Anonymity in predicting the future

zbMATH Open1391.03033arXiv1508.06865MaRDI QIDQ4576544FDOQ4576544

Authors: Dvij Bajpai, Daniel J. Velleman 

Publication date: 12 July 2018

Abstract: Consider an arbitrary set $S$ and an arbitrary function $f:mathbbRoS$. We think of the domain of $f$ as representing time, and for each $xinmathbbR$, we think of $f(x)$ as the state of some system at time $x$. Imagine that, at each time $x$, there is an agent who can see $fupharpoonright(-infty,x)$ and is trying to guess $f(x)$--in other words, the agent is trying to guess the present state of the system from its past history. In a 2008 paper, Christopher Hardin and Alan Taylor use the axiom of choice to construct a strategy that the agents can use to guarantee that, for every function $f$, all but countably many of them will guess correctly. In a 2013 monograph they introduce the idea of anonymous guessing strategies, in which the agents can see the past but don't know where they are located in time. In this paper we consider a number of variations on anonymity. For instance, what if, in addition to not knowing where they are located in time, agents also do not know the rate at which time is progressing? What if they have no sense of how much time elapses between any two events? We show that in some cases agents can still guess successfully, while in others they perform very poorly.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1508.06865

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Other combinatorial set theory (03E05) Axiom of choice and related propositions (03E25)

Cites Work

• A Peculiar Connection Between the Axiom of Choice and Predicting the Future
• The mathematics of coordinated inference. A study of generalized hat problems

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• How robustly can you predict the future?
• Sparse analytic systems
• The role of measurability in game-theoretic probability

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