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When the Rich Do (Not) Trust the (Newly) Rich: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Positive Random Shocks in the Trust Game
Get PDFWe study behavior in a trust game where first-movers initially have a higher endowment than second-movers but the occurrence of a positive random shock can eliminate this inequality by increasing the endowment of the second-mover before the decision of the first-mover. We find that second-movers return less (i.e., they are less trustworthy) when they have a lower endowment than first-movers, compared with the case in which first and second-movers have the same endowment. In addition, second-movers who experience the positive shock return more than second-movers who have the same endowment as the first-mover from the outset. First-movers do not seem to anticipate this behavior from second-movers. They send less to second-movers who benefited from a shock. Our findings suggest that in addition to the distribution of the endowments the source of this distribution plays an important role in determining the levels of trust and trustworthiness
Development and Application of Self-Supervised Machine Learning for Smoke Plume and Active Fire Identification from the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality Datasets
Get PDFFire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality (FIREX-AQ) was a field campaign aimed at better understanding the impact of wildfires and agricultural fires on air quality and climate. The FIREX-AQ campaign took place in August 2019 and involved two aircraft and multiple coordinated satellite observations. This study applied and evaluated a self-supervised machine learning (ML) method for the active fire and smoke plume identification and tracking in the satellite and sub-orbital remote sensing datasets collected during the campaign. Our unique methodology combines remote sensing observations with different spatial and spectral resolutions. With as much as a 10% increase in agreement between our produced masks and high-certainty hand-labeled pixels, relative to evaluated operational products, the demonstrated approach successfully differentiates active fire pixels and smoke plumes from background imagery. This enables the generation of a per-instrument smoke and active fire mask product, as well as smoke and fire masks created from the fusion of selected data from independent instruments. This ML approach has the potential to enhance operational active wildfire monitoring systems and improve decision-making in air quality management through fast smoke plume identification and tracking and could improve climate impact studies through fusion data from independent instruments
What Makes a Theory of Consciousness Unscientific?
No full textTheories of consciousness have a long and controversial history. One well-known proposal — integrated information theory — has recently been labeled as ‘pseudoscience’, which has caused a heated open debate. Here we discuss the case and argue that the theory is indeed unscientific because its core claims are untestable even in principle
Dedekind-MacNeille and Related Completions: Subfitness, Regularity, and Booleanness
Get PDFCompletions play an important rôle for studying structure by supplying elements that in some sense “ought to be.” Among these, the Dedekind-MacNeille completion is of particular importance. In 1968 Janowitz provided necessary and sufficient conditions for it to be subfit or Boolean. Another natural separation axiom connected to these is regularity. We explore similar characterizations of when closely related completions are subfit, regular, or Boolean. We are mainly interested in the Bruns-Lakser, ideal, and canonical completions, which (unlike the Dedekind-MacNeille completion) satisfy stronger forms of distributivity. The first two are widely used in pointfree topology, while the latter is of crucial importance in the semantics of modal logic
American Collusion with the Republic of South Africa during the Angolan Civil War (1975-1990)
Get PDFBetween 1948 and 1994, the Republic of South Africa enacted one of the most brutal white supremacist regimes in recent history, known as Apartheid. Across the world, nations pressured South Africa to end its racist legislature through economic sanctions, limited diplomatic contact, and non-cooperation with the government. The United States was one such nation to decry Apartheid since it stood against American values of equality and freedom. This all changed when the Angolan Civil War broke out in 1975, and South Africa stood as the primary neighboring anti-communist interventionist in the conflict. This research explores exactly why and how the United States chose to compromise its values and support and cooperate with a regime they had previously detested. Over a fifteen-year span (1975–1990), the US Congress turned from divestment in Apartheid South Africa to actively funding and supplying their military campaigns in Angola. Through analyzing declassified government documents from the US Executive Branch and Central Intelligence Agency, a clear picture emerges demonstrating the gradual shift in American perceptions of the role of the United States as an anti-communist bastion first, and a warrior for international peace and justice second. Right after the United States ceased their materiel involvement in the war in 1990, they went right back to opposing Apartheid. This demonstrates that, during the last decade of the Cold War, America’s dominant efforts continued to be spent defeating communism, not upholding American values