Modern scholarship on decision behavior dates from the late 1940s. But that scholarship has been preoccupied with two ideas that are much older. One is the notion of expected utility, first articulated in the scholarly literature by Daniel Bernoulli in 1738. In its simplest form, the expected utility concept applies to monetary gambles. Imagine you are asked to choose between two gifts, either gamble G, which you would then play and get either $9 or nothing, or else a simple, (...) direct payment of $3. As shown in the decision tree in figure 10.1, you receive gamble G's $9 payoff if the toss of a fair die yields one or two pips, but you receive nothing otherwise. (In decision trees, choice points are represented by square nodes, chance points by circular nodes.) The expected value or expectation of a gamble is the sum of its payoffs, each weighted (i.e., multiplied) by its probability. Thus, the expected value of G is EV(G) = (1/3)($9) + (2/3)($0) = $3, the same as the direct payment. So, if you generally make decisions like this one so as to maximize expected value, you would be indifferent between the present options. However, if you are like most people, you are not indifferent. Instead, you are risk‐averse, preferring the guaranteed $3. Why? (shrink)

Tiebreak rules are necessary for revealing indifference in non- sequential decisions. I focus on a preference relation that satisfies Ordering and fails Independence in the following way. Lotteries a and b are indifferent but the compound lottery f, 0.5b> is strictly preferred to the compound lottery f, 0.5a>. Using tiebreak rules the following is shown here: In sequential decisions when backward induction is applied, a preference like the one just described must alter the preference relation between a and b at (...) certain choice nodes, i.e., indifference between a and b is not stable. Using this result, I answer a question posed by Rabinowicz (1997) concerning admissibility in sequential decisions when indifferent options are substituted at choice nodes. (shrink)

The theory of trees with additional unary predicates and quantification over nodes and branches embraces a rich branching time logic. This theory was reduced in the companion paper to the first-order theory of binary, bounded, well-founded trees with additional unary predicates. Here we prove the decidability of the latter theory.

Decision-making competence refers to the ability to make better decisions, as defined by decision-making principles posited by models of rational choice. The adult decision-making competence (A-DMC) scale is a relatively mature evaluation tool used for decision-making competence. However, the A-DMC is yet far from other mature psychological evaluation tools, and especially the structure of A-DMC remains unclear. In the current study, we estimated a regularized partial correlation network of decision-making competence in a Chinese sample consisting (...) of 339 adults who were evaluated by the A-DMC, and then the centrality indicators were calculated. The results revealed that all nodes of the decision-making competence networks are positively associated, except for the association of resistance to framing (RF) and resistance to sunk costs (SC). The strongest edge was between RF and applying decision rules (DR; regularized partial correlation = 0.37). The centrality indicators of RF and applying DR were highest, revealing that these two variables may play important roles in the decision-making competence network. Our study conceptualizes the decision-making competence from network perspectives, so as to provide some insights for future researches. (shrink)

Operating universities under pandemic conditions is a complex undertaking. The Artificial University responds to this need. TAU is a configurable, open-source computer simulation of a university using a contact network based on publicly available information about university classes, residences, and activities. This study evaluates health outcomes for an array of interventions and testing protocols in an artificial university of 6,500 students, faculty, and staff. Findings suggest that physical distancing and centralized contact tracing are most effective at reducing infections, but there (...) is a tipping point for compliance below which physical distancing is less effective. If student compliance is anything short of high, it helps to have separate buildings for quarantining infected students, thereby gracefully increasing compliance. Hybrid in-person and online classes and closing fitness centers do not significantly change cumulative infections but do significantly decrease the number of the infected at any given time, indicating strategies for “flattening the curve” to protect limited resources. Supplementing physical distancing with centralized contact tracing decreases infected individuals by an additional 14%; boosting frequency of testing for student-facing staff yields a further 7% decrease. A trade-off exists between increasing the sheer number of infection tests and targeting testing for key nodes in the contact network. There are significant advantages to getting and acting on test results quickly. The costs and benefits to universities of these findings are discussed. Artificial universities can be an important decision support tool for universities, generating useful policy insights into the challenges of operating universities under pandemic conditions. (shrink)

Inspired by the operation of human social organisation, this paper presents a new architecture—a pyramid-committee—for developing society-oriented intelligence, whose structure imitates the organisation of human society in its decision making. The system takes a pyramid-like hierarchical structure with links in the pyramid forming a semi-lattice, which relate not only to nodes in the same layer, but also to others in different layers. The output of the system is a result of the negotiation and balancing of different interests. For (...) such a system to function, the main difficulties concern the complicated relationships between different factors or agents. Focussing on the airport environment audit, we discuss the development of a model framework and the role of neural networks. (shrink)

. Network data analysis helps in capturing node usage behavior. Existing algorithms use reduced feature set to manage high runtime complexity. Ignoring features may increase classification errors. This paper presents a model, allowing classification of network traffic, while considering all the relevant features. Learning phase partitions training sample on values of the respective features. This creates equivalence classes related to m features. During classification, each feature value of the test instance results in picking one set from equivalence class generated during (...) learning. Algorithm captures new behavior in semi-supervised incremental learning mode. For problems having m features and n training samples the model has incremental learning complexity of and average classification complexity is of the order. (shrink)

Emmanuel Kant s'est attaqué sinon à la métaphysique, du moins à sa méthode. Il lui reproche d'avoir l'ambition de parvenir à une connaissance scientifique de ce qui est en tant que tel et de dépasser ainsi les données de l'expérience sensible. La métaphysique classique de tradition aristotélicienne prétendait en effet parvenir à une véritable connaissance de Dieu, de la création, de l'âme, de la liberté.00Mais selon Kant, la métaphysique ne parvient en réalité qu'à des conclusions contradictoires qu'il nomme les ± (...) antinomies de la raison pure?. Les contradictions entre les divers métaphysiciens attestent cette impasse. Il ne reste donc plus à la raison qu'à se tourner vers elle-même et au mieux vers les conditions de la science des phénomènes et de la pratique. C'est en cela que réside le suicide de la raison théorique et métaphysique que met en lumière Michel Nodé-Langlois. L'idée d'une métaphysique comme connaissance et science est devenue, d'après Kant, impossible.00Pourtant, et c'est tout l'intérêt de ce livre, il est aisé de montrer que les contradictions exposées par Kant n'en sont pas. Elles reposent sur des interprétations erronées de la manière dont la métaphysique aborde les questions. S'il en est ainsi, les prétendues antinomies s'effondrent et la raison libérée du piège kantien peut reprendre le chemin de la spéculation théorique sur les grandes questions, avec l'espoir de les résoudre grâce à une connaissance véritable. (shrink)

«A genuine literary treatment of the soul» is what Eugenio Massa called the brief section of Egidio of Viterbo’s Sentences Commentary that he published in 1954. What Massa published is Egidio’s discussion of part of Peter Lombard’s third distinction in Book I, which bears the title «De imagine et similitudine Trinitatis in anima humana». The main topic at so early a place in the Sentences is not, strictly speaking, the human soul but the divine Trinity. The point of departure is (...) Lombard’s consideration of the soul as analogous to the Trinity; and behind that connection lies Augustine, who presented the soul as an image of the Trinity because he saw in the soul a unity and simplicity of substance but also Platonism’s tripartite divisions. These include, for example, the appetitive, emotional, and rational functions, from the Republic, and Augustine’s subdivision of the rational functions into memory, understanding, and will. This connection between Trinity and human soul, however, gave commentators excellent opportunities not only for theology, discourse about God, but also for psychology, the study of the soul. Descriptions of the human soul initially offered in the theological context became important in their own right. According to Massa, in light of the soul’s being created in God’s image, Egidio was able to make human dignity the major theme even at this early point in the commentary. (shrink)

Link prediction, which aims to forecast potential or missing links in a complex network based on currently observed information, has drawn growing attention from researchers. To date, a host of similarity-based methods have been put forward. Usually, one method harbors the idea that one similarity measure is applicable to various networks, and thus has performance fluctuation on different networks. In this paper, we propose a novel method to solve this issue by regarding link prediction as a multiple-attribute decision-making problem. (...) In the proposed method, we consider RA, LP, and CAR indices as the multiattribute for node pairs. The technique for order performance by similarity to ideal solution is adopted to aggregate the multiattribute and rank node pairs. The proposed method is not limited to only one similarity measure, but takes separate measures into account, since different networks may have different topological structures. Experimental results on 10 real-world networks manifest that the proposed method is superior in comparison to state-of-the-art methods. (shrink)

Community detection is one of the key research directions in complex network studies. We propose a community detection algorithm based on a density peak clustering model and multiple attribute decision-making strategy, TOPSIS. First, the two-dimensional dataset, which is transformed from the network by taking the density and distance as the attributes of nodes, is clustered by using the DBSCAN algorithm, and outliers are determined and taken as the key nodes. Then, the initial community frameworks are formed and (...) expanded by adding the most similar node of the community as its new member. In this process, we use TOPSIS to cohesively integrate four kinds of similarities to calculate an index, and use it as a criterion to select the most similar node. Then, we allocate the nonkey nodes that are not covered in the expanded communities. Finally, some communities are merged to obtain a stable partition in two ways. This paper designs some experiments for the algorithm on some real networks and some synthetic networks, and the proposed method is compared with some popular algorithms. The experimental results testify for the effectiveness and show the accuracy of our algorithm. (shrink)

Exactly how do the sign/symbol/token systems of endo- and exo-biosemiosis differ from those of cognitive semiosis? Do the biological messages that integrate metabolism have conceptual meaning? Semantic information has two subsets: Descriptive and Prescriptive. Prescriptive information instructs or directly produces nontrivial function. In cognitive semiosis, prescriptive information requires anticipation and “choice with intent” at bona fide decision nodes. Prescriptive information either tells us what choices to make, or it is a recordation of wise choices already made. Symbol systems (...) allow recordation of deliberate choices and the transmission of linear digital prescriptive information. Formal symbol selection can be instantiated into physicality using physical symbol vehicles (tokens). Material symbol systems (MSS) formally assign representational meaning to physical objects. Even verbal semiosis instantiates meaning into physical sound waves using an MSS. Formal function can also be incorporated into physicality through the use of dynamically-inert (dynamically-incoherent or -decoupled) configurable switch-settings in conceptual circuits. This paper examines the degree to which biosemiosis conforms to the essential formal criteria of prescriptive semiosis and cybernetic management. (shrink)

"ACT Administrative Appeals Tribunal Decisions." Ethos: Official Publication of the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, (200), pp. 42.

The model of phoneme monitoring proposed by Norris et al. is implausible when implemented in a localist connectionist network. Lexical representations mysteriously inform phoneme decision nodes as to the presence or absence of a target phoneme.

A syntactic formalism for the modeling of belief revision in perfect information games is presented that allows to define the rationality of a player's choice of moves relative to the beliefs he holds as his respective decision nodes have been reached. In this setting, true common belief in the structure of the game and rationality held before the start of the game does not imply that backward induction will be played. To derive backward induction, a “forward belief” condition (...) is formulated in terms of revised rather than initial beliefs. Alternative notions of rationality as well as the use of knowledge instead of belief are also studied within this framework. Footnotes1 I would like to thank Wlodek Rabinowicz and three anonymous referees for very helpful comments. (shrink)

An information completion of an extensive game is obtained by extending the information partition of every player from the set of her decision nodes to the set of all nodes. The extended partition satisfies Memory of Past Knowledge (MPK) if at any node a player remembers what she knew at earlier nodes. It is shown that MPK can be satisfied in a game if and only if the game is von Neumann (vN) and satisfies memory at (...) decision nodes (the restriction of MPK to a player's own decision nodes). A game is vN if any two decision nodes that belong to the same information set of a player have the same number of predecessors. By providing an axiom for MPK we also obtain a syntactic characterization of the said class of vN games. (shrink)

Norris et al.'s claim that feedback is unnecessary is compromised by (1) a questionable application of Occam's razor, given strong evidence for feedback in perception; (2) an idealization of the speech recognition problem that simplifies those aspects of the input that create conditions where feedback is useful; (3) Norris et al.'s use of decision nodes that incorporate feedback to model some important empirical results; and (4) problematic linking hypotheses between crucial simulations and behavioral data.

A decision tree is one of the machine learning techniques and also one of the major knowledge representations of data mining results.This is because it is easy to understand its meaning for human analysts.Even ID3, the representative algorithm, is known to exhibit remarkable performance deterioration under certain circumstances, particularly due to strong correlation between attributes representing the class of examples. One of the approaches to get more preferable decision trees is pre-processing the training data to extend its description, (...) such as attributes generation and attribute selection. There is also the idea of decision trees with a region rule. In this paper, we consider two approaches, i.e., decision trees with a region rule allowing multiple attributes, and a pre-processing method of a region rule to enabling any suitable number of attributes to correspond to branch nodes, where an optimal division condition with arbitrarily multiple attributes is acquired. By using this method, we propose a new decision tree generation algorithm guaranteeing to select effective compound attributes with each branch node, where an MDL-based new evaluation criterion is also defined for determining the optimal number of compound attributes specified to each node.This algorithm is applied to datasets containing only nominal values. It consists of three processes: compound attributes selection, parent node integration, and pruning. We call this new decision trees DTMACC (Decision Trees with Multiple Attributes Concept Clustering). The effectiveness and comprehensiveness of the proposed algorithm are confirmed through experiments comparing to the ordinary decision trees and an effective pre-processing method. (shrink)

One might think that money pumps directed at agents with cyclic preferences can be avoided by foresight. This view was challenged two decades ago by the discovery of a money pump with foresight, which works against agents who use backward induction. But backward induction implausibly assumes that the agent would act rationally and retain her trust in her future rationality even at choice nodes that could only be reached if she were to act irrationally. This worry does not apply (...) to BI-terminating decision problems, where at each choice node backward induction prescribes a move that terminates further action. For BI-terminating decision problems, it is enough to assume that rationality and trust in rationality are retained at choice nodes reachable by rational moves. The old money pump with foresight was not BI-terminating. In this paper, we present a new money pump with foresight, one that is both BI-terminating and considerably simpler. (shrink)

In representing classification rules by decision trees, simplicity of tree structure is as important as predictive accuracy especially in consideration of the comprehensibility to a human, the memory capacity and the time required to classify. Trees tend to be complex when they get high accuracy. This paper proposes a novel method for generating accurate and simple decision trees based on symbiotic evolution. It is distinctive of symbiotic evolution that two different populations are evolved in parallel through genetic algorithms. (...) In our method one's individuals are partial trees of height 1, and the other's individuals are whole trees represented by the combinations of the former individuals. Generally, overfitting to training examples prevents getting high predictive accuracy. In order to circumvent this difficulty, individuals are evaluated with not only the accuracy in training examples but also the correct answer biased rate indicating the dispersion of the correct answers in the terminal nodes. Based on our method we developed a system called SESAT for generating decision trees. Our experimental results show that SESAT compares favorably with other systems on several datasets in the UCI repository. SESAT has the ability to generate more simple trees than C5.0 without sacrificing predictive accuracy. (shrink)

Behaviour norms are considered for decision trees which allow both objective probabilities and uncertain states of the world with unknown probabilities. Terminal nodes have consequences in a given domain. Behaviour is required to be consistent in subtrees. Consequentialist behaviour, by definition, reveals a consequence choice function independent of the structure of the decision tree. It implies that behaviour reveals a revealed preference ordering satisfying both the independence axiom and a novel form of sure-thing principle. Continuous consequentialist behaviour (...) must be expected utility maximizing. Other plausible assumptions then imply additive utilities, subjective probabilities, and Bayes' rule. (shrink)

Intervening on causal systems can illuminate their underlying structures. Past work has shown that, relative to adults, young children often make intervention decisions that appear to confirm a single hypothesis rather than those that optimally discriminate alternative hypotheses. Here, we investigated how the ability to make informative causal interventions changes across development. Ninety participants between the ages of 7 and 25 completed 40 different puzzles in which they had to intervene on various causal systems to determine their underlying structures. Each (...) puzzle comprised a three‐ or four‐node computer chip with hidden wires. On each trial, participants viewed two possible arrangements of the chip's hidden wires and had to select a single node to activate. After observing the outcome of their intervention, participants selected a wire configuration and rated their confidence in their selection. We characterized participant choices with a Bayesian measurement model that indexed the extent to which participants selected nodes that would best disambiguate the two possible causal structures versus those that had high causal centrality in one of the two causal hypotheses but did not necessarily discriminate between them. Our model estimates revealed that the use of a discriminatory strategy increased through early adolescence. Further, developmental improvements in intervention strategy were related to changes in the ability to accurately judge the strength of evidence that interventions revealed, as indexed by participants' confidence in their selections. Our results suggest that improvements in causal information‐seeking extend into adolescence and may be driven by metacognitive sensitivity to the efficacy of previous interventions in discriminating competing ideas. (shrink)

I hypothesize that re-occurring prior experience of complex systems mobilizes a fast response, whose attractor is encoded by their strongly connected network core. In contrast, responses to novel stimuli are often slow and require the weakly connected network periphery. Upon repeated stimulus, peripheral network nodes remodel the network core that encodes the attractor of the new response. This “core-periphery learning” theory reviews and generalizes the heretofore fragmented knowledge on attractor formation by neural networks, periphery-driven innovation, and a number of (...) recent reports on the adaptation of protein, neuronal, and social networks. The core-periphery learning theory may increase our understanding of signaling, memory formation, information encoding and decision-making processes. Moreover, the power of network periphery-related “wisdom of crowds” inventing creative, novel responses indicates that deliberative democracy is a slow yet efficient learning strategy developed as the success of a billion-year evolution. Also see the video abstract here: https://youtu.be/IIjP7zWGjVE. The network core triggers fast responses to previously experienced stimuli. Innovations require the network periphery that encodes a novel attractor by core-remodeling. This core-periphery learning theory is introduced as a general adaptation, learning, decision-making, and forgetting mechanism of all complex systems including protein, metabolic, signaling, neuronal, social networks, and ecosystems. (shrink)

Seidenfeld (Seidenfeld, T. [1988a], Decision theory without 'Independence' or without 'Ordering', Economics and Philosophy 4: 267-290) gave an argument for Independence based on a supposition that admissibility of a sequential option is preserved under substitution of indifferents at choice nodes (S). To avoid a natural complaint that (S) begs the question against a critic of Independence, he provided an independent proof of (S) in his (Seidenfeld, T. [1988b], Rejoinder [to Hammond and McClennen], Economics and Philosophy 4: 309-315). In (...) reply to my (Rabinowicz, W. [1995], To have one's cake and eat it too: Sequential choice and expected-utility violations, The Journal of Philosophy 92: 586-620), in which I argue that the proof is invalid, Seidenfeld (Seidenfeld, T. [2000], Substitution of indifferent options at choice nodes and admissibility: A reply to Rabinowicz, Theory and Decision 48: 305–310 this issue) submits that I fail to give due consideration to one of the underlying assumptions of his derivation: it is meant to apply only to those cases in which the agent's preferences are stable throughout the sequential decision process. The purpose of this note is to clarify the notion of preference stability so as meet this objection. (shrink)

Cloud computing (ClC) has become a more popular computer paradigm in the preceding few years. Quality of Service (QoS) is becoming a crucial issue in service alteration because of the rapid growth in the number of cloud services. When evaluating cloud service functioning using several performance measures, the issue becomes more complex and non-trivial. It is therefore quite difficult and crucial for consumers to choose the best cloud service. The user's choices are provided in a quantifiable manner in the current (...) methods for choosing cloud services. Hence, this study attempts to achieve this objective through construction. decision-making framework so-called cloud services evaluator (CSsEv). The main indicator and its sub-indicators are formed as nodes at levels(n) in tree soft sets (TSSs). Thereafter Single Value Neutrosophic Sets (SVNSs) as branch of neutrosophic sets which conjunction with the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique to facilitate analysis and evaluation process for the available Cloud services providers. Hence, entropy is employed to obtain indicators and sub_indicators weights and Complex Proportional Assessment utilizes these weights to facilitate the decision process of selecting optimal ClSPs. (shrink)

According to the standard objection to backward induction in games, its application depends on highly questionable assumptions about the players' expectations as regards future counterfactual game developments. It seems that, in order to make predictions needed for backward reasoning, the players must expect each player to act rationally at each node that in principle could be reached in the game, and also to expect that this confidence in the future rationality of the players would be kept by each player come (...) what may: even at the game-nodes that could only be reached by irrational play. Both expectations seem to be rather unreasonable: a player's initial disposition to rational behaviour may be weakened by a long stretch of irrational play on his part and, even more importantly, his initial confidence in the other players' future rationality may be undermined by an irrational play on their part. For different formulations of this objection see Binmore, Reny and, Bicchieri, Pettit and Sugden. and Aumann and.). (shrink)

We consider the following signaling game. Nature plays first from the set {1, 2}. Player 1 (the Sender) sees this and plays from the set {A, B}. Player 2 (the Receiver) sees only Player 1’s play and plays from the set {1, 2}. Both players win if Player 2’s play equals Nature’s play and lose otherwise. Players are told whether they have won or lost, and the game is repeated. An urn scheme for learning coordination in this game is as (...) follows. Each node of the desicion tree for Players 1 and 2 contains an urn with balls of two colors for the two possible decisions. Players make decisions by drawing from the appropriate urns. After a win, each ball that was drawn is reinforced by adding another of the same color to the urn. A number of equilibria are possible for this game other than the optimal ones. However, we show that the urn scheme achieves asymptotically optimal coordination. (shrink)