Impartial observer theorem with ambiguity

Harsanyi's impartial observer must consider two types of lotteries: imaginary identity lotteries (“accidents of birth”) that she faces as herself and the real outcome lotteries (“life chances”) to be faced by the individuals she imagines becoming. If we maintain a distinction between identity and outcome lotteries, then Harsanyi-like axioms yield generalized utilitarianism, and allow us to accommodate concerns about different individuals' risk attitudes and concerns about fairness. Requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent as to which individual should face similar risks restricts her social welfare function, but still allows her to accommodate fairness. Requiring an impartial observer to be indifferent between identity and outcome lotteries, however, forces her to ignore both fairness and different risk attitudes, and yields a new axiomatization of Harsanyi's utilitarianism.

Introduction John Harsanyi, in a classic series of writings – most notably in Harsanyi (1955, 1977a) – uses expected utility theory to develop two axiomatizations of “weighted utilitarian” rules. I refer to these results as Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem and Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem. Both propositions are single-profile social choice results – that is, they assume that there is a single profile of individual preference orderings and a single social preference ordering of a set of social alternatives. The set of alternatives considered by Harsanyi consists of all the lotteries generated from a finite set of certain alternatives. In Harsanyi's Aggregation Theorem, Harsanyi assumes that individual and social preferences satisfy the expected utility axioms and that these preferences are represented by von Neumann–Morgenstern utility functions. With the addition of a Pareto condition, Harsanyi demonstrates that the social utility function is an affine combination of the individual utility functions – that is, social utility is a weighted sum of individual utilities once the origin of the social utility function is suitably normalized. In Harsanyi's Impartial Observer Theorem, Harsanyi introduces a hypothetical observer who determines a social ordering of the alternatives based on a sympathetic but impartial concern for the interests of all members of society. The observer is sympathetic because he imagines how he would evaluate an alternative if he were placed in, say, person i 's position, with i 's tastes and objective circumstances. Harsanyi supposes the impartial observer has preferences over these hypothetical alternatives that satisfy the expected utility axioms, and that these preferences are represented by a von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function.

John Harsanyi and John Rawls both used the veil of ignorance thought experiment to study the problem of choosing between alternative social arrangements. With his ‘impartial observer theorem’, Harsanyi tried to show that the veil of ignorance argument leads inevitably to utilitarianism, an argument criticized by Sen, Weymark and others. A quite different use of the veil-of-ignorance concept is found in evolutionary biology. In the cell-division process called meiosis, in which sexually reproducing organisms produce gametes, the chromosome number is halved; when meiosis is fair, each gene has only a fifty percent chance of making it into any gamete. This creates a Mendelian veil of ignorance, which has the effect of aligning the interests of all the genes in an organism. This paper shows how Harsanyi's version of the veil-of-ignorance argument can shed light on Mendelian genetics. There turns out to be an intriguing biological analogue of the impartial observer theorem that is immune from the Sen/Weymark objections to Harsanyi's original.

Existing eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques support people in interpreting AI advice. However, although previous work evaluates the users’ understanding of explanations, factors influencing the decision support are largely overlooked in the literature. This article addresses this gap by studying the impact of user uncertainty , AI correctness , and the interaction between AI uncertainty and explanation logic-styles for classification tasks. We conducted two separate studies: one requesting participants to recognize handwritten digits and one to classify the sentiment of reviews. To assess the decision making, we analyzed the task performance, agreement with the AI suggestion, and the user’s reliance on the XAI interface elements. Participants make their decision relying on three pieces of information in the XAI interface (image or text instance, AI prediction, and explanation). Participants were shown one explanation style (between-participants design) according to three styles of logical reasoning (inductive, deductive, and abductive). This allowed us to study how different levels of AI uncertainty influence the effectiveness of different explanation styles. The results show that user uncertainty and AI correctness on predictions significantly affected users’ classification decisions considering the analyzed metrics. In both domains (images and text), users relied mainly on the instance to decide. Users were usually overconfident about their choices, and this evidence was more pronounced for text. Furthermore, the inductive style explanations led to overreliance on the AI advice in both domains—it was the most persuasive, even when the AI was incorrect. The abductive and deductive styles have complex effects depending on the domain and the AI uncertainty levels.

Combination of geophysical and geotechnical data using belief functions: Assessment with numerical and laboratory data

This paper describes the results of a calibration of partial action factors in the new ISO 19906 Arctic Offshore Structures Standard. The work was scoped and directed by a panel of world experts in offshore Arctic engineering, constituted as ISO Technical Panel TP10 "Case studies and calibration". The calibration focuses on environmental action factors both for principal actions and for various environmental companion actions. The calibration is essentially a weighted risk-based optimization which targets three risk or exposure levels L1, L2 and L3 and which considers two limit states (ULS and ALS) as well as two basic sets of design check equations: a set I based on ISO 19902:2007 and a set II based on earlier suggestions in ISO/DIS 19906 and CAN/CSA-S471–04. It accounts for weighted combinations of all action effects in various proportions, for different resistance models, for different levels of action effect model uncertainties, for different levels of uncertainty, and for different mean action event occurrence rates. Weights used in the optimization were validated by the ISO panel TP10. Ice actions are regionalized on the basis of uncertainty characterization of extreme action effects (tails and extreme values). This is done with respect to both geographical region and type of structure. Regions with different ice action magnitudes can be considered together if their probabilistic description is similar. Four different calibration scenarios were considered for ice actions: a calibration of separate principal ice action factors for each combination of region and type of structure, a calibration of region-wide ice action factors, a calibration of one overall principal ice action factor, and the inclusion of ice actions in the larger group of all environmental actions. All four scenarios lead to reasonable action factors that are consistent with ice type and structure type. The multitude of environmental/ice companion factors in various environmental action combinations is reduced to just 4 companion action factors each of which is subsequently calibrated. Introduction The DIS version of ISO 19906 published early in 2009 contained normative clauses with respect to reliability, risk and consequences, but it did not provide definitive partial action factors for its limit states design framework. Accordingly, during 2009 a calibration was performed of the environmental action factors for exposure level L1 in order to ensure that the specified target reliability for each ULS and ALS action combination was achieved for circumstances that could reasonably be foreseen. A secondary objective was to also recommend calibrated environmental action factors for L2 and L3. A detailed report was published about the calibration in October 2009 (Maes, 2009). The present paper provides an overview of the analysis and the results of the calibration study. In addition to the above objectives, the report also provides detailed guidance on a recommended calibration method should the user of ISO 19906 wish to perform a site-specific or structure-specific calibration using a fully probabilistic approach. This objective is in itself quite important as ISO 19906 permits such an approach when the potential economic benefits of performing a site-specific calibration are likely to be considerable for large arctic offshore installations.

jergeas@ucalgary.caThe high level of technical complexity in mega projects as well as unstable market conditionin the oil and gas industry result in different levels of risk and uncertainty throughout variousphases of the project. Cost reimbursable and lump sum are two commonly used contractualarrangements that shift the project risks to the owner or the contractor respectively. Conven-tional approach to use a single contract type such as cost reimbursable or lump sum for thewhole project life cycle cannot address the dynamic and unpredictable environment of megaprojects in the oil and gas industry. Project cost and performance risks should be addressed byappropriate contract price arrangements during the project life cycle. A dynamic contractualframework should be structured for the major projects to optimize risk taking/sharing philoso-phy between contracting parties. This paper presents an alternative contractual arrangementfor oil and gas projects with respect to the different levels of uncertainty throughout thedevelopment and execution phases of the project. In particular, one of the major challengesof using this contractual framework has been addressed in this paper.

Effective project management requires reliable knowledge of cash required in different stages of project life cycle. Getting this knowledge is highly dependent on sophisticated consideration of project environment. Nature of projects and their environments are associated with uncertain conditions. In this paper, a new project cash flow assessment method based on project scheduling is proposed to foresee projects' cash flow in their different stages. Interval-valued fuzzy sets (IVFSs) are applied to address the uncertainty of activity durations and costs. First, an IVF-project scheduling method is proposed to calculate early start time and early finish time of activities under IVF-environment and based on that, a new method of cash flow assessment is introduced under IVF-environment. For the purpose of illustration, the proposed method is implemented to generate cash flow of main activities of a large-scale project. The results show the flexibility of presented assessment method in expressing uncertainty, in addition to its capability in risk evaluation. Furthermore, using alpha-cuts to address different levels of uncertainty and risk provides a comprehensive insight of the cash required in different stages of project life cycle under different levels of risk and uncertainty. Finally, the results are discussed and the proposed method is believed to be useful in the project evaluation.

As more GISs are used in many institutions and fields, the importance of keeping GIS database current is keenly recognized. To fulfill the requirement, a concept of dynamic update of GIS databases using a wide variety of data from multiple sources is proposed and a methodological framework is proposed to realize it. At first, a model to represent geo-objects with spatio- temporal uncertainties is proposed. The model can serve as a basis to handle geo-objects with different levels of spatio-temporal uncertainties especially in integrating data from multiple sources. Secondly, a method is proposed to estimate or reconstruct the status of relatively static geo-objects which only emerge and extinguish using observational data from multiple sources. Further extension of the method is required to estimate the status of more dynamic geo-objects. To merge geometric data with different levels of uncertainties, a method to estimate the `most probable' position of a line feature with a statistically sound basis is proposed. It is necessary to validate the effectiveness of this methodological framework using actual data of an urban object such as houses or structures.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Water distribution networks (WDNs) are essential systems that supply water for the most basic normal activities of our society. Their design is a complex problem because WDNs must function properly, permanently responding to consumer needs and taking into account many different technical and social issues. In recent decades, they have been extensively studied considering only a single demand setting. Therefore, the pipe sizes obtained using this approach are unreliable to address a wide spectrum of situations that WDNs face during their service life. Water demand is one of the most important sources of uncertainty for the design of WDNs. In fact, water demand is affected by different types of uncertainty (Walker et al., 2003). It can be the result of users' behavioural variability on a daily and seasonal scale (which can be classified as 'statistical uncertainty’) and can also be related to "social variability" due to the unpredictable nature of social, economic, and cultural dynamics (a more challenging level of uncertainty, 'scenario uncertainty').  'Statistical uncertainty’ can be addressed by extracting information from available data and making assumptions about the statistical parameters of water demand distribution (Magini et al., 2019). 'Scenario uncertainty’ may be handled through various approaches for creating plausible future demand changes i.e., likely assumptions about the future hypotheses on demand change that can concern the number of users, socio-economic situation, changes in technology, tariffs, cultural dynamics and users' behaviour (Cunha. 2023). Robust optimization models may embrace scenarios with different levels of demand uncertainty. It is essential to generate demand scenarios to develop robust WDNs, in multi-objective environments, including issues such as their reliability and the level of service they provide (Cunha et al., 2023). Thorough comparisons of the robustness of WDNs sized either using deterministic approaches or considering different levels of uncertainty are vital to understand the benefits of these last ones. This presentation will provide an overview of the key issues and challenges in defining robust WDNs to cope with multiple states of the world.   REFERENCES Cunha, M. C. (2023). Water and Environmental Systems Management Under Uncertainty: From Scenario Construction to Robust Solutions and Adaptation. Water Resources Management, 1–15 Cunha, M. C., Magini, R., & Marques, J. (2023).  Multi-objective optimization models for the design of water distribution networks by exploring scenario-based approaches. Water Resources Research, 59, e2023WR034867. https://doi. org/10.1029/2023WR034867 Magini, R., Boniforti, M. A., & Guercio, R. (2019). Generating scenarios of cross-correlated demands for modelling water distribution networks. Water (Switzerland), 11(3), 493. Walker, W. E., Harremoës, P., Rotmans, J., van der Sluijs, J. P., van Asselt, M. B. A., Janssen, P., & Krayer von Krauss, M. P. (2003). Defining Uncertainty: A Conceptual Basis for Uncertainty Management in Model-Based Decision Support. Integrated Assessment, 4(1), 5–17. Acknowledgments: The author thanks the Portuguese public agency “Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia” (FCT) the support of national funds under the project UIDB/ 00285/2020. 

This dissertation addresses an important empirical regularity that is still not very well understood: the same firm, in a given institutional context, simultaneously relies on different organizational arrangements to govern similar (or identical) transactions. I will follow The dissertation is composed of four chapters, each of which, providing different but complementary approaches to plural forms and serving as input for the next: the first half of this dissertation remains theoretical, while the second presents distinct qualitative empirical contributions on the theme. In the first chapter, I intend to verify what has been theorized about plural forms and how this field has evolved over time. I am especially concerned with the multiple theoretical explanations about the reasons why firms adopt plural forms, mainly because, to date, there is no consensus on the subject. To this end, I both perform some bibliometric analyses by surveying the ISI Web of Science platform and qualitatively review some significant papers on the subject. I find that the combination of asset specificity and multiple types of uncertainty underlies most of the explanations used over time and highlight that these could be interesting variables for a model predicting plural forms. In the second chapter, I am concerned with explaining the variety of plural form manifestations. However, in order to understand such variety, I build a theoretical model integrating asset specificity and uncertainty to predict plural and non-plural forms. Next, I emphasize that these arrangements are heterogeneous and, to keep my argumentation tractable, I define three categories of plural forms: 'between' (or the combination of different modalities of organizational arrangements), 'within' (or the combination oh hybrid arrangements) and 'combo' ( or the combination of 'between' and 'within'). My hypotheses relate each of these three types of plural forms to the different typologies of uncertainty (market, technological and performance assessment) that capture the essential dimensions of the concept. In the next two chapters, I empirically confornt my theretical model and hypotheses with qualitative empirical data concerning the Brazilian Agribusiness sector. In the third chapter, I seek to verify whether the combination of uncertainty and asset specificity predicts the emergence of plural forms. Moreover, I assess whether different levels of uncertainty and of asset specificity (combined) determine the selection of distinct organizational arrangements. To this end, I perform an embedded clinical case study at the Korin company, which produces and commercializes multiple organic products. I am concerned with the procurement of distinct inputs (regular and organic corn, regular soybeans, poultry and antibiotic-free eggs), both with plural and with non-plural forms. I find support for my model and for the idea that different levels of asset specificity and uncertainty push towards the adoption of distinct organizational arrangements. In the final chapter, I intend to empirically confront both my theoretical model (i.e., if asset specificity and uncertainty predict plural or non-plural forms) and my hypotheses (i.e., whether different types of high uncertainty, subject to a certain degree of asset specificity, push towards different types of plural forms). To this end, I survey the procurement of inputs by 24 companies operating in the Brazilian Agribusiness sector and procuring 11 different inputs by means of both plural and non-plural forms. I make use of a 4point likert scale questionnaire capturing my theoretical variables and perform some qualitative analyses. I find empirical support for my theoretical model and for some of my vi hypotheses concerning the diversity of plural forms, indicating a path for further empirical analyses.

Dynamic stability of a pipe conveying fluid with an uncertain computational model

Accidents of Birth, Life Chances and the Impartial Observer

Abstract. Introduction. Enterprises of Ukraine today are at a new stage of development, which is determined both by pandemic events and changes of a political, financial and global nature, which significantly complicates the management decisionmaking. It is clear that making a management decision is an important stage in the company's activity. Usually, a decision is made as one of many alternatives that are mutually exclusive. It is believed that the decision that allows to obtain the maximum profit is rational. However, today, this is not quite the case. The effective functioning of the economic system as a whole and its individual subjects is determined by a certain level of uncertainty. It is impossible to thoroughly study its behavior without considering this level. Purpose. The purpose of the article is to study the concepts of uncertainty, clarify the levels of uncertainty and determine the features of management decision-making at certain stages of uncertainty in modern dynamic conditions. Results. Management decision-making in conditions of uncertainty is a process that results in the selection of an alternative based on the complex interaction of analysis, forecasting, optimization, economic justification, etc., which occurs in conditions of complete or partial lack of information. The article updates issues related to the functioning of enterprises in conditions of risk and uncertainty. A brief analysis of the crisis situation in which our country and the world found itself was conducted, it was compared with other similar situations, and the main consequences of this situation were outlined. Questions are raised regarding the problems of identification and timely assessment of the level of uncertainty at which the company found itself, since its correct definition will allow effective decisions to be made for further development. The concept of uncertainty is studied, the reasons for its occurrence are analyzed. The main levels of uncertainty and their signs, which determine the peculiarities of decision-making at its individual stages in modern dynamic conditions, are outlined and clarified. An analysis of the features of management decision-making in crisis conditions was carried out. Directions of company behavior and decision-making at different levels of uncertainty are proposed. Conclusions. Underestimating the uncertainty factor leads to choosing a strategy that will not allow the company to protect itself from challenges and threats. After conducting the analysis, we note the dependence of the risk degree on the level of uncertainty. To help in choosing an alternative, it is advisable to use a modern mathematical apparatus. The effectiveness of management decision-making depends on the correct definition of the level and type of uncertainty.

In Harsanyi's impartial observer theorem, an impartial observer determines a social ordering of the lotteries on the set of social alternatives based on a sympathetic but impartial concern for all individuals in society. This ordering is derived from a more primitive ordering on the set of all extended lotteries. An extended lottery is a lottery which determines both the observer's personal identity and the social alternative. We establish a version of Harsanyi's theorem in which the observer is only required to have preferences on the extended lotteries in which there is an equal chance of being any person in society.