Designing good deception: Recursive theory of mind in lying and lie detection

The human ability to deceive others and detect deception has long been tied to theory of mind. We make a stronger argument: in order to be adept liars – to balance gain (i.e. maximizing their own reward) and plausibility (i.e. maintaining a realistic lie) – humans calibrate their lies under the assumption that their partner is a rational, utility-maximizing agent. We develop an adversarial recursive Bayesian model that aims to formalize the behaviors of liars and lie detectors. We compare this model to (1) a model that does not perform theory of mind computations and (2) a model that has perfect knowledge of the opponent’s behavior. To test these models, we introduce a novel dyadic, stochastic game, allowing for quantitative measures of lies and lie detection. In a second experiment, we vary the ground truth probability. We find that our rational models qualitatively predict human lying and lie detecting behavior better than the non-rational model. Our findings suggest that humans control for the extremeness of their lies in a manner reflective of rational social inference. These findings provide a new paradigm and formal framework for nuanced quantitative analysis of the role of rationality and theory of mind in lying and lie detecting behavior.

Tugend als Wert: Christoph Halbig und Max Scheler im Vergleich

Virtue as Value: A Comparison between Christoph Halbig and Max SchelerThe aim of the following contribution is to compare the virtue conceptions of Christoph Halbig and Max Scheler in order to scrutinize their common positions and differences and thus to answer two questions: Firstly, is it true that Scheler's approach is based on the basic assumptions of the recursive theory of virtues, as Halbig asserts this? Secondly, can the virtues be defined as attitudes (Thomas Hurka, Christopher Halbig), or should they be conceived as qualities of the person (Max Scheler)? In addition, the author examines the connection of virtues and emotions more closely and shows that virtues can be regarded as a kind of transformers from the negative to the positive, because they fix the right way of dealing with negative emotions and because they switch over the negative basic mood into a positive and joyful one. The reflection of these questions is embedded in a constant reference to Aristotle's understanding of virtues.

Fast Algorithms of Line Outage Distribution Factors with Cascading Failures

The prominent role of cascading outages in recent blackouts has created a need in security applications for evaluating line outage distribution factors (LODFs) under the multiple-line outages. Two fast algorithms of LODFs with multiple-line outages are proposed in this paper. In the first method, the double-line outage LODFs are expressed in terms of single-line outage LODFs, and it can be extended to N-k (k≥2) contingencies without any complex matrix operation through the recursive theory. In the second method, a computationally efficient expression of LODFs based on power transfer distribution factors (PTDFs) in pre-contingency network is presented. Numerical simulations are carried out on IEEE 14 and 118-bus test systems. The results show that both methods can effectively improve the computation speed of multiple-line outage LODFs.

A note on Σ1-maximal models

Let T be a recursive theory in the language of first order Arithmetic. We prove that if T extends: (a) the scheme of parameter free Δ1-minimization (plus exp). or (b) the scheme of parameter free Π1-induction, then there are no Σ1-maximal models with respect to T. As a consequence, we obtain a new proof of an unpublished theorem of Jeff Paris stating that Σ1-maximal models with respect to IΔ0 + exp do not satisfy the scheme of Σ1-collection BΣ1.

On maximal theories

Let S be a recursive theory. Let a theory T* consisting of Σ1 sentences be called maximal (with respect to S) if T* is maximal consistent with S, i.e. there is no Σ1 sentence consistent with T* + S which is not in T*.A maximal theory with respect to IΔ0 was considered by Wilkie and Paris in [WP] in connection with the end-extension problem.Let us recall that IΔ0 is the fragment of Peano arithmetic consisting of the finite collection of algebraic axioms PA− together with the induction scheme restricted to bounded formulas.The main open problem concerning the end-extendability of models of IΔ0 is the following:(*) Does every model of IΔ0 + BΣ1 have a proper end-extension to a model of IΔ0?Here BΣ1 is the following collection scheme:where φ runs over bounded formulas and may contain parameters.It is well known(see [KP]) that if I is a proper initial segment of a model M of IΔ0, then I satisfies IΔ0 + BΣ1.For a wide discussion of the problem (*) see [WP]. Wilkie and Paris construct in [WP] a model M of IΔ0 + BΣ1 which has no proper end-extension to a model of IΔ0 under the assumption IΔ0 ⊢¬Δ0H (see [WP] for an explanation of this assumption). Their model M is a model of a maximal theory T* where S = IΔ0.Moreover, T*, which is the set Σ1(M) of all Σ1 sentences true in M, is not codable in M.