Dear all,

tomorrow we will have a LIRa session with Rohit Parikh.

Everyone is cordially invited!

Speaker: Rohit Parikh (City University of New York, Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center)

Date and Time: Friday, April 29th 2016, 13:00-14:30

Venue: ILLC Seminar Room F1.15, Science Park 107

Title: Influencing behavior by influencing beliefs.

Abstract. Agents act on the basis of their preferences and their beliefs. These include beliefs both about the world and about the actions of other agents. By influencing the beliefs of agents we can also influence what choices they make. The influence need not involve deception but may simply involve withholding or offering certain truths. We show that for a finite set of agents who know nothing about some proposition, an arbitrary state of information can be achieved by sending an n-tuple of signals, one to each agent. We consider how this will influence the actions of cautious (risk averse) or aggressive (risk loving) agents. We next consider the case of a candidate campaigning for election who seeks the approval of voters. What sorts of things can she say to increase their approval? And is it possible to increase approval while, at the same time losing votes? We show that it is always possible to increase net approval but that this can result in losing votes.

Hope to see you there!

The LIRa team