Policy information or information policy? information types in economics and policy

The economic distinction between technological and market information offers a useful guide to the relationship between information and policy. The two types create different problems for markets and require different emphases in public policy, focusing on either the production or the distribution of information. The interaction of the two types creates familiar policy problems such as underinvestment in information, adverse selection and moral hazard. Indicators and other means of dealing with such problems constitute policies and demonstrate not only the importance of information for policy but the necessity of policy for information. where he is also affiliated with the Environmental Studies Center. His primary research interests are in public policy, expecially environmental policy and science and technology policy, and in the relationship between policy, economics and information.     

Real-time sharing of gaze data between multiple eye trackers–evaluation,tools, and advice

Technological advancements in combination with significant reductions in price have made it practically feasible to run experiments with multiple eye trackers. This enables new types of experiments with simultaneous recordings of eye movement data from several participants, which is of interest for researchers in, e.g., social and educational psychology. The Lund University Humanities Laboratory recently acquired 25 remote eye trackers, which are connected over a local wireless network. As a first step toward running experiments with this setup, demanding situations with real time sharing of gaze data were investigated in terms of network performance as well as clock and screen synchronization. Results show that data can be shared with a sufficiently low packet loss (0.1 %) and latency (M = 3 ms, M A D = 2 ms) across 8 eye trackers at a rate of 60 Hz. For a similar performance using 24 computers, the send rate needs to be reduced to 20 Hz. To help researchers conduct similar measurements on their own multi-eye-tracker setup, open source software written in Python and PsychoPy are provided. Part of the software contains a minimal working example to help researchers kick-start experiments with two or more eye trackers.     

Structural and functional information—an evolutionary approach to pragmatic information

The paper starts with a critics of the potential information which is related to the statistical entropy. In order to include the syntactic and semantic aspects of information, we propose a distinction between structural and functional information, instead. Structural information represents the structural determination of a system state, it measures the content of information, as given by the material structure. Functional information, on the other hand, represents the operational closure of the system, it could be e.g. an algorithm which activates and interprets the existing structural information.

From an evolutionary point of view, pragmatic information is generated by an interplay of structural and functional information. This leads to a new insight into the concept of pragmatic information, which is not an invariant of evolution, but must be steadily re‐generated.

The active role of information in a self‐organization process is demonstrated in a model of artificial agents. It is shown by means of computer simulations that the feedback of already existing information on the generation of new information performs analogies to the creation of a collective memory.     

Information theory,evolutionary computation,and Dembski’s “complex specified information”

Intelligent design advocate William Dembski has introduced a measure of information called “complex specified information”, or CSI. He claims that CSI is a reliable marker of design by intelligent agents. He puts forth a “Law of Conservation of Information” which states that chance and natural laws are incapable of generating CSI. In particular, CSI cannot be generated by evolutionary computation. Dembski asserts that CSI is present in intelligent causes and in the flagellum of Escherichia coli, and concludes that neither have natural explanations. In this paper, we examine Dembski’s claims, point out significant errors in his reasoning, and conclude that there is no reason to accept his assertions.     

Want information? How mood and performance perceptions alter the perceived value of information and influence information-seeking behaviors

Currently, it is not well understood when positive and negative moods would encourage and discourage the process of identifying and seeking out valuable information. Building upon the mood-as-a-resource hypothesis and the mood-behavior-model, this project reconciles mixed findings by investigating and finding support for the hypothesis that positive moods encourage seeking instrumental information when performance is perceived to be weak; whereas negative moods encourage it when performance is perceived to be strong. These effects are due to mood influencing the perceived value (i.e. instrumentality) of information and cannot be explained by arguing that mood altered the affective costs/benefits associated with the information. Overall, these results indicate that positive moods may help individuals acquire information to resolve an existing problem, whereas negative moods may help individuals acquire information when there is no apparent problem.     

Fodor's information semantics between naturalism and mentalism∗

Political theorists have begun to re-examine claims by indigenous peoples to lands which were expropriated in the course of sixteenth-eighteenth century European expansionism. In Australia, these issues have captured public attention as they emerged in two central High Court cases: Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996), which recognize pre-existing common law rights of native title held by indigenous people prior to European contact and, in some cases, continue to be held to the present day. The theoretical significance of the two Australian cases is examined and the links drawn out between the current debate about Aboriginal land rights in Australia and the wider philosophical debate about indigenous land rights, property rights, and indigenous justice as characterized by Jeremy Waldron and James Tully. Justice towards indigenous groups requires substantial acknowledgement and recognition of the values and institutions of the relevant indigenous group; yet, these values and institutions may not readily fall under the framework of existing state structures. Attempts to redress injustice towards indigenous groups which do not question the justice of existing state institutions will therefore prove to be inadequate responses to indigenous peoples' demands for substantive justice.     

What shapes the probability weighting function? Influence of affect,numeric competencies,and information formats

Research suggests that people are less sensitive to variations in probability in affect‐rich compared with affect‐poor risky choices. This effect is modeled by a more curved probability weighting function (PWF). We investigated the role of different numeric competencies and the effectiveness of several intervention strategies to decrease this affect‐laden probability distortion. In two experiments, we manipulated the affect‐richness of a risky prospect. In Experiment 1 (N = 467), we measured numeracy and symbolic‐number mapping (i.e., the ability to accurately map numbers onto their underlying magnitudes). The affect‐based manipulations showed the expected effects only in participants with more accurate symbolic‐number mapping, who also reported more differentiated emotional reactions to the various probabilities and displayed more linear PWFs. Instructions to focus on the probability information decreased probability distortion and revealed differences in the use of probability information on the basis of symbolic‐number mapping ability. In Experiment 2 (N = 417), we manipulated the format in which the probability information was presented: using visual aids versus no visual aids and a positive frame (e.g., one person wins) versus combined frame (e.g., one person wins and 99 persons do not win). The affect‐based manipulations had no effect but both the visual aids and combined frame decreased probability distortion. Whereas affect‐richness manipulations require further research, results suggest that probability weighting is at least partially driven by the inability to translate numerical information into meaningful and well‐calibrated affective intuitions. Visual aids and simple framing manipulations designed to calibrate these intuitions can help decision makers extract the gist and increase sensitivity to probabilities.     

Attending to emotions is sharing of emotions – A multidisciplinary perspective to social attention and emotional sharing. Comment on Zahavi and Rochat (2015)

Attending to bodily expression of emotions plays an important role in the human social world. It provides subjects with valuable information, constructs opportunities to act, and importantly, as Daniel Stern pointed out, it is involved in the constitution of the direct experience of others. Whether mutual or one-sided, these direct experiences, in which the subject can share the perspectives and attitudes of other subjects, always comprise one person’s bodily expression of emotions that is available to another person. In this article I suggest that attending to other subjects’ expressed emotions involves a special (social) mode of attention and emotional sharing. This suggestion challenges Dan Zahavi’s view that confines the sharing of emotions solely to reciprocal experiences.     

Storage and retrieval of serial‐order information

In this paper I will first review some seminal work by Conrad on the storage and retrieval of serial‐order information which is still very relevant today. Then I will discuss the TODAM (theory of distributed associative memory) approach to serial‐order effects. I will compare the three TODAM serial‐order models (the chaining model, the chunking model and the power‐set model; Murdock, 1995) but concentrate on the power set model. Its original problems can be solved, but a revised and augmented version has some new problems. This paper is more of a progress report than a finished product, so the reader should be prepared to follow the twists and turns of the argument.     

Where did you go wrong? Errors, partial errors, and the nature of human information processing

Human performance is seldom perfect, and even when an overt response is correct it may be accompanied by partial-error activity that does not achieve the level of a complete incorrect response. Partial errors can be detected in measures of the lateralized readiness potential, of the electromyogram, and of response force. Correct responses accompanied by partial errors tend to have slower reaction times than “clean” correct responses (because of response competition), and condition differences in reaction time can, on some occasions, be explained in terms of differences in the incidence of partial errors. In two-choice reaction time tasks, partial errors are more frequent when the imperative stimulus contains information that favors both responses, than when it contains information that favors only one response. The non-random nature of partial errors supports the inference that partial information about the stimulus is used to guide responses. A similar inference is supported by the observation that, in hybrid choice Go/No-go tasks, the kinds of partial errors that follow a No-go stimulus represent activation of the response that would have been correct had the stimulus been a Go stimulus. Finally, we note that the human processing system is capable of monitoring its own behavior and of initiating remedial actions if necessary. The activity of an error-detection system, as revealed by measures of the error-related negativity, is related to the degree to which responses are slowed after errors.     

Farewell to multiculturalism? sharing values and identities in societies of immigration

For critics of multiculturalism, societies of immigration need to strengthen cohesion based on shared democratic values and national identities. This article suggests that democratic values are not a sufficient basis for political cohesion, because they are universal and cannot identify a particular polity toward which one ought to be loyal. Immigrants are always asked to accept a package deal that includes not only democratic values, but also the hegemony of established national cultures. Shared democratic values may also not be strictly necessary for political cohesion. They must be embedded in political institutions and ought to be respected by office holders, democratic politicians, and parties, but democratic states must tolerate that most citizens appear to hold illiberal beliefs including illiberal attitudes toward immigrants. Immigrants are then often asked to profess a commitment to values that citizens do not widely share. If political loyalty, cannot be exclusively based on democratic values, must societies of immigration then ask newcomers to assimilate into a shared national identity? The article argues that this requires, first, a self-transformation of these identities in response to immigration. Instead of regarding shared identities as overriding all other affiliations, democratic states should see them as overarching and overlapping. Different attitudes toward dual nationality illustrate the implication of this suggestion. The article concludes by proposing a catalyst model of multiculturalism as an alternative to the metaphors of the melting pot, the salad bowl, and the mosaic.     

Do confusing information and egocentric instructions influence perception?

In an investigation of psychological differentiation, Witkin's personality dimension, 12 field-dependent and 12 field-independent students were selected from a population of college men in summerschool based on their Embedded Figures Test scores. They were assigned to conditions, given egocentric or gravitational instructions, and provided clarified or obscuring feedback about their performance on the Rod and Frame Test. Although instructions had no effect, students with clarified feedback performed better than those whose feedback was confusing. Field-independent men had less difficulty with the confusing feedback than did field-dependent men.     

Ockham’s razor and reasoning about information flow

What is the minimal algebraic structure to reason about information flow? Do we really need the full power of Boolean algebras with co-closure and de Morgan dual operators? How much can we weaken and still be able to reason about multi-agent scenarios in a tidy compositional way? This paper provides some answers.     

Accuracy and performance of the state-based Φ and liveliness measures of information integration

A number of people have suggested that there is a link between information integration and consciousness, and a number of algorithms for calculating information integration have been put forward. The most recent of these is Balduzzi and Tononi’s state-based Φ algorithm, which has factorial dependencies that severely limit the number of neurons that can be analyzed. To address this issue an alternative state-based measure known as liveliness has been developed, which uses the causal relationships between neurons to identify the areas of maximum information integration. This paper outlines the state-based Φ and liveliness algorithms and sets out a number of test networks that were used to compare their accuracy and performance. The results show that liveliness is a reasonable approximation to state-based Φ for some network topologies, and it has a much more scalable performance than state-based Φ.     

Attention network test — The impact of social information on executive control,alerting and orienting

According to the attention network approach, attention is best understood in terms of three functionally and neuroanatomically distinct networks — alerting, orienting, and executive attention. An important question is whether social information influences the efficiency of these networks. Using the same structure as the Attentional Network Test (ANT), we developed a variant of this test to examine attentional effects in response to stimuli with and without social-cognitive content. Fish, drawings or photographs of faces looking to the left or right were used as target stimuli. Results collected from twenty-four university students showed that photographs of faces positively affected attentional orienting and executive control, whereas reduced the efficiency of alerting, as compared to both face drawings and fish. These results support the status of human faces as a special class of visual stimuli for the human attentional systems.     

Effects of discriminability and irrelevant information on absolute judgments’

The effects of irrelevant information (0, 1, 2, or 3 bits stimulus) on absolute judgments of size were measured at different levels of discrimination difficulty. The stimuli were 7 small circular spots of light of different sizes, selected from an eaual-discriminability scole, and arranged into 6 pairs that represented different levels of stimulus dissimilarity. Three of the pairs comprised a low-dissimilarity (LD) subgrouping in which different lepels of dissimilarity and discriminability were confounded, whereas the remaining three pairs comprised a high-dissimilarity (HD) subgrouping in which different levels of dissimilarity occurred at a single high level of discriminability. Different colors were used to provide the four levels of irrelevant information; 240 Ss (10 in each of the 24 experimental conditions) made absolute judgments of size under the classical procedure for the method of single stimuli. Separate analyses of errors, reaction times, and rates of information transmission indicated that irrelevant information had an increasingly detrimental effect on absolute judgments as discrimination difficulty was increased (in the LD subgroup), but essentially no effect where discriminations were easily modefin the HD subgroup).