Whitman argues that group selection is consistent with methodological individualism. He begins by defining a weak form of methodological individualism in which agents are not necessarily self-interested or rational and shows that this form of is consistent with Sober and Wilson’s model of group selection. However, Sober and Wilson’s group selection is also consistent with a methodological indiv...

SYSTEMATIC REVIEW SOURCE This is a rational clinical examination abstract, a regular segment of the Annals’ Evidence-Based Emergency Medicine (EBEM) series. Each segment features an abstract of a rational clinical examination review from the Journal of the American Medical Association and a commentary by an emergency physician knowledgeable in the subject area. The source for this rational clin...

In the Internet, ISPs adopt local routing polices to choose routes to achieve objectives such as reducing cost, increasing revenue, reducing latency, and avoiding congestion. Recently, systematic models (e.g., [3]) are proposed to study the stability of path-vector, policy-based interdomain routing. Gao and Rexford [2] prove the surprising result that the constraints on local routing policies d...

We propose the use of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) (Holland, 1992) to deal with the attribute selection task of referring expression generation. Evolutionary algorithms operate over a population of individuals (possible solutions for a problem) that evolve according to selection rules and genetic operators. The fitness function is a metric that evaluates each of the possible solutions, ensurin...

In part I of this work 10], a rational Lanczos algorithm was developed which led to rational inter-polants of dynamical systems. In this sequel, the important implementational issue of interpolation point selection is analyzed in detail. A residual expression is derived for the rational Lanczos algorithm and is used to govern the placement and type of the interpolation points. Algorithms are de...

We propose a practical algorithm of best rational approximation of a given order to a function in the Hardy H space on the unit circle or on the real line. The type approximation is proved to be equivalent with Blaschke form approximation. The algorithm is called Cyclic AFD as it adaptively selects one parameter during each cycle based on the Maximal Selection Principle used in adaptive Fourier...

Rational agents programmed in agent programming languages derive their choice of action from their beliefs and goals. One of the main benefits of such programming languages is that they facilitate a high-level and conceptually elegant specification of agent behaviour. Qualitative concepts alone, however, are not sufficient to specify that this behaviour is also nearly optimal, a quality typical...

In this paper, we will discuss the traveler’s dilemma, a problem famous for its ability to point out how theoretical results of game theory don’t always translate properly into real life applications. We explore the paradox of rational agents being outperformed by agents playing randomly and explain what is the problem with backward induction. We comment on the results obtained by [CGGH99] when...