Social Machinery and Intelligence

Social machines are systems formed by technical and human elements interacting in a structured manner. The use of digital platforms as mediators allows large numbers of human participants to join such mechanisms, creating systems where interconnected digital and human components operate as a single machine capable of highly sophisticated behaviour. Under certain conditions, such systems can be described as autonomous and goal-driven agents. Many examples of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be regarded as instances of this class of mechanisms. We argue that this type of autonomous social machines has provided a new paradigm for the design of intelligent systems marking a new phase in the field of AI. The consequences of this observation range from methodological, philosophical to ethical. On the one side, it emphasises the role of Human-Computer Interaction in the design of intelligent systems, while on the other side it draws attention to both the risks for a human being and those for a society relying on mechanisms that are not necessarily controllable. The difficulty by companies in regulating the spread of misinformation, as well as those by authorities to protect task-workers managed by a software infrastructure, could be just some of the effects of this technological paradigm

On representing the relationship between the mathematical and the empirical

We examine, from the partial structures perspective, two forms of applicability of mathematics: at the “bottom” level, the applicability of theoretical structures to the “appearances”, and at the “top” level, the applicability of mathematical to physical theories. We argue that, to accommodate these two forms of applicability, the partial structures approach needs to be extended to include a notion of “partial homomorphism”. As a case study, we present London’s analysis of the superfluid behavior of liquid helium in terms of Bose-Einstein statistics. This involved both the introduction of group theory at the top level, and some modeling at the “phenomenological” level, and thus provides a nice example of the relationships we are interested in. We conclude with a discussion of the “autonomy” of London’s model

Landauer Defended: Reply to Norton

Ladyman et al (2007) proposed a model of the implementation of logical operations by physical processes in order to clarify the exact statement of Landauer's Principle, and then ordered a new proof of the latter based on the construction of a thermodynamic cycle, arguing that if Landauer's Principle were false it would be possible to harness a machine that violated it to produce a violation of the second law of thermodynamics. In a recent paper in this journal, John Norton (2011) directly challenges the consistency of that proof. In the present paper we defend the proof given by Ladyman et al against his critique. In particular, contrary to what Norton claims, we argue that the pro- cesses used in the proof cannot be used to construct a cycle that enacts erasure in a thermodynamically reversible way, and that he does not show that the processes used in the proof violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Establishment of silvopastoral system into a Missouri hardwood forest

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on April 8, 2010).Thesis advisors: Dr. H.E. "Gene" Garrett and Dr. Monty KerleyM. S. University of Missouri--Columbia 2010.This research was conducted at the University of Missouri Hugo Wurdack Farm located near Cook Station, MO (Crawford County, Section 36, Township 36N, Range 5W). Plots were located on north- or north-east facing slopes. Grazing plots were 132.9 meters on the contour of the slope and 70.1 meters from base of the slope. The experiment was designed as a randomized complete block with five treatments, and five replications of each treatment. The five treatments were: (1) 1.01 hectares thinned forest, planted with selected forages and grazed, (2) 0.51 hectares thinned forest, planted with selected forages and not grazed, (3) 0.51 hectares thinned forest only, with no forage planting and not grazed, (4) 0.51 hectares control forest (no applied management), and (5) 1.01 hectares open pasture. Forage treatments were established on April 4 and 5, 2003, using Kentucky 31 Tall Fescue (Lolium arundinacea Schreb.). Red clover (Trifolium pretense L.) and "Marion" lespedeza (Kummerowia striata Thunb.) were sown on April 9, 2003. All treatments received 154 kg per hectare of 0-150-75 fertilizer. The number of trees left per ha following thinning averaged 165. Forages were harvested May 3, 2004 (cutting 1) and again on May 28, 2004 (cutting 2). All forages were analyzed for their content of nitrogen (N), neutral detergent fiber (NDF), and acid detergent fiber (ADF). The silvopasture had a lower NDF and ADF for the May 28 cutting compared to the open pastures.Includes bibliographical reference

Graph Theory and the Identity of Indiscernibles

The mathematical field of graph theory has recently been used to provide counterexamples to the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles. In response to this, it has been argued that appeal to relations between graphs allows the Principle to survive the counterexamples. In this paper, I aim to show why that proposal does not succeed

Black hole as an Information Eraser

We discuss the identity of black hole entropy and show that the first law of black hole thermodynamics, in the case of a Schwarzschild black hole, can be derived from Landauer's principle by assuming that the black hole is one of the most efficient information erasers in systems of a given temperature. The term "most efficient" implies that minimal energy is required to erase a given amount of information. We calculate the discrete mass spectra and the entropy of a Schwarzschild black hole assuming that the black hole processes information in unit of bits. The black hole entropy acquires a sub-leading contribution proportional to the logarithm of its mass-squared in addition to the usual mass-squared term without an artificial cutoff. We also argue that the minimum of the black hole mass is $\sqrt{\log 2/(8\pi)}M_P$.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures, minor change

The structure of causal sets

More often than not, recently popular structuralist interpretations of physical theories leave the central concept of a structure insufficiently precisified. The incipient causal sets approach to quantum gravity offers a paradigmatic case of a physical theory predestined to be interpreted in structuralist terms. It is shown how employing structuralism lends itself to a natural interpretation of the physical meaning of causal sets theory. Conversely, the conceptually exceptionally clear case of causal sets is used as a foil to illustrate how a mathematically informed rigorous conceptualization of structure serves to identify structures in physical theories. Furthermore, a number of technical issues infesting structuralist interpretations of physical theories such as difficulties with grounding the identity of the places of highly symmetrical physical structures in their relational profile and what may resolve these difficulties can be vividly illustrated with causal sets.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figure

On the origin of ambiguity in efficient communication

This article studies the emergence of ambiguity in communication through the concept of logical irreversibility and within the framework of Shannon's information theory. This leads us to a precise and general expression of the intuition behind Zipf's vocabulary balance in terms of a symmetry equation between the complexities of the coding and the decoding processes that imposes an unavoidable amount of logical uncertainty in natural communication. Accordingly, the emergence of irreversible computations is required if the complexities of the coding and the decoding processes are balanced in a symmetric scenario, which means that the emergence of ambiguous codes is a necessary condition for natural communication to succeed.Comment: 28 pages, 2 figure