Generative Rationality

In this paper we contrast bounded and ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Ecological approaches to rationality build on the idea of humans as “intuitive statisticians” while we argue for a more generative conception of humans as “probing organisms.” We first highlight how ecological rationality’s focus on cues and statistics is problematic for two reasons: (a) the problem of cue salience, and (b) the problem of cue novelty in teeming environments. We highlight these problems by revisiting the statistical and cue-based logic that underlies ecological rationality, by discussing its origins in the field of psychophysics (e.g., signal detection, just-noticeable-differences). We work through the most popular experiment in the ecological rationality literature—the city-size task—to illustrate how psychophysical assumptions have been linked to ecological rationality. After highlighting these problems, we contrast ecological rationality with a proposed alternative, generative rationality. Generative rationality builds on biology, in contrast to ecological rationality’s focus on statistics. We argue that in uncertain environments cues are rarely given and available for statistical processing. Environments “teem” with indefinite cues, meanings and potential objects, the salience or relevance of which is scarcely obvious based on their statistical or physical properties. We focus on organism-specificity and organism-directed probing that shapes perception and judgment. Generative rationality departs from existing bounded and ecological approaches in that cue salience is given by top-down factors rather than the bottom-up, statistical or physical properties. A central premise of generative rationality is that cues in teeming environments are noticed or recognized when they serve as cues-for-something, requiring what might be called a “cue-to-clue” transformation. Awareness toward relevant cues needs to be actively cultivated or “grown.” Thus we argue that perception might more productively be seen as the presentation of cues and objects rather than their representation. The generative approach not only applies to seemingly mundane organism (including human) interactions with their environments—as well as organism-object relationships and their embodied nature—but also has significant implications for understanding the emergence of novelty in economic and other uncertain settings. We conclude with a discussion of how our arguments link with—but modify—Herbert Simon’s popular “scissor” metaphor, as it applies to bounded rationality and its implications for decision making in uncertain, teeming environments.

Training Decay Selection for Usability Validation: Pilot Study Methodology and Results for an FDA Research Grant

As medical devices become more technologically advanced, patients risk forgetting their training and missing critical steps. Existing literature explores ways to train patients on medical devices but does not quantify how long information is retained, which is essential for valid medical device testing before approval. The aim of the research presented is to validate a robust method of quantifying training decay research across multiple periods. Some participants were trained on an insulin pump and assigned to decay periods of one hour, one day, or one week. Additionally, an untrained cohort represented a theoretical maximum decay. Although results are not statistically significant due to a small sample size, task performance shows possible differences between time points and task types. Improvements and considerations translating this pilot study into a more extensive main study are also discussed.

Abstract P182: Workforce Reforms And Task Sharing To Improve Hypertension Treatment Coverage In India

Background: Most patients with hypertension in India are not treated, in part due to insufficient healthcare providers. Objective: Estimate the current hypertension treatment capacity of the public healthcare system in India and simulate the effects of workforce system and treatment reforms designed to increase coverage of hypertension treatment. Methods: We estimated the hypertension treatment capacity and salary costs of public healthcare facilities (subcenters, primary and community healthcare centers) under different assumptions on workforce size, task sharing, and treatment frequencies. Results: In 2020, an estimated 9% of all hypertensives in India (~23 million adults) are being treated for hypertension in subcenters and primary/community healthcare centers. Treating 30% of hypertensives without task sharing would require an additional >400,000 staff and >340 billion INR/year in salaries ( Figure ). Task sharing under current legislation was estimated to allow the current workforce to treat 14%, while a feasible extension of task sharing beyond the current legislation (e.g., allowing nurses to prescribe medicines) could treat 57% of hypertensive adults with the same workforce. Applying quarterly visits in addition to the extended task sharing, the current workforce could treat all hypertensives adults in India. Conclusion: Under the current practice, even modest increases of hypertension treatment coverage will require substantial additional human and financial resources. Extended task sharing plus fewer visits with longer prescription period may achieve nationwide hypertension treatment at public systems without additional workforce.

Dump the “dimorphism”: Comprehensive synthesis of human brain studies reveals few male-female differences beyond size

With the explosion of neuroimaging, it is clear that sex/gender is a key covariate influencing brain structure and function. Here we synthesize three decades of human brain MRI and postmortem data, emphasizing meta-analyses and other large studies, but the result is few reliable sex/gender findings and many unreplicated claims. Males' brains are larger than females' from birth, stabilizing around 11% in adults. This size difference accounts for other reproducible male/female brain differences: gray/white matter ratio (larger in F), inter- versus intrahemispheric connectivity ratio (greater in F), and regional cortical and subcortical volumes (greater in M). However, regional cortical and subcortical sex/gender differences are highly unreliable and explain only about 1% of volume variance. Connectome studies of sex/gender difference are conflicted and rarely control from brain size. Task-based fMRI has also failed to find reproducible brain activation differences between men and women in verbal, spatial, or emotion processing due to high rates of false discovery. In sum, male/female brain differences are non-binary and trivial relative to the total variance across human populations. Properly speaking, the human brain is not sexually-dimorphic.

Factors Affecting Technical Efficiency of Rubber Smallholders in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia

The main objective of the study was to figure out, identify and analyse the technical efficiency of rubber smallholders’ production in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Multi-stage data collection procedures, comprising both purposive and random sampling techniques, were used. Using structured questionnaires, farm-level information with cross sectional data from five districts of Negeri Sembilan, were employed in the study. A parametric Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA), with a transcendental logarithmic (Translog) functional form, was used in the study. The descriptive statistics results revealed that, the mean rubber yield was 5465 kg while that of the seven inputs used include 1.2 ha, 602.7, 2.33, 363.6 kg, 13.0 lit, 13.2 man days and 2.47 respectively for farm size, task, farm tools, fertilizer, herbicides, labour and rubber clones.The inferential statistics showed that, the mean technical efficiency was found to be 0.73 with a standard deviation of 0.089. Thus, this translates that 27% accounted for technical inefficiency. Both the sigma square and gamma coefficients were found to be statistically significant at 1% level. The Log Likelihood Function (LLF) and the Log Rati (LR) test were found to be respectively 167.7 and 34.07. The results further revealed that, although none of the farms were found to be on the frontier, however, 9 farms were very near the frontier with efficiency score range between 0.90-0.99. And twenty (20) firms have range 0.80-0.90. Race, Tapping experience, household number and extension agent’s visits were found to be technically significant and are thus critical in determining technical efficiency of rubber smallholders in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia.

Control-Scheduling Codesign Exploiting Trade-Off between Task Periods and Deadlines

A control task’s performance heavily depends on its sampling frequency and sensing-to-actuation delay. More frequent sampling, that is, shorter period, improves the control performance. Similarly, shorter delay also has a positive effect. Moreover, schedulability is also a function of periods and deadlines. By taking into account the control performance and schedulability at the same time, this paper defines a period and deadline selection problem for fixed-priority systems. Our problem is to find the optimal periods and deadlines for given tasks that maximize the overall system performance. As our solution, this paper presents a novel heuristic algorithm that finds a high-quality suboptimal solution with very low complexity, which makes the algorithm practically applicable to large size task sets.