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Zoom Link: https://mit.zoom.us/j/95420946277

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Speaker: Junior Okoroafor

Affiliation: BCS 2nd Year Graduate Student

Title: A Roadmap Towards a Unified Intuitive Theory of Power

Abstract:

How do people make fast and flexible inferences about power dynamics in environments that they have never encountered before? 

We aim is answer this question by study people’s intuitive theory of structural power dynamics and grounding this in a formal computational model of intuitive power. We approach this task by first studying human judgments of relative power in diverse economic games that each capture different aspects of power. 

In this talk, I will first present some pilot data of early-stage results of our human experiments. I will then present competing theories of power - formalised as computational models and compare the predictions that these models make about power inferences across these games with the actual human data. I shall end by positing a unified computational model of intuitive power, that merges different aspect of power into a coherent and conceptually rich unified theory.

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Speaker: Sol Markman

Affiliation: JazLab

Title: The neural basis of context-dependent information seeking

Abstract: 

As inhabitants of a dynamic world, we are constantly seeking information to make sense of our environment and to decide what to do. As intelligent beings, we have the remarkable ability to contextualize our information-seeking actions based on our current situation and goals. Under different circumstances, the same piece of information may help us make upcoming choices, predict the future, understand the past, or ponder what could have happened, and we must modulate our behavior by these contexts as we decide whether to pursue information and what to do with it once we have it. How does the brain process incoming information and control information-seeking actions in such a flexible, context-dependent manner? In this talk, I will introduce a novel task design that, along with simultaneous neural recordings, aims to shed light on this overarching question.