Archive

Speaker: Rohit Parikh (Brooklyn College and CUNY Graduate Center)
Title: Knowledge from Inadvertant and Strategic Communication
Date:
Time: 15:30 - 17:30
Location: Room F1.15, ILLC, Science Park 107, Amsterdam

Abstract: A popular model in knowledge updating is where we receive true information from a trusted source. The work of Jan Plaza and others, and the AGM theory both use this paradigm. This is also the method used by Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis, and RP and Krasucki, in their “activist” versions of Aumann’s result. However, literature is rife with examples where information is revealed inadvertantly so that the one revealing information is not doing it deliberately but is tricked into it. We give examples from Shakespeare, Saki and Birbal. A second departure from the paradigm arises when the two sources do not share objectives, so that the Gricean assumption of cooperation does not hold. Nonetheless, some information can get across when the interests of the two parties overlap at least in part. We report on some theoretical work in this area, some of it falling under the heading of “cheap talk,” and offer a model.