A rational choice framework for collective behavior

Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017.

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Krafft, Peter M. (Peter Martin)
Other Authors: Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Alex "Sandy" Pentland.
Format: Thesis
Language:eng
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113931
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author Krafft, Peter M. (Peter Martin)
author2 Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Alex "Sandy" Pentland.
author_facet Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Alex "Sandy" Pentland.
Krafft, Peter M. (Peter Martin)
author_sort Krafft, Peter M. (Peter Martin)
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description Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1139312019-04-10T10:29:01Z A rational choice framework for collective behavior Krafft, Peter M. (Peter Martin) Joshua B. Tenenbaum and Alex "Sandy" Pentland. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Thesis: Ph. D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2017. This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. Includes bibliographical references (pages 137-146). As the world becomes increasingly digitally mediated, people can more and more easily form groups, teams, and communities around shared interests and goals. Yet there is a constant struggle across forms of social organization to maintain stability and coherency in the face of disparate individual experiences and agendas. When are collectives able to function and thrive despite these challenges? In this thesis I propose a theoretical framework for reasoning about collective intelligence--the ability of people to accomplish their shared goals together. A simple result from the literature on multiagent systems suggests that strong general collective intelligence in the form of "rational group agency" arises from three conditions: aligned utilities, accurate shared beliefs, and coordinated actions. However, achieving these conditions can be difficult, as evidenced by impossibility results related to each condition from the literature on social choice, belief aggregation, and distributed systems. The theoretical framework I propose serves as a point of inspiration to study how human groups address these difficulties. To this end, I develop computational models of facets of human collective intelligence, and test these models in specific case studies. The models I introduce suggest distributed Bayesian inference as a framework for understanding shared belief formation, and also show that people can overcome other difficult computational challenges associated with achieving rational group agency, including balancing the group "exploration versus exploitation dilemma" for information gathering and inferring levels of "common p-belief" to coordinate actions. by Peter M. Krafft. Ph. D. 2018-03-02T21:39:46Z 2018-03-02T21:39:46Z 2017 2017 Thesis http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113931 1023861296 eng MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582 146 pages application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Krafft, Peter M. (Peter Martin)
A rational choice framework for collective behavior
title A rational choice framework for collective behavior
title_full A rational choice framework for collective behavior
title_fullStr A rational choice framework for collective behavior
title_full_unstemmed A rational choice framework for collective behavior
title_short A rational choice framework for collective behavior
title_sort rational choice framework for collective behavior
topic Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
url http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113931
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