Asymptotics of superstatistics

Superstatistics are superpositions of different statistics relevant for driven nonequilibrium systems with spatiotemporal inhomogeneities of an intensive variable (e.g., the inverse temperature). They contain Tsallis statistics as a special case. We develop here a technique that allows us to analyze the large energy asymptotics of the stationary distributions of general superstatistics. A saddle-point approximation is developed which relates this problem to a variational principle. Several examples are worked out in detail.Comment: Published version, few typos corrected, 7 pages, 1 figure, RevTeX

Convergence of large deviation estimators

We study the convergence of statistical estimators used in the estimation of large deviation functions describing the fluctuations of equilibrium, nonequilibrium, and manmade stochastic systems. We give conditions for the convergence of these estimators with sample size, based on the boundedness or unboundedness of the quantity sampled, and discuss how statistical errors should be defined in different parts of the convergence region. Our results shed light on previous reports of 'phase transitions' in the statistics of free energy estimators and establish a general framework for reliably estimating large deviation functions from simulation and experimental data and identifying parameter regions where this estimation converges.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures. v2: corrections focusing the paper on large deviations; v3: minor corrections, close to published versio

Praktisches Lernen, "Soziales Engagement" und "Praktische Ethik" in der Ganztagsschule Veermoor

Das Unterrichtsangebot der genannten Offenen Ganztagsschule ist stark in die Stadtteilarbeit eingebettet. Die im Titel genannten drei Schwerpunkte der schulischen Arbeit werden im Beitrag vorgestellt und in ihrer Entwicklung und ihrer Verbindung zum Stadtteil beschrieben. Soziales Lernen verzahnt "handwerklich herstellende mit sozial-helfenden Projektbereichen" z. B. im Umbau des Schulgeländes oder einer "Kinder-Küche". Auch für das Soziale Lernen durch soziales Engagement und die praktische Ethik gibt es Angebote, die als Wahlpflichtkurse gestaltet sind. (DIPF/Bi.

Rationality applied: resolving the two envelopes problem

The Two Envelopes Problem is a beautiful and quite confusing problem in decision theory which is ca. 35 years old and has provoked at least 150 papers directly addressing the problem and displaying a surprising variety of different responses. This paper finds decisive progress in an approach of Priest and Restall in 2003, contends that the recent papers having appeared since did not really go beyond that paper, argues further that Priest’s and Restall’s solution is still not complete, and proposes a completion of their solution. If the analysis is correct, this work has the potential of laying the Two Envelopes Problem at rest

Fighting human hubris: Intelligence in nonhuman animals and artefacts

100 years ago, the editors of the Journal of Educational Psychology conducted one of the most famous studies of experts’ conceptions of human intelligence. This was reason enough to prompt the question where we stand today with making sense of “intelligence”. In this paper, we argue that we should overcome our anthropocentrism and appreciate the wonders of intelligence in nonhuman and nonbiological animals instead. For that reason, we study two cases of octopus intelligence and intelligence in machine learning systems to embrace the notion of intelligence as a non-unitary faculty with pluralistic forms. Furthermore, we derive lessons for advancing our human self-understanding

Intelligence in Light of Perspectivalism: Lessons from Octopus Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence

This paper pursues the question of where we stand today in making sense of "intelligence". Even though definitions of intelligence have been provided over many years in different fields and disciplines such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science, these crude approaches often turn out to be overly systematic, rigid, and reductive. Moreover, as we argue here, much work on intelligence suffers from the bias of using humans as a yardstick and/or of focusing on human intelligence at the expense of acknowledging other, i.e., non-human forms of intelligence. By means of a concise literature review and case study analysis, the objective of this paper is to pave the ground for overcoming our anthropocentrism and appreciating the wonders of intelligence in nonhuman and non-biological animals instead. For that reason, we study two cases of octopus intelligence and intelligence in machine learning systems to embrace the notion of intelligence as a non-unitary faculty with pluralistic forms. Furthermore, we derive lessons for advancing our human self-understanding