Conference: A Crude Look at the Whole - Robert Axelrod

Speaker: Robert Axelrod Walgreen Professor for the Study of Human Understanding, University of Michigan Abstract: A Theory of Meaning Making sense of a novel situation is an important part of human and machine intelligence. This talk will present a Theory of Meaning that helps account for how sense making is done and how it might be optimized. The theory uses the concept of a schema, such as the balance schema that represents a bi-polar world. In the balance schema friends of friends are friends, and friends of enemies are enemies, and enemies of enemies are friends. The theory is based on an extension of information theory, and states that prior beliefs about the structure of relationships (schemas) and prior knowledge about some of these relationships often allows one to infer substantial additional knowledge based on only limited additional information. Put simply, schemas and prior beliefs allow one to give meaning to new information. The presentation will include some mathematical results about the statics and dynamics of sense making, and will raise a number of questions for future research on the Theory of Meaning. http://www.paralimes.ntu.edu.sg/