Boris Johnson Ought To Change Negotiation Tactics to Avoid No-Deal Brexit

Boris Johnson Ought To Change Negotiation Tactics to Avoid No-Deal Brexit

With time quickly ticking to a no-deal Brexit, the UK’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson has been meeting with his French and German counterparts over the terms of UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. Giving the impression of commitment to a no-deal Brexit on October 31st, Johnson hopes that his assertive approach will mete out some concessions from the EU.

Imelda Mather from the University College Dublin and Dermot Hodson from the University of London feel that the prime minister could be right. However, he ought to be careful not to overplay his hand. Their research on EU treaty-making since 1950 gave them the belief to Johnson’s view that Merkel, Macron and other EU leaders could cede some grounds before October 31st. As much as the Brexit withdrawal agreement is a different treaty, the EU is generally detested to let deals fail, given the deep cost of negotiating them.

Up to now, the 1952 European Defence Community Treaty is the only main agreement that member states left and even then, it was not a clear-cut case. However, if Johnson tied his hands too tightly or demands for too much in the Brexit end game; it is likely that be the EU instead of the UK which leaves the negotiating table.

In 1954, the French National Assembly declined to approve the European Defence Community Treaty, member states sort defence co-operation called the Western European Union. One act of accord making was replaced with another, as France and its European partners agreed to revise the 1948 Treaty of Brussels.

Correspondingly, after Denmark voted no to the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. The accord was saved by the EU agreeing to opt-outs. Flexibility was also shown to Ireland after it declined the Nice and Lisbon Treaties in 2001 and 2007 respectively. The concessions protected by the Irish government were sufficient to get support for the treaties in second referendums.

Reference

https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-must-change-his-negotiating-tactics-to-avoid-no-deal-brexit-eu-treaty-making-experts-122243

 

How Empathy Is the Secret Ingredient to Civilization and Cooperation

How Empathy Is the Secret Ingredient to Civilization and Cooperation

According to Arunas L. Radzvilavicius from the University of Pennsylvania, human societies are often prosperous due to their charitable nature. Unlike other animals, human beings cooperate even when around strangers. They share knowledge on Wikipedia, work together to manage resources and also show up to vote responsibly.

However, the question asked is where these cooperative skills come from and why don’t the selfish instincts overpower them. By using a branch of mathematics known as evolutionary game theory to explore this trait of human societies, Arunas and his collaborators found that empathy, the unique human capacity to someone else’s perspective could be responsible for sustaining these high levels of cooperation in modern societies.

For many years, scholars have assumed that social norms and reputation could explain altruistic behaviour. Human beings are far more likely to be considerate to people they see as “good” than those they see as having “bad” reputation. If everyone concurs that being kind towards other cooperators gives you a good reputation, cooperation will go on.

The common understanding of how people see as morally excellent and worthy of cooperation is a type of social norm, an invisible rule which guides social behaviour and encourages collaboration. A well-known pattern in human societies is known as “stern judging”, for instance, rewards cooperators who decline to help unfortunate people, but many other norms are possible.

The thought that you assist one person and someone else helps you is known as the theory of indirect reciprocity. On the contrary, it has been built assuming that people will concur with each other’s reputations as they change over a specified period. Good reputations were seen to be entirely objective and publicly understood. Arunas gives an example of an all-seeing institution monitoring people’s traits and assigning status like China’s social credit system. The system awards people or sanctions based on social scores calculated by the government.

Reference

https://theconversation.com/empathy-is-the-secret-ingredient-that-makes-cooperation-and-civilization-possible-115105

 

 

Will the game theory finally unlock genetics? Researchers are on it

A pair of researchers has recently have released a study saying that the principles of game theory may actually be used in looking into genetics.

“The view of genes as players in a signaling game effectively animates genes and bestows simple utilities and strategies—thus, unique personalities—on them,” said Bhubaneswar “Bud” Mishra, NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences professor in a report.

Mishra co-authored the said study with Steven Massey, an associate professor at the University of Puerto Rico.

The researchers wrote that the principles of game theory have been extensively in understanding and making sense out of things in other fields of sciences. It was first used in the 1970s to understand animal behavior. Eventually, it was also used in political science, ethics and philosophy.

“For instance, the macromolecules signal their identity to other macromolecules that bind to them, which then undertake a biochemical reaction. The communication of identity opens the possibility of certain behaviors associated with humans—such as molecular “deception” occurring between gene players,” Phys.org said in its report.

Science Daily defined Game theory as a “branch of applied mathematics and economics that studies situations where players choose different actions in an attempt to maximize their returns.”

“The evolution of the genetic code and many of the other major evolutionary transitions that led to present-day lifeforms may be linked to the evolution of signaling conventions between macromolecules, and the possibility of subversion by selfish entities or pathogens,” said Mishra.

He added that the “occurrence of molecular deception has led to the evolution of mechanisms of ‘molecular sanctioning’ to control the offending behavior.”

Ref: http://www.anewsweek.com/will-the-game-theory-finally-unlock-genetics-researchers-are-on-it/

 

 

Game theory shows why disease stigmatization may not make sense in modern society

Although stigmatizing people suffering from an infectious disease may have been adapted for pre-historic humans, now it could cause more harm than good, according to a team of Penn State researchers.

In a study that used game theory to understand how stigmatizing infected people affects the spread of the disease, the researchers found that the availability to modern healthcare now makes stigmatization a less effective strategy for dealing with disease spread. Stigmatization could actually make a disease outbreak worse in a modern society. The ability to use a game theory model to quantify the effects of stigmatization could help medical professionals design interventions and communications strategies to better contend with infectious disease outbreaks.

While game theory has been used to analyze the strategies and outcomes in fields as diverse as dating and the stock market, Reluga said that its techniques can also be used to study the effects of evolution in biology and the spread of infections. In the case of infectious disease, the researchers examined three scenarios—pre-Urban and modern, along with a non-infectious disease control scenario.

The researchers modeled how people infected with a disease in a community without access to medical care might deal with their infection. The model shows that the population with access to medical care, that avoids stigmatization, stabilizes after a disease outbreak, but the population falters if stigmatization keeps some people from seeking treatment.

Reluga added that the results also offer an insight into how science and technology shape and re-shape society and culture.

In the future, the researchers hope to refine their models even more by including other behaviors and strategies people may use in the face of stigmatization, as well as examine demographic features of certain populations.

Ref: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-06-game-theory-disease-stigmatization-modern.html

 

Game Theory and Artificial Intelligence to Help Treat Cancer Among Other Challenges

 Game Theory and Artificial Intelligence to Help Treat Cancer Among Other Challenges

Following a new US Army research that was conducted by scientists based at Carnegie Mellon University, which was published in Science, a new artificial intelligence program was developed, which can treat cancer and other diseases. The program is called Pluribus and can also solve other problems like cybersecurity and can efficiently deploy soldiers and other assets with no problem. Using the program, one could be able to win a poker game. This has been developed using game theory.

In funding this research, the Army and National Science Foundation funded the mathematics part of it, while Facebook funded the poker game. According to Dr. Purush Iyer, the division chief of network sciences at the Army Research Office, the most significant challenge that has faced game theory for a long time has been its scalability. (Scalability is the ability of the game theory to deal with the state space that is increasing exponentially).  He insisted that in order to achieve this, a strategy is critical.

Poker, as they said, is a perfect example of how mathematical models can be used in the case to come up with strategies to deal with situations where a person lacks complete information. Being able to handle this as made possible by game theory can go a magnificent mile in solving many challenges such as listed above.

Some of the research work papers that have been funded by the Army in game theory are now in application by the Transportation Security Administration, the Los Angeles Metro Rail and the US Coast Guard to help in scheduling resources in such a manner that they decrease in the cost for security personnel but at the same time increasing the costs for the adversary. Other instances where algorithmic game theory has been applied is in reducing pouching among many others.

Reference

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190715103314.html

Random Timings Have a Great Influence On Strategies of Game Theory

 Random Timings Have a Great Influence On Strategies of Game Theory

In coming up with game theory strategies, many strategies have not put into consideration the role played by the timing in the real world that is done randomly. There are those models whose players receive information at the same time; hence, they work concurrently with one another. However, it is also important to note that in some models, data has been shared randomly leading to the distribution of data at significant steps, which are maybe continuous but not stepwise-wise as the world thinks.

Justin Grana, an economist and former postdoctoral scholar at the Santa Fe Institute, said that most companies which are competing with each other would only make decisions based on the time when information is received, and the nature of the information collected. She said that timing, therefore, becomes a very crucial determinant which can either make a perfect decision or break an already existing right choice for the game theory strategists. Grana also added that randomness in the way information is distributed evolves in a continuous manner and not step-wise as many thought.

No one knows the times when things happen since the environment keeps changing as a result of many random processes and, therefore, it is only prudent that one must act at random times. For instance, one might receive information that may cause him or her either to move or may cause one to delay in what he or she should do.

Therefore, Grana and his colleagues in a new paper the ‘Berkeley Electronic Journal of Theoretical Economics’ have investigated game theory strategies that will enable one to create models that will take care of what plays need to do when they receive information at random times or when they act randomly as a result of continuous evolution of time.

Reference

https://m.physics.org/news/2019-07-random-tweaks-game-theory-strategies.html

Game Theory Explains Why Stigmatization Makes Less Sense in Modern Society

According to Penn State researchers, as much as stigmatizing people suffering from infectious disease was prevalent for pre-historic humans; it could cause more harm than right now.

In a study which employed game theory to understand how stigmatizing infected people affected the spread of the disease, the researchers found that the presence of modern healthcare can now make stigmatization a less efficient strategy for dealing with the spread of diseases.

According to Tim Reluga, associate professor of mathematics and biology at the Eberly College of Science and an affiliate of the Huck Institutes of Life Science Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics and the Institute for CyberScience, while stigmatization may not have developed over a period as an evolutionarily sound strategy to help people in primitive societies deal with illnesses, it could have actually make a disease outbreak worse in a modernized society.

Reluga added that there were two opposing sides of the debate on stigmas; in one sense, stigmas feel natural to people instinctively as a response to disease. He then said that when people ok at them from a sociological perspective, they see that they have negative consequences. He mentioned that the findings in the study state that in most cases, they do not make any sense.

The researchers mentioned that stigmatization is indeed ineffective for preventing illnesses since it cannot completely seal off the spread of any infection. Usually, people are afraid of stigmatization, and they may not seek medical treatment. This means that they will continue to suffer from the illness, but they can also continue to spread the infection.

Reluga added that when people are in situations where there is no competent medical care, and there is no way to deal with the disease, stigmatization can still be useful. However, when you have medical treatments which reduce transmissions, then people hiding the illness and not getting treatment can lead to more transmission than if they were open about the disease and seeking medical help.

Reference

https://www.google.com/amp/s/medicalxpress.com/news/2019-06-game-theory-disease-stigmatization-modern.amp

 

 

 

Empathy Makes Cooperation and Civilization Possible

Usually, human societies become prosperous because of how generous humans are. People always cooperate even with total strangers, something different from other animals. We share knowledge on sites like Wikipedia, work together to manage natural resources responsibly and also show up to vote.

The question lies as to where the cooperative skills in human beings come from and why doesn’t the selfish instincts of human beings overwhelm these instincts. With the help of a branch of mathematics called evolutionary game theory to explore this feature in human beings, Arunas L. Radzvilavicius from the University of Pennsylvania and his collaborators found that empathy, a unique human capacity to listen to another person’s perspective, could be the reason for sustaining such rare high levels of cooperation in modern societies.

For many years, schools have thought that social norms and reputation could explain altruistic behavior. Usually, humans are more likely to be kind to people they see as good than they are to those with a bad reputation. If everyone concurs with the fact that being compassionate towards other cooperates could earn them a functional status, cooperation will persist.

The universal understanding of who people see as morally excellent and worthy of cooperation is a type of social norm — an invisible rule which guides social behavior and pushes for agreement. An everyday norm in human societies is known as stern judging, for instance, rewards cooperators who decline to help bad people, but many other standards are possible.

The notion that you help one person and someone else helps you is known as the theory of indirect reciprocity. On the contrary, it has been built assuming that individuals always agree on each other’s’ reputations as they change over time. Good standings have been presumed to be entirely objective and known. For instance, an all-seeing institution that monitors peoples’ behavior and assigns reputation, e.g., China’s social credit system where people will get rewarded or sanctioned based on social scores calculated by the government.

Reference

https://theconversation.com/empathy-is-the-secret-ingredient-that-makes-cooperation-and-civilization-possible-115105

 

Bizarre Bird Behavior Predicted By Game Theory

A team of scientists, led by the University of Exeter, has used game theory to explain the bizarre behaviour of a group of ravens.

Ravens feed on the carcasses of large animals. Most populations live in temperate forests, where individuals search for carcasses and finds are then defended by a pair of territorial adults. Unpaired younger birds, on the other hand, gather at communal roosts from which they search individually for carcasses on adult territories and recruit each other to overwhelm adult protectionism. However, at one raven roost on Anglesey, things work differently: juveniles forage in gangs. This level of coordination had not been seen before in a raven population.

The researchers built a mathematical model to understand how this behaviour evolved and why it might occur in some roosts and not others. The model designed for this study was based on techniques used in other game theory models, which identify the most profitable behaviours of individuals in different situations to predict what would be favoured by evolution.

The study revealed two strategies as being most profitable for ravens to find food. One is for birds to search independently for food and recruit each other. The other is for the birds to forage in gangs.

The findings showed that gang foraging should occur when searching for food individually is no more efficient than foraging in groups. The study also identifies the availability of food as a key factor. The roost in Anglesey is situated in an agricultural area, which means that the carcasses of farm animals are often available so food is more plentiful than in wild locations.

Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090224230705.htm

 

How game theory can bring humans and robots closer together

Researchers at the University of Sussex, Imperial College London and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have for the first time used game theory to enable robots to assist humans in a safe and versatile manner.

The research team used adaptive control and Nash equilibrium game theory to programme a robot that can understand its human user’s behaviour in order to better anticipate their movements and respond to them.

Lead author Dr Yanan Li, Lecturer in Control Engineering at the University of Sussex, said: “It is still very early days in the development of robots and at present, those that are used in a working capacity are not intuitive enough to work closely and safely with human users. By enabling the robot to identify human users’ behaviour and exploiting game theory to let the robot optimally react to them, we have developed a system where robots can work along humans as humans do.”

Game theory is commonly used to understand how economic agents decide and interact with each other in order to maximise their own gain. To successfully apply game theory to the interaction of a robot and its human user, the researchers had to overcome the issue that the robot cannot know the human’s intentions. The researchers thus had to develop a method enabling the robot to identify the human partner while safely and efficiently interacting with their motion.

The reactive robotic programming system enables a robot to continuously learn the human user’s control and adapt its own control correspondingly. The robot is able to understand the human user’s action and then respond to and assist them to perform tasks successfully and with minimal effort.

Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190107112953.htm