A computational theory of awareness and decision making

ABSTRACT

We exhibit a new computational-based definition of awareness, informally that our level of unawareness of an object is the amount of time needed to generate that object within a certain environment. We give several examples to show this notion matches our intuition in scenarios where one organizes, accesses and transfers information. We also give a formal process-independent definition of awareness based on Levin's universal enumeration.

We show the usefulness of computational awareness by showing how it relates to decision making, and how others can manipulate our decision making with appropriate advertising, in particular, we show connections to sponsored search and brand awareness. Understanding awareness can also help rate the effectiveness of various user interfaces designed to access information.

REFERENCES

• 1: {AE08} S. Athey and G. Ellison. Position auctions with consumer search. Working paper, 2008.
• 2: Gagan Aggarwal , Jon Feldman , S. Muthukrishnan , Martin Pál, Sponsored Search Auctions with Markovian Users, Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics, December 17-20, 2008, Shanghai, China [doi>10.1007/978-3-540-92185-1_68]
• 3: {CF08} K. Chung and L. Fortnow. Loopholes. Submitted, 2008.
• 4: Nick Craswell , Onno Zoeter , Michael Taylor , Bill Ramsey, An experimental comparison of click position-bias models, Proceedings of the international conference on Web search and web data mining, February 11-12, 2008, Palo Alto, California, USA [doi>10.1145/1341531.1341545]
• 5: R. Fagin , J. Y. Halpern, Belief, awareness, and limited reasoning, Artificial Intelligence, v.34 n.1, p.39-76, Dec. 1987 [doi>10.1016/0004-3702(87)90003-8]
• 6: {Hal} J. Halpern. Personal Communication.
• 7: {Hal01} J. Halpern. Alternative semantics for unawareness. Games and Economic Behavior, 37(2):321--339, November 2001.
• 8: {HM84} J. Halpern and Y. Moses. Knowledge and common knowledge in a distributed environment. ACM Press, New York, 1984.
• 9: David Kempe , Mohammad Mahdian, A Cascade Model for Externalities in Sponsored Search, Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Internet and Network Economics, December 17-20, 2008, Shanghai, China [doi>10.1007/978-3-540-92185-1_65]
• 10: {Lev73} L. Levin. Universal'nyǐe perebornyǐe zadachi (Universal search problems: in Russian). Problemy Peredachi Informatsii, 9(3):265--266, 1973. Corrected English translation in {?}.
• 11: {MR94} S. Modica and A. Rustichini. Awareness and partitional information structures. Theory and Decision, 37(1):107--124, July 1994.
• 12: {MR99} S. Modica and A. Rustichini. Unawareness and partitional information structures. Games and Economic Behavior, 27(2):265--298, May 1999.
• 13: {Var07} H. R. Varian. Position auctions. International Journal of Industrial Organization, 25(6):1163--1178, 2007.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.4 Knowledge Representation Formalisms and Methods

Additional Classification:
  F. Theory of Computation
  F.4 MATHEMATICAL LOGIC AND FORMAL LANGUAGES
      F.4.1 Mathematical Logic
          Subjects: Computational logic

  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.2 Types of Systems
          Subjects: Decision support (e.g., MIS)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Management, Theory