Cargando…

Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty

In its most basic form, decision-making can be viewed as a computational process that progressively eliminates alternatives, thereby reducing uncertainty. Such processes are generally costly, meaning that the amount of uncertainty that can be reduced is limited by the amount of available computation...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gottwald, Sebastian, Braun, Daniel A.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7514859/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33267089
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e21040375
_version_ 1783586685931487232
author Gottwald, Sebastian
Braun, Daniel A.
author_facet Gottwald, Sebastian
Braun, Daniel A.
author_sort Gottwald, Sebastian
collection PubMed
description In its most basic form, decision-making can be viewed as a computational process that progressively eliminates alternatives, thereby reducing uncertainty. Such processes are generally costly, meaning that the amount of uncertainty that can be reduced is limited by the amount of available computational resources. Here, we introduce the notion of elementary computation based on a fundamental principle for probability transfers that reduce uncertainty. Elementary computations can be considered as the inverse of Pigou–Dalton transfers applied to probability distributions, closely related to the concepts of majorization, T-transforms, and generalized entropies that induce a preorder on the space of probability distributions. Consequently, we can define resource cost functions that are order-preserving and therefore monotonic with respect to the uncertainty reduction. This leads to a comprehensive notion of decision-making processes with limited resources. Along the way, we prove several new results on majorization theory, as well as on entropy and divergence measures.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7514859
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher MDPI
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-75148592020-11-09 Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty Gottwald, Sebastian Braun, Daniel A. Entropy (Basel) Article In its most basic form, decision-making can be viewed as a computational process that progressively eliminates alternatives, thereby reducing uncertainty. Such processes are generally costly, meaning that the amount of uncertainty that can be reduced is limited by the amount of available computational resources. Here, we introduce the notion of elementary computation based on a fundamental principle for probability transfers that reduce uncertainty. Elementary computations can be considered as the inverse of Pigou–Dalton transfers applied to probability distributions, closely related to the concepts of majorization, T-transforms, and generalized entropies that induce a preorder on the space of probability distributions. Consequently, we can define resource cost functions that are order-preserving and therefore monotonic with respect to the uncertainty reduction. This leads to a comprehensive notion of decision-making processes with limited resources. Along the way, we prove several new results on majorization theory, as well as on entropy and divergence measures. MDPI 2019-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC7514859/ /pubmed/33267089 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e21040375 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Gottwald, Sebastian
Braun, Daniel A.
Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty
title Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty
title_full Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty
title_fullStr Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty
title_full_unstemmed Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty
title_short Bounded Rational Decision-Making from Elementary Computations That Reduce Uncertainty
title_sort bounded rational decision-making from elementary computations that reduce uncertainty
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7514859/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33267089
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e21040375
work_keys_str_mv AT gottwaldsebastian boundedrationaldecisionmakingfromelementarycomputationsthatreduceuncertainty
AT braundaniela boundedrationaldecisionmakingfromelementarycomputationsthatreduceuncertainty