Showing papers on "Dilemma published in 1980"

Brown v. Board of Education and the Interest-Convergence Dilemma

Abstract: After Brown v. Board of Education was decided, Professor Herbert Wechsler questioned whether the Supreme Court’s decision could be justified on the basis of “neutral” principles. To him Brown arbitrarily traded the rights of whites not to associate with blacks in favor of the rights of blacks to associate with whites. In this Comment, Prof. Derrick Bell suggests that no conflict of interest actually existed; for a brief period, the interests of the races converged to make the Brown decision inevitable. More recent Supreme Court decisions, however, suggest to Professor Bell a growing divergence of interests that makes integration less feasible. He suggests the interest of blacks in quality education might now be better served by concentration on improving the quality of existing schools, whether desegregated or all-black.

Effective Choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma:

Abstract: This is a “primer” on how to play the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game effectively. Existing research approaches offer the participant limited help in understanding how to cope effectively with such interactions. To gain a deeper understanding of how to be effective in such a partially competitive and partially cooperative environment, a computer tournament was conducted for the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Decision rules were submitted by entrants who were recruited primarily from experts in game theory from a variety of disciplines: psychology, political science, economics, sociology, and mathematics. The results of the tournament demonstrate that there are subtle reasons for an individualistic pragmatist to cooperate as long as the other side does, to be somewhat for-giving, and to be optimistic about the other side's responsiveness.

More Effective Choice in the Prisoner's Dilemma

Abstract: This study reports and analyzes the results of the second round of the computer tournament for the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. The object is to gain a deeper understanding of how to perform well in such a setting. The 62 entrants were able to draw lessons from the results of the first round and were able to design their entries to take these lessons into account. The results of the second round demonstrate a number of subtle pitfalls which specific types of decision rules can encounter. The winning rule was once again TIT FOR TAT, the rule which cooperates on the first move and then does what the other player did on the previous move. The analysis of the results shows the value of not being the first to defect, of being somewhat forgiving, but also the importance of being provocable. An analysis of hypothetical alternative tournaments demonstrates the robustness of the results. THE TOURNAMENT APPROACH This article reports and analyzes the results of the second round of the Computer Tournament for the Prisoner's Dilemma. The object of the study is to gain a deeper understanding of how to perform well in such a Prisoner's Dilemma setting. The Prisoner's Dilemma game is justifiably famous as an elegant embodiment of the tension between individual rationality (reflected in the incentive of both sides to be selfish) and group rationality (reflected in the higher payoff to both sides for mutual cooperation). A typical

The prisoner's dilemma and dynamical systems associated to non-cooperative games1

Abstract: A new way of looking at repeated games is introduced which incorporates a bounded memory and rationality. In these terms, a resolution of the prisoner's dilemma is given. THE GOAL HERE is to give a natural way of introducing dynamics into game theory, or at least for non-cooperative games. Perhaps the main idea in this treatment of dynamics is the way the past is taken into account. We suppose for both mathematical and model theoretic considerations that the agents only keep some kind of summary or average of the past outcomes (or payoffs) in their memory. Decisions are based on this summary. This kind of modeling reflects the fact that there exist substantive bounds to the storing and organizing of information. We give an axiomatization of bounded memory and rationality, with both institutions and people in mind. On the other hand, the hypothesis used in this treatment leads to a tractable mathematics. Differential equations on function spaces which contain little geometry are replaced by a dynamics on a finite dimensional space. And yet dynamics takes the past into account as a kind of substitute for the theory of delay equations. The perspective in this paper is that of no finite horizon and no discounting of the future. There is always a tomorrow in our plans, and it is as important as today. Also there is a history, a beginning of history, but no end. Decisions are based on the effect of past actions of agents, not on promises or binding agreements. However communication is certainly not precluded. Solutions in our games are asymptotic solutions. To be important for us, they must meet the criteria of stability. This criterion is well-defined by virtue of the dynamical foundations of the models. The first section deals with an example, the repeated prisoner's dilemma, in the language of an arms race. Here a class of strategies, "good strategies," is given where the solution is Pareto optimal, stable, and a Nash equilibrium. Thus at least asymptotically, we have a rather robust resolution of the prisoner's dilemma. We show how good strategies with optimal solutions might bifurcate into strategies with the worst solutions.

Why policies succeed or fail

Abstract: The question of why policies fail once adopted, in the words of series editor Stuart Nagel, 'goes to the essence of public policy analysis'. The volume editors, in their extensive and valuable introduction, provide a review of previous efforts to answer aspects of this question and discuss the problems of definition and research political scientists encounter in dealing with it. Louise Comfort in her essay discusses how programme goals must sometimes simply be redifined. Edward Jennings explores the thesis that changes in welfare policy came about largely because of urban unrest. David O'Brien writes aboutt the dilemma confronting agencies caught between the conflicting aims of the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act. Theodore Anagnoson explores the problem of judging a policy that fails because Congress preferred to protect contrary political values.

The Education Dilemma: Policy Issues for Developing Countries in the 1980s

Abstract: Efficiency of investment in education The impact of education on employment, migration and fertility Allocation, equity and conflict in educational planning What can be done

Critical Theory: Is There Still Hope?.

Abstract: The first critical theorists were unable to give their notion of "substantive reason," as opposed to merely instrumental rationality, any real meaning. They ran aground on the old dilemma inherent in attempting to combine the ideals of freedom and reason, what might be called the "dilemma of democratic radicalism." A second generation, led by Habermas, claims to have resolved the dilemma with (1) a "systems analysis" demonstrating the persistent "irrationality" of capitalism, and (2) a "consensus theory of truth" capable of establishing "rational" norms. These attempts, it is argued here, do nothing to resolve the dilemma: the first lacks any empirically verifiable implications; the second is merely a restatement of the dilemma. Some of the possible reasons that critical theory has nevertheless commanded increasing attention among North American sociologists are suggested.

Dialogue design implications of task allocation between man and computer

Abstract: It is argued that the form of dialogue required in man-computer interaction is dependent upon the nature of the task and the allocation for task functions between man and computer. The paper examines the design implications of two task variables; task openness and task frequency. It concludes that one of man's essential roles in the operation of man-computer systems is to cope adaptively with the openness in the system and that one of the problems of current systems is that they infer a closed model of the task that may inhibit the user in his efforts to provide an adaptive contribution. The paper considers the kinds of constrained languages appropriate for closed tasks and the command languages necessary to make flexible and powerful use of computer facilities when the task is open. It raises the dilemma of the infrequent user with open-ended tasks who needs a complex formal language but is unwilling or unable to master it. A number of solutions are offered to this dilemma. Finally, a plea is made for th...

Inflation as Prisoner’s Dilemma

Abstract: (1980). Inflation as Prisoner’s Dilemma. Journal of Post Keynesian Economics: Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 459-481.

Civil commitment of the mentally ill

Abstract: To the Editor.— The article "New Developments in Civil Commitment of the Mentally Ill" by Williams (242:2307, 1979) comes as a breath of fresh air to an area of medicine once nearly suffocating from legalistic intrusion. The recapture of humanistic attitudes toward the patient and his illness, family, and physician in decriminalizing civil commitments are yearned-for developments that are long overdue. Active advocacy for the "medical model," stemming from Chief Justice Burger's opinion in theAddington vs Texascase, is indeed welcome news. When a psychiatrist is placed as an adversary to his patient, both suffer from the antitherapeutic (and antipsychiatric) position. We have been able to soften this dilemma for the patient somewhat by discussions before and after the event describing where we stand in the hearings. (Repetitive hearings may actually develop unexpected assets by forcing clarity and verbal facility in the therapist's systems of expressing diagnosis, prognosis, and

The role of the community school in rural transformation in developing countries.

Abstract: The literature on the role of the rural elementary school in community change is examined in this paper and certain socioeconomic factors which may be important preconditions of the decision of a community to accept or reject the school are discussed. The relationship of the community to the community school is also considered. Generally schools have responded to rather than led or initiated changes in rural communities. Commonly communities have accepted the school when they have perceived that it can be helpful in fulfilling their existed felt needs--usually for better economic and material well-being. Once the school has been accepted for 1 reason its potential for effecting changes in other ways through the younger generation is often also greater. It is questionable whether schools can succeed if they try to promote or sustain an entirely new culture in an indifferent or hostile environment. Throughout the developing world governments have modified their early expectations that rural schools on their own could be potent tools of socioeconomic change. Studies of the role of the school in rural areas have focused upon the school itself and tended to neglect the structure of the local community and its relationship to the larger society. The ways in which kinship operates affects a communitys conception of itself and its attitude towards and relationship with the school. A rural community in a poor country lacks mobility and means of communication. Where a community shares a national or mainstream culture in terms of language and religion its decisions regarding whether to send its children to school are relatively unproblematic for its identity for the school will mirror at least some aspects of its own culture. Where a community sees itself as a minority there will be problems. Rural communities which on rational appraisal of the economic situation hesitate to send their children to school pose a dilemma for governments anxious to integrate remote and "backward" areas into the nations economic life. Rural communities may be conceptualized on a continuum with respect to the degree to which they are more or less culturally cohesive more or less economically self-sufficient and more or less politically and administratively autonomous. Despite the commitment of governments and international agencies to the concept of community participation in school in the interests of rural improvement such schemes are unlikely to serve the interests of the entire community unless a genuine mutuality of interests exists among community members.

The Dilemma of Premature Bureaucratization in the New States of Africa: The Case of Nigeria

Abstract: The main thesis of this paper is that the apparent failures of bureaucracies in the new and developing states of Africa, far from being concomitants of dismaying negligence and outright incompetence, are, in fact, glaring manifestations of the dilemma of premature bureaucratization. It is impossible to speak of bureaucratization in African states without reference to those gradual, often times painful, but sustained and systematic separations of administrative processes from the Royal Households and personal loyalties of the nineteenth century Western Europe consequent upon tremendous societal changes that were occurring at the time. It was a process of injecting rationality and efficiency into administrative activities (Bendix, 1968: 208). This process was accentuated with the advent of the Scientific Management School of Organizational Theory, which appeared early in the twentieth century. From then onward, the prescriptions for modern administrative organizations have been oriented toward a classical conception of rationality. The scientific management school, led by Frederick W. Taylor (1911), was concerned among other things with the motivations of workers, whereas the administrative management school, led by Luther Gulick and L. Urwick (1937), made organization structure their central theme. Following the examples of these two schools of organizational theory, the literature on organization management has tended to emphasize a high degree of control and efficiency, achieved by means of an elaborate network of impersonal rules and order. Organization men are seen as possessing high instrumental capabilities for goal attainment. In other words, the organization men possess all the relevant information and knowledge as regards causes and effects. This element of perfect knowledge discounts possibilities of errors and uncertainties resulting from the indeterminate environment of the organization. Organizational rules, orders, and structures are both necessary and sufficient conditions for organizational efficiency.

"After College, What?": New Graduates and the Family Claim

Abstract: century confronted a dilemma made famous by Jane Addams in her autobiography, Twenty Years at Hull House, and her essay, "Filial Relations": when graduates returned home from college eager to apply their knowledge and skills to the larger social realm, parents, refusing to sanction the legitimacy of this "social claim," reasserted familial authority. The daughter, still regarded as a "family possession" despite her years at college, submitted, though she felt wronged. The result, said Addams, was an "unhappy woman," restless and miserable, "consumed by vain regrets and desires." ' In this essay, I shall examine the formative place of familial relationships in the after-college lives of educated women of this era, and shall suggest a modification of the "social" vs. "family" claim which Addams described.2 Although as Addams suggested, familial attachments often prevented individuals from using their higher education in a manner commensurate with the promise of the college years, the role of the family

American Dream, Global Nightmare: The Dilemma of U.S. Human Rights Policy

Abstract: This book began as a private odyssey, but ended somewhat to my surprise with a public destination.

The Cycle, Dilemma, and Expectations of the Black Administrator.

Abstract: It is high time for us to get ourselves together. The Black administrators have been talked about too long on the social and cocktail party circuit. Finally, people are attempting to deal with them in a formal, organized way, and I applaud that attempt. In talking about the Black administrator in white academia the joy, agony, expectations, and opportunities too many people expect too many things from the Black administrator in higher education, particularly in white-controlled institutions. At the same time, however, not many people know very much about the men and women who are expected to be these super niggers to so many people. The first phenomenon-the enormous expectation arises in large part from the second phenomenon a serious lack of information. It is not too much to say that the understanding of both phenomena is important to Black survival. Administration is in itself a topic of enormous concern and controversy. Students and parents, especially those who are Black and poor, have shaken off their resignation and apathy

The stranger as seer or voyeur: A dilemma of the peep-show theory of knowledge

Abstract: The belief that ‘the stranger’ (outsider, disinterested third party) sees things more clearly, i.e. is more “objective,” is seen to be a corner-stone of folk wisdom; underlying Western judicial thought and concepts of objectivity in the social sciences. The author raises the dilemma that both positivistic and humanistic sociologists accept this belief—suggesting 1) that it is a residue of positivism and a quest for certain knowledge, or 2) the possibility that ‘the stranger’ does gain deeper insight into group life than members. The paper examines the concept of the stranger, considering the aura of charisma that seems to have been attached to it in ordinary discourse as well as within the sociological dialogue. Two types of strangers are described: outsiders and enemies within. Finally, an attempt is made to examine the testimony of prominant strangers as they describe their marginal status and speculate on the ways that status has made them unusually perceptive observers of social phenomena.