We revisit the neutrality requirement in social choice theory. We propose a weakening of the standard neutrality condition, by allowing for different procedural treatment for different alternatives while entailing that alternatives enjoy same ex-ante possibility to be chosen. We compare these two conditions theoretically and computationally. Furthermore, we explore social choice problems in whi...

This paper focuses on the dilemma that humanitarian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) face in their efforts to gain access to populations caught up in current wars. Narrow and broad concepts of humanitarian protection are discussed and it is argued that despite high levels of professionalism, the space for humanitarian action has constricted sharply since the events surrounding the attacks ...

Biological systems, from macromolecules to whole organisms, are robust if they continue to function, survive, or reproduce when faced with mutations, environmental change, and internal noise. I focus here on biological systems that are robust to mutations and ask whether such systems are more or less evolvable, in the sense that they can acquire novel properties. The more robust a system is, th...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been seeking public comments about net neutrality. It is found that a great majority of these comments were written from format letters potentially provided by several campaign groups. Principle Components Analysis (PCA) was first used to visualize the data set and it is found that the data are obviously clustered. Based on this fact, several clas...

Communications regulators over the next decade will spend increasing time on conflicts between the interests of broadband providers and the public’s interest in competitive innovation environment on the internet. As the policy questions this conflict raises are basic to communications policy, they are likely to appear in many different forms. So far, the first major appearance has come in the “...

SFI WORKING PAPER: 1998-10-089 SFI Working Papers contain accounts of scientific work of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Santa Fe Institute. We accept papers intended for publication in peer-reviewed journals or proceedings volumes, but not papers that have already appeared in print. Except for papers by our external faculty, papers must be based on work done at ...

The Internet serves as ubiquitous, prompt source of information in our society. Due to the giant amount of information, the access to the information relies on information processing mechanisms as implemented in search engines, product recommendation systems, or online social networks. As a result of the engineered preprocessing mechanism, the retrieved information is biased and does not repres...

Under strict net neutrality Internet service providers (ISPs) are required to carry data without any differentiation and at no cost to the content provider. We provide a simple framework with a monopoly ISP to evaluate different net neutrality rules. Content differs in its sensitivity to delay. Content providers can use congestion control techniques to reduce delay for their content, but do not...