainty relations play a fundamental role in
determining optimal quantum strategies for non-local games. Our theoretical
findings are supported by an experimental implementation with entangled
photons.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure
Quantum Games Entropy
We propose the study of quantum games from the point of view of quantum
information theory and statistical mechanics. Every game can be described by a
density operator, the von Neumann entropy and the quantum replicator dynamics.
There exists a strong relationship between game theories, information theories
and statistical physics. The density operator and entropy are the bonds between
these theories. The analysis we propose is based on the properties of entropy,
the amount of information that a player can obtain about his opponent and a
maximum or minimum entropy criterion. The natural trend of a physical system is
to its maximum entropy state. The minimum entropy state is a characteristic of
a manipulated system i.e. externally controlled or imposed. There exist tacit
rules inside a system that do not need to be specified or clarified and search
the system equilibrium under the collective welfare principle. The other rules
are imposed over the system when one or many of its members violate this
principle and maximize its individual welfare at the expense of the group.Comment: 6 page
Interference Effects in Quantum Belief Networks
Probabilistic graphical models such as Bayesian Networks are one of the most
powerful structures known by the Computer Science community for deriving
probabilistic inferences. However, modern cognitive psychology has revealed
that human decisions could not follow the rules of classical probability
theory, because humans cannot process large amounts of data in order to make
judgements. Consequently, the inferences performed are based on limited data
coupled with several heuristics, leading to violations of the law of total
probability. This means that probabilistic graphical models based on classical
probability theory are too limited to fully simulate and explain various
aspects of human decision making.
Quantum probability theory was developed in order to accommodate the
paradoxical findings that the classical theory could not explain. Recent
findings in cognitive psychology revealed that quantum probability can fully
describe human decisions in an elegant framework. Their findings suggest that,
before taking a decision, human thoughts are seen as superposed waves that can
interfere with each other, influencing the final decision.
In this work, we propose a new Bayesian Network based on the psychological
findings of cognitive scientists. We made experiments with two very well known
Bayesian Networks from the literature. The results obtained revealed that the
quantum like Bayesian Network can affect drastically the probabilistic
inferences, specially when the levels of uncertainty of the network are very
high (no pieces of evidence observed). When the levels of uncertainty are very
low, then the proposed quantum like network collapses to its classical
counterpart
Moral Uncertainty for Deontologists
Defenders of deontological constraints in normative ethics face a challenge: how should an agent decide what to do when she is uncertain whether some course of action would violate a constraint? The most common response to this challenge has been to defend a threshold principle on which it is subjectively permissible to act iff the agent's credence that her action would be constraint-violating is below some threshold t. But the threshold approach seems arbitrary and unmotivated: what would possibly determine where the threshold should be set, and why should there be any precise threshold at all? Threshold views also seem to violate ought agglomeration, since a pair of actions each of which is below the threshold for acceptable moral risk can, in combination, exceed that threshold. In this paper, I argue that stochastic dominance reasoning can vindicate and lend rigor to the threshold approach: given characteristically deontological assumptions about the moral value of acts, it turns out that morally safe options will stochastically dominate morally risky alternatives when and only when the likelihood that the risky option violates a moral constraint is greater than some precisely definable threshold (in the simplest case, .5). I also show how, in combination with the observation that deontological moral evaluation is relativized to particular choice situations, this approach can overcome the agglomeration problem. This allows the deontologist to give a precise and well-motivated response to the problem of uncertainty
One for all, all for one---von Neumann, Wald, Rawls, and Pareto
Applications of the maximin criterion extend beyond economics to statistics,
computer science, politics, and operations research. However, the maximin
criterion---be it von Neumann's, Wald's, or Rawls'---draws fierce criticism due
to its extremely pessimistic stance. I propose a novel concept, dubbed the
optimin criterion, which is based on (Pareto) optimizing the worst-case payoffs
of tacit agreements. The optimin criterion generalizes and unifies results in
various fields: It not only coincides with (i) Wald's statistical
decision-making criterion when Nature is antagonistic, (ii) the core in
cooperative games when the core is nonempty, though it exists even if the core
is empty, but it also generalizes (iii) Nash equilibrium in -person
constant-sum games, (iv) stable matchings in matching models, and (v)
competitive equilibrium in the Arrow-Debreu economy. Moreover, every Nash
equilibrium satisfies the optimin criterion in an auxiliary game
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