Shared Assumption Research Articles

How Can Deep Neural Networks Inform Theory in Psychological Science?

Over the last decade, deep neural networks (DNNs) have transformed the state of the art in artificial intelligence. In domains such as language production and reasoning, long considered uniquely human abilities, contemporary models have proven capable of strikingly human-like performance. However, in contrast to classical symbolic models, neural networks can be inscrutable even to their designers, making it unclear what significance, if any, they have for theories of human cognition. Two extreme reactions are common. Neural network enthusiasts argue that, because the inner workings of DNNs do not seem to resemble any of the traditional constructs of psychological or linguistic theory, their success renders these theories obsolete and motivates a radical paradigm shift. Neural network skeptics instead take this inability to interpret DNNs in psychological terms to mean that their success is irrelevant to psychological science. In this article, we review recent work that suggests that the internal mechanisms of DNNs can, in fact, be interpreted in the functional terms characteristic of psychological explanations. We argue that this undermines the shared assumption of both extremes and opens the door for DNNs to inform theories of cognition and its development.

Managing the business of sex: swinger club managers and sexual health promotion

The increased popularity of swinger clubs across the UK in the past two decades has not been met with commensurate public health initiatives or interventions that engage with the relationship between swinger clubs and sexual health. Consequently, the responsibility for sexual health promotion within these establishments largely depends on the discretion of club managers. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 10 managers from across the UK, the study suggests that the managers’ perceptions of the club-consumer relationship shape the nature of sexual health promotion. Three distinct approaches were evident in the research: those who perceive sexual health promotion as financially detrimental; those who see it as an individual rather than a collective club concern; and those who consider it as part of a broader social community responsibility. These findings highlighted an implicit beneficence of managers towards their customers; a shared assumption that an ideal consumer was heterosexual, partnered and in their forties; and differing perceptions of manager responsibility towards the sexual health of customers. The paper concludes by suggesting that the swinger community is a blind spot in sexual health discussion in the UK and that by talking to the managers of swinger clubs we can further develop our understanding of the area.

What Is Sexual Intimacy?

AbstractWhat is the role of intimacy in sex? The two culturally dominant views on this matter both share the implicit assumption that sex is genuinely intimate only when connected to romance, and hence that sex and intimacy stand in a contingent relationship: it is possible to have good sex without it. Liberals embrace this possibility and affirm the value of casual sex, while conservatives attempt to safeguard intimacy by insisting on romantic exclusivity. I reject their shared assumption and argue for a necessary connection between intimacy and sex, in that sexual activity as such aims at a specific form of intimacy, irrespective of whether it takes place in casual encounters or romantic relationships, and the difference between good and bad sex consists in whether this end is attained. To defend this view, I develop a general account of intimacy and apply it to isolate its specifically sexual form.

From Unitary Plurality to Plural Unity

The writings by Chinese historians and archeologists about the origins of Chinese civilization in the past century have transitioned from the old construct of “unitary plurality,” or a shared assumption of the mythical Huangdi (the Yellow Emperor) as the progenitor of the only civilization in the land of Huaxia (proto China) while admitting its coexistence with other heterogeneous but inferior cultures, to the new paradigm of “plural unity” or a consensus on Huaxia's interaction with all other cultures to form a unitary Chinese civilization that has lasted into the twenty-first century. Substantiated by the archeological findings of the twentieth century, this transition was ultimately propelled by three interweaving forces, namely, Chinese researchers' ideological undertakings, their factional struggle for academic supremacy, and commitment to local interest and identity.

Speeds of post-merger integration: The roles of chronos and kairos in M&As

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are major events in organizational development and the post-merger phase is widely recognised as being crucial for value creation. One of the most important decisions in this process is the speed of integration. However, despite a growing body of literature on this subject, conclusions remain a source of persistent equivocality. In fact, this debate has been dominated by diametrically opposed, and often highly normative, views advocating either fast or slow post-merger integration (PMI). One commonality within this discussion though, is the shared assumption that integration proceeds at a linear, constant rate, whatever the speed. We challenge this assumption.We undertook a 30-month, longitudinal study of two merging, not-for-profit, organisations. Using detailed and multiple sources of process data, we were able to identify and track periods of comparatively rapid and equally comparatively slower integration during the two-and-a-half- year PMI process. We thus offer a novel empirical demonstration of the changes in speed during the PMI process. We support this with a theoretical discussion using the temporal concepts of chronos and kairos. We analyse the determinants and mechanisms of changes in speed, asking why and how these variations occur. We call this mechanism the kairotic switch and discuss its theoretical and managerial uses and implications.

Automatic Model-Based Dataset Generation for High-Level Vision Tasks of Autonomous Driving in Haze Weather

Improving the performance of high-level computer vision tasks in adverse weather (e.g., haze) is highly critical for autonomous driving safety. However, collecting and annotating training sets for various high-level tasks in haze weather is expensive and time-consuming. To address this issue, we propose a novel haze generation model called HazeGEN by coupling the variational autoencoder (VAE) and the generative adversarial network (GAN) to automatically generate annotated datasets. The proposed HazeGEN leverages a shared latent space assumption based on an optimized encoder-decoder architecture, which guarantees high fidelity in the cross-domain image translations. To ensure that the generated image can truly facilitate high-level vision task performance, a semi-supervised learning strategy is developed for HazeGEN to efficiently learn the useful knowledge from both the real-world images (with unsupervised losses) and the synthetic images generated following the atmosphere scattering model (with supervised losses). Extensive experiments and ablation studies demonstrate that training the model with our generated haze dataset greatly improves accuracy in high-level tasks such as semantic segmentation and object detection. Furthermore, one important but under-exploited issue is investigated to find out whether the developed dataset can be a good substitute for the real ones. Results show that the generated dataset has the most similar performance to the real-world collected haze dataset on multiple challenging industrial scenarios compared with prior works.

Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination, by Vincent W. Lloyd

Black Dignity: The Struggle against Domination, by Vincent W. Lloyd

Realism, reckless states, and natural selection

Why is daredevil aggression like Russia’s war on Ukraine such an important factor in world politics? Neither offensive nor defensive realists give a fully satisfactory answer. This paper maintains that the problem lies in their shared assumption that states pursue security. Tracing neorealism’s roots in evolutionary economics, and hence indirectly in biological theories of natural selection, I argue that many policies are compatible with state survival. What is hard is surviving as a great power. States that rise to that rank, and remain there, behave as if they sought to maximize their influence, not their security. This Darwinian competition selects in favor of states with expansionist institutions and ideologies. Failing to recognize this phenomenon risks conferring a spurious legitimacy on imperialism. At the same time, neorealists have also committed a fallacy familiar to biologists: assuming that traits enhancing group fitness are selected even when they diminish fitness in intragroup competition. Whereas interstate competition selects in great powers for traits that promote influence-maximization, with the spread of democracy, intrastate competition increasingly selects for security-seeking. Yet the former process sometimes still dominates the latter, above all in authoritarian great powers.

Moods: from diffusiveness to dispositionality

ABSTRACT The view that moods are dispositions has recently fallen into disrepute. In this paper, we want to revitalise it by providing a new argument for it and by disarming an important objection against it. A shared assumption of our competitors (intentionalists about moods) is that moods are ‘diffuse’. First, we will provide reasons for thinking that existing intentionalist views do not in fact capture this distinctive feature of moods that distinguishes them from emotions. Second, we offer a dispositionalist alternative that we think does better. Finally, we disarm the objection that is responsible for dispositionalism’s bad press.

Validating the Assumptions of Population Adjustment: Application of Multilevel Network Meta-regression to a Network of Treatments for Plaque Psoriasis.

Network meta-analysis (NMA) and indirect comparisons combine aggregate data (AgD) from multiple studies on treatments of interest but may give biased estimates if study populations differ. Population adjustment methods such as multilevel network meta-regression (ML-NMR) aim to reduce bias by adjusting for differences in study populations using individual patient data (IPD) from 1 or more studies under the conditional constancy assumption. A shared effect modifier assumption may also be necessary for identifiability. This article aims to demonstrate how the assumptions made by ML-NMR can be assessed in practice to obtain reliable treatment effect estimates in a target population. We apply ML-NMR to a network of evidence on treatments for plaque psoriasis with a mix of IPD and AgD trials reporting ordered categorical outcomes. Relative treatment effects are estimated for each trial population and for 3 external target populations represented by a registry and 2 cohort studies. We examine residual heterogeneity and inconsistency and relax the shared effect modifier assumption for each covariate in turn. Estimated population-average treatment effects were similar across study populations, as differences in the distributions of effect modifiers were small. Better fit was achieved with ML-NMR than with NMA, and uncertainty was reduced by explaining within- and between-study variation. We found little evidence that the conditional constancy or shared effect modifier assumptions were invalid. ML-NMR extends the NMA framework and addresses issues with previous population adjustment approaches. It coherently synthesizes evidence from IPD and AgD studies in networks of any size while avoiding aggregation bias and noncollapsibility bias, allows for key assumptions to be assessed or relaxed, and can produce estimates relevant to a target population for decision-making. Multilevel network meta-regression (ML-NMR) extends the network meta-analysis framework to synthesize evidence from networks of studies providing individual patient data or aggregate data while adjusting for differences in effect modifiers between studies (population adjustment). We apply ML-NMR to a network of treatments for plaque psoriasis with ordered categorical outcomes.We demonstrate for the first time how ML-NMR allows key assumptions to be assessed. We check for violations of conditional constancy of relative effects (such as unobserved effect modifiers) through residual heterogeneity and inconsistency and the shared effect modifier assumption by relaxing this for each covariate in turn.Crucially for decision making, population-adjusted treatment effects can be produced in any relevant target population. We produce population-average estimates for 3 external target populations, represented by the PsoBest registry and the PROSPECT and Chiricozzi 2019 cohort studies.

Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity. Edited by Matthew Novenson

This volume publishes papers from a colloquium at the University of Edinburgh in April 2019 and is dedicated to the (now late) Larry W. Hurtado, to whose work many of the essays pay homage. After an introduction that reviews the achievements and new questions generated by (what Martin Hengel dubbed) the ‘New History of Religions school’, most of the remaining 12 essays pertain to the character and origins of the belief in Christ’s divinity. Hurtado’s piece offers autobiographical reflections on the origins of the new ‘Schule’ and responds briefly to some criticisms of his own proposals, especially those who think he gives insufficient attention to the formative role of Greek and Roman phenomena (Dieter Zeller, Yabro Collins, Michael Peppard, David Litwa). In a provocative essay, Matthew Novenson evaluates Jewish monotheism in light of Robert Parker’s proposal that there was a ‘universal polytheism’, with ‘a shared assumption that … at bottom the gods you worship are also the gods I do or might worship’ (Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 2017, p. 76). Against the usual view that Jews were exceptional, Novenson finds evidence that some identified their God with Zeus (or Dionysus or Helios) and that others assimilated gentile gods to their own tradition, by means of angelology, demonology, or following the method established by Euhemerus (Isis is Eve, Serapis is Joseph, and so forth).

POSC313 Network Meta-Interpolation; A Fast, Novel NMA Approach Accounting for Effect Modification

Effect modification (EM) causes bias in network meta-analyses (NMA) if EM varies across treatments in the network. Several methods have been developed, dealing with EM in NMAs when aggregated data (AgD) is available for at least one trial in the network. These methods typically make the shared effect modification assumption (SEMA) and disregard the available information the EM contains on the relative treatment effect (RTE) in the AgD trials. The SEMA is debatable, especially when comparing different classes of therapies.

Underside Couching in the Byzantine World

It has long been a shared assumption of textile specialists that the underside couching technique was used exclusively in Western Europe in the Middle Ages. England is the most renowned medieval center of gold embroidery in this technique, although sporadic examples are known from other centers, particularly in Italy. Works of gold embroidery that employ underside couching, no matter how Byzantine their stylistic appearance, have been attributed to Western workshops based on the principle that the Byzantines were ignorant of the technique. New information, however, should prompt a reevaluation of this assumption. Several examples that have recently come to light from the regions north of the Black Sea suggest that the Byzantines and their Slavic neighbors may have experimented with the underside couching technique in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.

A Philosophy of First Contact: Stanisław Lem and the Myth of Cognitive Universality

Within science fiction the topic of ‘first contact’ is a popular theme. How will an encounter with aliens unfold? Will we succeed in communicating with them? Although such questions are present in the background of many science fiction novels, they are not always explicitly dealt with and even if so, often in a poor way. In this article, I will introduce a typology of five dominant types of solutions to the problem of first contact in science fiction works. The first four solutions are the more dominant, but also the least interesting ones. There is a fifth category that addresses the question of first contact in a more interesting way, exemplified by the work of Stanisław Lem. This fifth option defines itself as a critique of the four previous categories, or of their shared assumption of what Lem (1967) has called ‘the myth of cognitive universality’. Lem is sceptical of the common optimism that first contact will always be successful. In books such as Solaris (1961), His Master’s Voice (1967) and Fiasco (1986), humanity makes first contact with an alien phenomenon, but fails to comprehend the phenomenon. Fundamentally, it will be argued that Lem’s work shows that in such an encounter we will typically not only lack the right answers to our questions, but that we also often lack the correct questions: we simply do not have the right categories or instruments to even recognize, let alone meaningfully interrogate, the alien phenomenon. The article ends with an exploration of the implications of Lem’s pessimism and whether it is the most plausible option for first contact. Moreover, the article will draw some lessons for philosophy of science, by exploring the parallel with the confrontation of novel or deviant phenomena in science. Lem’s work is helpful here because it succeeds in articulating what has not always been appreciated in the philosophy of science, namely that the right questions by which to interrogate scientific phenomena are not given, but that their articulation always requires work.

Lying by Omission: Experimental Studies

Leading theories of lying disagree on many points, but they agree on the following assumption: lying essentially involves asserting. The possibility of lying by omission poses a challenge to that shared assumption. To lie by omission is to lie by not asserting. This paper is the first experimental investigation of whether lying by omission is conceptually possible, according to our ordinary, shared lying concept. Overall, our results support, without proving, that it is not possible. Based on the present findings, we hypothesize that to the extent that people are tempted to call an omission a “lie,” it is for lack of a better word. When provided more flexibility to express themselves, almost no one in our studies counted an omission as a lie.

The Unity of Normative Thought

AbstractPractical cognitivism is the view that practical reason is our will, not an intellectual capacity whose exercises can influence those of our will. If practical reason is our will, thoughts about how I am to act have an essential tie to action. They are intentions. Thoughts about how others are to act, though, lack such a tie to action. They are beliefs, not intentions. How, then, can these thoughts form a unified class? I reject two answers which deny the differences between such thoughts about myself and those about others, one of which says that all such thoughts are intentions, the other that all are beliefs. I then reject a shared assumption which says that a class of those is unified only if all its elements are all of one type of thought. I instead argue that this class is unified even though some elements are intentions, others beliefs, because such beliefs depend on those intentions in various ways.

Assessing the performance of population adjustment methods for anchored indirect comparisons: A simulation study.

Standard network meta‐analysis and indirect comparisons combine aggregate data from multiple studies on treatments of interest, assuming that any factors that interact with treatment effects (effect modifiers) are balanced across populations. Population adjustment methods such as multilevel network meta‐regression (ML‐NMR), matching‐adjusted indirect comparison (MAIC), and simulated treatment comparison (STC) relax this assumption using individual patient data from one or more studies, and are becoming increasingly prevalent in health technology appraisals and the applied literature. Motivated by an applied example and two recent reviews of applications, we undertook an extensive simulation study to assess the performance of these methods in a range of scenarios under various failures of assumptions. We investigated the impact of varying sample size, missing effect modifiers, strength of effect modification and validity of the shared effect modifier assumption, validity of extrapolation and varying between‐study overlap, and different covariate distributions and correlations. ML‐NMR and STC performed similarly, eliminating bias when the requisite assumptions were met. Serious concerns are raised for MAIC, which performed poorly in nearly all simulation scenarios and may even increase bias compared with standard indirect comparisons. All methods incur bias when an effect modifier is missing, highlighting the necessity of careful selection of potential effect modifiers prior to analysis. When all effect modifiers are included, ML‐NMR and STC are robust techniques for population adjustment. ML‐NMR offers additional advantages over MAIC and STC, including extending to larger treatment networks and producing estimates in any target population, making this an attractive choice in a variety of scenarios.

MM-209: Assessing Efficacy via Indirect Comparison of Single-Agent Belantamab Mafodotin (Belamaf; GSK2857916) in DREAMM-2 Versus STORM or MAMMOTH Studies in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma (RRMM)

Context: Patients with RRMM who have progressed following standard-of-care (SoC) regimens have limited treatment options. Single-agent belamaf demonstrated deep and durable responses in heavily pretreated patients with RRMM in the DREAMM-2 primary analysis (NCT03525678; Lonial et al. Lancet Oncol 2020). Objective: To indirectly compare the efficacy of single-agent belamaf versus appropriate comparators in similar patient populations (received ≥3 prior lines of treatment, refractory to anti-CD38 therapies) in a post-hoc analysis of DREAMM-2. Methods: Following a systematic literature review, STORM Part 2 (NCT02336815) study of selinexor+dexamethasone (sel+dex) was identified as a feasible comparator. Matching-adjusted indirect comparisons (MAIC) were performed to investigate the efficacy of single-agent belamaf (DREAMM-2) versus sel+dex (STORM) by matching populations for all available, clinically-validated effect modifiers, and prognostic factors (Popat et al ASCO 2020 e10527; EHA 2020 EP1016). Belamaf efficacy vs SoC was estimated by Bucher indirect treatment comparison (ITC) of MAIC results with the relative efficacy of sel+dex versus SoC in a patient subset# from MAMMOTH (retrospective, natural history study of patients with RRMM following SoC), evaluated against a comparable STORM subset (Costa et al. Blood 2019). Results: MAIC and Bucher ITC analyses suggested significantly longer overall survival (OS) with single-agent belamaf versus sel+dex (hazard ratio [HR] [95% CI]: 0.60 [0.39–0.94]; p=0.025) and SoC (HR [95% CI]: 0.33 [0.17–0.63]; p < 0.001). MAIC results suggested significantly longer duration of response (DoR) for belamaf (HR [95% CI]: 0.34 [0.13–0.90]; p=0.030) compared with sel+dex. Overall response rates (odds ratio [97.5% CI]: 0.95 [0.5–1.83]; p=0.88), time to response (HR [95% CI]: 0.76 [0.46–1.23]; p=0.26), and progression-free survival (HR [95% CI]: 1.34 [0.89–2.00]; p=0.16) were not statistically different. Conclusions: MAIC indicated significant improvements in OS and DoR with single-agent belamaf versus sel+dex in heavily pretreated RRMM patients. Subject to the shared treatment effect modifiers assumption, Bucher ITC suggested significantly improved OS with belamaf versus SoC. Additional analyses will inform safety comparisons. Funding: GlaxoSmithKline (207145). Drug linker technology licensed from Seattle Genetics; monoclonal antibody produced using POTELLIGENT Technology licensed from BioWa. #Penta-exposed (bortezomib, carfilzomib, lenalidomide, pomalidomide, and daratumumab); refractory to ≥one proteasome inhibitor, one immunomodulatory agent, and daratumumab. Patients with RRMM who have progressed following standard-of-care (SoC) regimens have limited treatment options. Single-agent belamaf demonstrated deep and durable responses in heavily pretreated patients with RRMM in the DREAMM-2 primary analysis (NCT03525678; Lonial et al. Lancet Oncol 2020). To indirectly compare the efficacy of single-agent belamaf versus appropriate comparators in similar patient populations (received ≥3 prior lines of treatment, refractory to anti-CD38 therapies) in a post-hoc analysis of DREAMM-2. Following a systematic literature review, STORM Part 2 (NCT02336815) study of selinexor+dexamethasone (sel+dex) was identified as a feasible comparator. Matching-adjusted indirect comparisons (MAIC) were performed to investigate the efficacy of single-agent belamaf (DREAMM-2) versus sel+dex (STORM) by matching populations for all available, clinically-validated effect modifiers, and prognostic factors (Popat et al ASCO 2020 e10527; EHA 2020 EP1016). Belamaf efficacy vs SoC was estimated by Bucher indirect treatment comparison (ITC) of MAIC results with the relative efficacy of sel+dex versus SoC in a patient subset# from MAMMOTH (retrospective, natural history study of patients with RRMM following SoC), evaluated against a comparable STORM subset (Costa et al. Blood 2019). MAIC and Bucher ITC analyses suggested significantly longer overall survival (OS) with single-agent belamaf versus sel+dex (hazard ratio [HR] [95% CI]: 0.60 [0.39–0.94]; p=0.025) and SoC (HR [95% CI]: 0.33 [0.17–0.63]; p < 0.001). MAIC results suggested significantly longer duration of response (DoR) for belamaf (HR [95% CI]: 0.34 [0.13–0.90]; p=0.030) compared with sel+dex. Overall response rates (odds ratio [97.5% CI]: 0.95 [0.5–1.83]; p=0.88), time to response (HR [95% CI]: 0.76 [0.46–1.23]; p=0.26), and progression-free survival (HR [95% CI]: 1.34 [0.89–2.00]; p=0.16) were not statistically different. MAIC indicated significant improvements in OS and DoR with single-agent belamaf versus sel+dex in heavily pretreated RRMM patients. Subject to the shared treatment effect modifiers assumption, Bucher ITC suggested significantly improved OS with belamaf versus SoC. Additional analyses will inform safety comparisons.

When Contract’s Basic Assumptions Fail: From Rose 2d to COVID-19

This Article explores the normative foundations of the rules governing mutual mistake, impossibility, impracticability, and frustration and studies their doctrinal implications. These familiar doctrines, which make contracts voidable or excusable whenever they are grounded on a shared basic assumption that failed, puzzle commentators and courts. We claim that the key to properly understanding their role and interpret their doctrinal elements lies in appreciating the core principles of a genuinely liberal – that is: autonomy-enhancing – contract law. The rules that delineate the scope of these doctrines are guided by liberal contract’s commitment to ensure that promisors’ future selves are not unacceptably encumbered. The rules that regulate these doctrines, in turn, follow liberal contract’s principles of proactive facilitation and relational justice. Together, these rules exemplify both the power of the liberal foundation of modern contract law and the subtlety of its doctrinal workings.

Modern, yet “full of forms, figures, shapes, objects”

With over four hundred years separating today’s millennials from Shakespeare’s plays, it is little wonder that students and teachers have pegged Elizabethan English as difficult—if not impossible—to understand. Generally, the motivation for students who seek such resources or for teachers who furnish them comes from a shared assumption that Shakespeare’s language is indecipherable to today’s audiences—or, just too difficult to grasp. There are even some students (and, teachers) who operate under the false premise that Shakespeare’s plays are composed in Old English, a language that thrived centuries prior to Shakespeare’s earliest works. To make visible the troubling implications of so-called “modern” or “contemporary” translations of Shakespeare’s works, I will look to Shakespeare’s most academic play, Love’s Labour’s Lost, to propose how today’s students are complicit in dismissing Shakespeare for his words as much as audiences of Shakespeare’s time laughed away Holofernes. In addition to surveying a critical history of supplementary resources designed to ease the burden of Shakespeare’s language, an analysis of Holofernes’ stage presence will offer a natural opportunity to explore what happens if we willingly replace Shakespeare’s English for English that is perceived as easier—or, according to some outlets, even truer. This article sets out to complicate the facility and pervasiveness of such contemporary translations by calling attention to the language lessons Holofernes teaches through his folly, revealing that such work is, “not generous, not gentle, not humble” (Love’s Labour’s V.ii.617).