The action selection methods introduced in this thesis will now be compared to a range of alternative work. Mostly we will be contrasting the work with the Minimize the Worst Unhappiness strategy, and in particular with W-learning.
Many of these action selection schemes mix together what we might call the "Q-problem" (actions to take in pursuit of a single goal) with the "W-problem" (choice between conflicting goals). Our methods rigorously separate these two different problems.
First we show how our model addresses various classic problems of animal behavior.
The division of control used in all the action selection methods in this thesis is state-based rather than time-based. In interleaving different behaviors, various authors have argued for time-based switching (e.g. see [Ring, 1992]). Blumberg [Blumberg, 1994] argues the need for a model of fatigue, where a switch of activity becomes more likely the longer an activity goes on. He points out that animals sometimes appear to engage in a form of time-sharing.
This is the same philosophy as Lorenz's "Psycho-Hydraulic" model in ethology. Lorenz's agents have a constant pressure to get executed, increasing over time. This can lead to vacuum activity - where an agent has to get expressed just because it's been frustrated for a long time, even if it is irrelevant to the current situation x. Similarly, pressure is reducing on agents that are being expressed, which may stop them even though they are not finished their task. While some animals do indeed appear to engage in vacuum activity, Tyrrell [Tyrrell, 1993] argues convincingly that vacuum activity should be seen as a flaw in any action selection scheme. Control should switch for a reason.
It is not clear anyway that time-sharing effects cannot be achieved by a suitable state representation x. If an activity goes on for long enough, some internal component of x (that is, some internal sense, e.g. "hunger") may change, leading to a new x and a potential switch in activity.
The advantage of a state-based approach is that x contains a reason why control has switched, which we can then analyse. We can discuss who is winning particular states and why, and so on. The analysis of time-based action selection seems much more complex and arbitrary.
In W-learning, control never switches without a reason grounded in the present (in the current state x). I am unconcerned about agents being frustrated for long stretches of time, endlessly suggesting their actions and being disappointed (such as the nest-seeking agent in §7.3). It's not viewed as pain, or Lorenz's water pressure building up. It's only information.
A classic ethology problem is: if priorities are assigned to entire activities, how does a low-priority activity ever manage to interrupt a higher-priority one? For example, the conflict between high-priority feeding and low-priority body maintenance discussed by [Blumberg, 1994]. Here is how W-learning would solve it.
W is still higher when very hungry. Here the W-value is influenced simply by the size of the reward.
in which case wins all the states (e,2,*) and (e,1,*). wins the state (e,0,2). And wins the states (e,0,1) and (e,0,0). The creature only cleans itself when it is very dirty and not hungry. Otherwise, it feeds.
The typical weak, low-priority agent only manages to raise its head in one or two extreme states x which are its very last chance before total disaster. It has been complaining all along but only at the last moment can it manage a W-value high enough to be obeyed.
Note that by feeding continuously, the state may change from (e,2,2) to (e,0,2), in which case there is a switch of control. But this switch of control has a reason - it is not fatigue with the feeding action, it is the movement into a new state x. The effect of time-based switching occurs when the state-based creature is in continuous interaction with a changing world.
Having internal hunger that increases over time does not necessarily break our MDP model. As [Sutton, 1990a] points out, we simply redraw the boundary between the creature and its environment. Where x is "hungry", y is "very hungry", and a is "do nothing", we might have say and for any timestep.
To enable a state-based approach to action selection, we do in fact assume that goals generally decline in urgency after they have been in charge of the creature (and thus able to satisfy themselves) for a long time. Or at least that other goals increase in urgency if not pursued for a long time. This is actually quite a weak assumption. Most problems with any potential for goal-interleaving can be made to fit into this scheme, with the reward-generation of an agent having the potential to be at least temporarily exhausted if the agent is in charge for a very long time. The need for time-based action selection (above) seems to come when behaviors can go on receiving high rewards indefinitely.
[Whitehead et al., 1993] make this explicit in their scheme, where goals are inactive (don't compete), start up at random (are activated), compete until they are fulfilled, and then fall inactive again. In this work, goals are implicitly activated and deactivated by suitable accompanying internal and external senses.
Minsky [Minsky, 1986] warns that too simple forms of state-based switching will be unable to engage in opportunistic behavior. His example is of a hungry and thirsty animal. Food is only found in the North, water in the South. The animal treks north, eats, and as soon as its hunger is only partially satisfied, thirst is now at a higher priority, so it starts the long trek south before it has satisfied its hunger. Even before it has got south, it will be starving again. One solution to this would be time-based, where agents get control for some minimum amount of time.
So its W-value is lower than for when water is visible. It might be very thirsty in both situations, but it presents W-values based also on whether it thinks it has a chance of satisfying its thirst. Here the W-value is influenced by how many steps away the reward is.
We see here how W-learning will support persistence, or sticking on a goal. When one agent 's goal is in sight, the differences if it is not obeyed are between immediate rather than delayed rewards. Hence the differences between Q-values are larger (not discounted). As its goal approaches, the agent will generate higher W-values until satisfied.
Ethologists have generally proposed positive feedback models to explain persistence (see [McFarland, 1989, §1]), where the strength of the feeding agent is being increased by the act of feeding itself (while at the same time being decreased by the reduction in hunger, so that it is still probably decreasing overall). The above analysis shows that such a time-based mechanism is not necessary to explain persistent behavior at least. A state-based explanation is also possible. The fact that we are eating means that food exists close by, and it will be easy (probably) to eat some more in the next few immediate timesteps. Other goals may be a number of timesteps away from fulfilment. Persistence happens because even though rewards are low, they are close by.
Note that our persistence mechanism, where W-values increase as the goal is approached, can also be seen as a positive feedback process (since being obeyed makes you even more likely to be obeyed on the next step, when you will have even higher W-values), but it is a different type of positive feedback process, state-based rather than time-based.
Our method factors in what McFarland [McFarland, 1989] calls the cost of switching from one activity to another, where nothing useful may happen for some time. Here, the Q-values are a promise of what will happen in the future, suitably discounted, and the W-value scheme makes an action selection decision based on the different agents' promises. High rewards far away may compete against low rewards close by.
Looking closer at McFarland's work, a W-value can be seen as equivalent to the "tendency" to perform a behavior in his model of motivational competition [McFarland, 1989].
In his model, the continuous performance of an activity traces a trajectory through the statespace, which may cross isoclines, leading to a switch of behavior. That is, performing an activity may cause us to enter a new state x in which there is a new winner and hence a switch of behavior. Note that my model does not assume the trajectory has to be continuous - we may make leaps from point to point in the statespace.
We now classify the list of specific models into three main groups - hierarchical, serial and parallel.
First, by hierarchical models we mean multi-level systems where the modules are built into some kind of structure. Some modules have precedence over others, and control flows down to their submodules. While many problems seem to lend themselves to this kind of solution, there is normally a considerable burden of hand-design. This thesis has consistently argued that there is no future in models that are not capable of some self-organisation.
Brooks' Subsumption Architecture was introduced in §5, and his ideas used as the basic inspiration for our model. A Brooks-like hierarchy would be a special case of our more general model. To implement a hierarchy, we would have strong higher level agents and weak lower ones such that when nothing is happening relevant to the higher agent, it does not compete against the lower ones but when it competes it will always win.
A hierarchy is only one of many possible ways that W-learning agents might automatically divide up control. In this problem, the best solutions were not strict hierarchies. Note also that with W-learning, a hierarchy may form only temporarily at run-time, and be dissipated when new agents are created that disrupt the existing competition.
Hierarchies may themselves be what Brooks [Brooks, 1991a] criticised traditional AI for - structures whose main attraction is that we find it easy to think about them. Just as we find it easier to think of central control than distributed, so we find it easier to think of hierarchies than of collections of agents that cannot be ranked in any single order. One agent sometimes forbids the other, then later vice versa.
Brooks acknowledges this to a certain extent in [Brooks, 1994, §3], but then avoids the question of who should win in a competition between peers by moving on (in the Cog project) to models of spreading excitation and inhibition through networks.
Hierarchies have also long been popular in ethology. Baerends, for example, put a great deal of work into breaking down the behaviors of the digger wasp and the herring gull into multi-level hierarchical structures. See [Tyrrell, 1993, §8] for a survey of this and Tinbergen's hierarchical models.
Nested Q-learning will be introduced in §18.1. It can be used as a hierarchical model, but that chapter shows that it can also be built into a more general scheme, of which a traditional hierarchy is only a special case.
Feudal Q-learning will be introduced in §18.2. Again, it is easy to think of it as a hierarchical scheme, but I show that that is only a special case of the more general model.
Self-organising models divide into two groups - serial (agents must terminate before other agents start) and parallel (agents endlessly interrupt each other). The Action Selection problem is essentially about the latter. Serial or sequential models have already been criticised in §3.
Singh's Compositional Q-learning [Singh, 1992] was addressed in §3.
Wixson's model (to be introduced in §18.1) is basically a serial form of Nested Q-learning, where we must wait for agents to terminate at their goal states before control may switch to a new agent.
Maes' Spreading Activation Networks [Maes, 1989, Maes, 1989a] or Behavior Networks consist of a network of agents (or nodes) which are aware of their preconditions. Nodes can be linked to from other nodes that can help to make those preconditions come true, or be inhibited by other nodes who will cause their preconditions to not hold. They can in turn link to other nodes whose preconditions their behavior can affect.
Agents in our system do not have explicit preconditions. It's just that if we are in a state x where agent cannot take any meaningful action, its W-value will be low since there will be little difference between its Q-values whatever action is taken. So it will in effect not compete. Our system could also be seen as more decentralised in the sense that agents have no explicit concept of what other agents' goals might be. They only discover when the other agents start taking their actions.
Maes' spreading activation mechanism spreads excitation and inhibition from node to node. As in other methods, we see that the "Q-problem" and the "W-problem" are mixed together. For example, the desire to pursue a goal sends excitation to the consummatory action node, which if not executable propagates excitation back to appetitive action nodes. In this way links encode temporal appetitive-consummatory relationships between nodes. But in our system, basic Q-learning takes care of this on its own and it is not seen as part of the problem of action selection.
The advantage of mixing the "Q-problem" and the "W-problem" here is that appetitive nodes can be shared by multiple goals. But Tyrrell then shows [Tyrrell, 1993, §9.3.3] that there may be problems caused if we can't tell if the "Explore" node is excited multiple times because it is serving multiple goals or because it is serving multiple paths to the same goal. Ideally, if it was serving multiple goals, we would allow it to be highly excited, whereas if it was only serving multiple paths to the same goal we would divide its excitation by the number of paths to express that it was only serving one goal. But because we can't tell the difference at a local level, we can't define a local rule to divide up the excitation or not.
In my architecture, each goal is taken care of by a separate agent. Each has to implement its own explore. The equivalent of "Explore" serving multiple goals would be multiple agents wanting to take the same action. If an action serves multiple goals it will be defended by multiple W-values. If it serves one goal via different paths it will only be represented by one W-value.
It might seem wasteful that I make each agent implement its own "Explore" but this does not mean that each agent actually wants its "Explore" to be obeyed. All I mean is that each is a complete sensing-and-acting machine which can suggest an a for each x. If there is an efficient specialised Explore agent present, agents find they do better when their own rudimentary explore or random motion action is not taken. So they do not try to compete (as long as Explore is winning).
Say we have 5 agents, and 3 of them want to do the same thing. In Maes' scheme they would divide up their excitation but as Tyrrell points out they then can't compete on an equal footing with the other 2.
In W-learning, all 5 would initially compete all against each other. If one of the 3 starts winning the whole competition, the other two of the 3 will back off. Agents back off when someone else is fighting their battles for them, but only if they are winning.
In parallel, or Pandemonium, models we have multiple agents trying to control the body simultaneously, and some intelligent (or dumb) switch deciding which one of them (or combination of them) to let through.
Lin's Hierarchical Q-learning has already been introduced (in §3) and subsequently tested.
The ancestor of our abstract decentralised model of mind is Selfridge's Pandemonium model [Selfridge and Neisser, 1960]. This is a collection of "demons" shrieking to be listened to. The highest shriek wins. Selfridge's implementation was in the area of pattern recognition or classification, where the demons examine different features, and their weight (shriek) is the similarity of the input to the structure of the demon. For example, each demon might be a character-recogniser. Demons' weights might be hand-coded, or they might be learnt by Supervised Learning. When the correct output is given, weights could be strengthened or weakened.
While there are many descendants of this kind of model in pattern recognition, it is not clear how it translates to the Action Selection problem, where demons become control programs, suggesting actions to execute, each pursuing different goals. What should the weights represent? Similarity to what? What is the "correct" demon? How should the weights change?
The Competitive Learning algorithm, an unsupervised learning technique in connectionism, can be seen as a detailed implementation of a pandemonium model.
In a neural network, the input pattern must be somehow encoded in the weights on the links leading into the hidden layer. Normally one finds that the representation is spread over a number of hidden units cooperating. In Competitive Learning, a single hidden unit will represent the input pattern. Given a particular input, a large number of hidden units compete to represent it. The winner is the one whose incoming weights are most similar to the input. The winner then modifies its weights to be even more similar to the input. We do not (as we normally would) modify the weights of all hidden units, only those of the winner.
In this way, each hidden unit ends up winning a different cluster of input patterns and its incoming weights converge to the centre of the cluster.
Again though, while a detailed implementation is useful, this is still directed towards the pattern recognition or category formation problem. It hasn't answered the question of how to apply this to Action Selection.
Jackson [Jackson, 1987] attempts to apply a pandemonium model to Action Selection. He has demons taking actions on a playing field, forging links with successor demons in the stands by exciting them, to get temporal chains of demons.
This is partly temporal chains of actions, which we saw is taken care of in pursuit of a single goal by basic Q-learning. It is also partly temporal sequencing of agents, or time-based action selection, that I criticised above. As we can see, the "Q-problem" and the "W-problem" are mixed together here.
Jackson's paper is full of interesting ideas but it is a conceptual model so it is hard to know whether it would really work as claimed. It would be interesting to see a model detailed enough for implementation.
where the are a set of weights reflecting which agents are currently priorities of the system. The idea is that these weights can be used to adjust the strength of an agent relative to its fellows to avoid the pitfalls of a collective method, such as inability to be single-minded. But one couldn't multiply all of 's Q-values by the same weight, as we saw earlier. We need , a weight specific to the state. Rosenblatt acknowledges this, and suggests the weightings can be changed dynamically as the creature moves through different states x. But he has no automatic way of generating these weights. This is all part of the burden of hand-design.
There is a special case where the denominator is zero (all Q-values are the same) but then the numerator is zero as well. We would just set W = 0 .
but it is unclear what the advantage would be. If we multiply the Q-values by a constant, the W-value would remain unchanged. We have no easy mechanism for making agents stronger or weaker. The argument against scaling was presented in §8.1.
The action selection is similar to Maximize Collective Happiness. Again, the difference is that these numbers are all designed by hand.
As was mentioned when it was introduced, our basic model of parallel internal competition is a form of drives model from ethology. Here the difference is we provide an answer to the question of where the drive strengths come from.
Implementing a W = D - F measure is essentially what Tyrrell is trying to do in his parameter tuning to get an implementation of drives working [Tyrrell, 1993, §9.3.1]. The amount of hand-design he needs to do only points out the value of self-organisation of these numbers.
For example, if a predator is visible he designs his "Avoid predator" drive to have a high drive strength (it must be listened to). If no predator is visible he gives it a low drive strength (it doesn't matter if it is not listened to).
When avoiding a moving predator, the predator-avoiding agent must be listened to precisely (the creature must move in exactly the opposite direction). When avoiding a stationary hazard, any action is alright so long as it isn't the one action in the direction of the hazard. So it doesn't matter if the hazard-avoiding agent is not listened to if other agents don't want to go in that exact direction anyway.
Under W-learning, these numbers would have been built automatically. would learn a high W-value if (as probable) other agents wanted to do anything else other than move away from the predator. would know that only that particular direction was bad, and would learn a low W-value (would not compete) if other agents were going in some other direction anyway.
In [Tyrrell, 1993, §11.1.2], Tyrrell's hierarchical decision structure implements a form of Maximize the Best Happiness, while his free-flow hierarchy implements a form of Maximize Collective Happiness.
Work at the University of Rochester [Whitehead et al., 1993, Karlsson, 1997] addresses the same question as this thesis - given a collection of competing peers, who should win? Their nearest neighbor strategy is effectively Maximize the Best Happiness (W=Q). Their greatest mass strategy is Maximize Collective Happiness. A Minimize the Worst Unhappiness strategy was not tried.
[Karlsson, 1997] argues that a modular approach learns a sub-optimal policy quicker and with less memory than a monolithic approach. While this is true, I further point out that the monolithic approach may not even learn the optimal policy itself.
[Ono et al., 1996, §2], in their implementation of greatest mass, implement exactly the Maximize Collective Happiness strategy.
For completeness, I point out which category this work itself belongs to. In their basic form, W-learning and related strategies are standard, one-layer, parallel models. §18 will show how they can scale up into more complex forms of societies, still self-organising.
Finally we consider other related work which looks to be relevant but on closer examination may not be quite so relevant.
The comparison is misleading. In this thesis we are not searching the space of reward function rules. We are not inventing new reward functions, only modifying the strengths of the existing ones. All we are doing is testing all different possible parameters - something any good empirical test has to do.
The classifier system rule operates at the low level of actually specifying behavior. The reward function rule operates at a higher level of specifying a value system, that must be translated into behavior. In this thesis I have been content to hand-design the reward functions and let the behavior be learnt from them. The genetic search on the reward functions' parameter values is then actually a search for different combinations of weak and strong agents. We will return to this in §17.2.
They are solving the Q-problem, not the W-problem.
Grefenstette's SAMUEL system [Grefenstette, 1992] uses competition among agents, where an agent (or strategy) is a set of rules. A rule is of the form: IF (condition) THEN suggest (set of actions with strengths). Hence "strength" here is the equivalent of a Q-value for the action. One difference with Q-values is that Grefenstette looks for high expected reward and a low variance in those rewards. Q-learning just looks at expected reward irrespective of variance.
"Competition among strategies" however turns out to mean only a genetic search for good strategies to solve the same problem, deleting the bad ones, and mutating good ones. There is no competition between two stategies in the same body at run-time which is what competition between agents means in this thesis. In other words, Grefenstette uses competition as a device to solve the single-goal Q-problem, rather than it being an unavoidable run-time feature of the problem, as it is in the multi-goal Action Selection W-problem.
A rule fires when its condition is met - which would seem equivalent to the rule representing the Q-values for a particular state x. An important difference though is that the conditions can be quite general, for example something like: IF fuel=[low or medium] AND speed=[600 to 800] THEN... So a rule builds up the equivalent of Q-values for actions in a region of statespace. These regions may overlap. That is why multiple rules may fire at the same time - something that cannot happen if rules are of the form IF x THEN.. where each x is a unique state. For states x lying in overlapping regions, there will be multiple estimates of Q(x,a).
Using a naive product method of Maximize Collective Happiness, action (3) will be chosen, strangely enough. Action (1) doesn't get chosen because the 0 cancels out the 0.9's. Action (4) doesn't get chosen because the -0.1 makes the product negative. And then action (3) beats action (2) because the minus signs cancel each other out.
Obviously, we must make all Q-values positive, which is accomplished by making all rewards positive (Theorem B.2). Q-values arbitrarily close to zero can still cancel out an entire column, but perhaps this is alright, since if all rewards are > 0 , a Q-value very close to zero means the action will not only give the agent no reward but also take it to a state from which nothing it can do can expect to bring it a reward for quite some time into the future. So perhaps it is right that the agent vetoes this action. Note that in the example above it is not good that the 0 vetoes the action because action (1) is actually quite a good action for agent !
Here, agent is drowned out and action (1) is not taken. Note that the summation method of Maximize Collective Happiness would have chosen action (1) in this case.
Baum [Baum, 1996] introduces an Economy of Mind model ("A Model of Mind as a Laissez-Faire Economy of Idiots"), where new agents can be created dynamically, and agents that do not thrive die off.
An "agent" here though is simply a rule (a condition-action pair). There is a single goal, and the economy selects agents over time to find a set of rules that best satisfy that goal. That is, as with Grefenstette, competition here is a device to solve the single-goal Q-problem, rather than referring to the run-time competition of the W-problem.
There are large numbers of these simple agent-rules (in one typical run, at any given time between 20 and 250 agents were alive). Agents pay for the right to take an action (they pay the previous winner). When an action is taken only the winner receives a reward. So an agent pays to win, but then receives two payoffs - one from the action it takes, and one in the next step when it is paid off by the next winner. What it pays should be less than or equal to on average what it receives, otherwise it will eventually be bankrupted and deleted. The agent who expects to gain the largest rewards by taking its action will outbid the others.
But these bids are not analogous to W-values. They are an estimate of expected reward, used to control the entry of new rules. New agents can only enter and thrive if their estimates are more accurate. Bids are analogous to Q-values - they are a way of learning estimates of reward in pursuit of the single goal.
It would be interesting to extend Baum's model to the Action Selection problem. "Agents" do not actually have to be simple condition-action pairs. The concept of bidding and paying for actions can still be applied even when the agents are our Q-learning agents pursuing different goals. In a strict economic model, though, agents would have no interest in letting other agents take their actions for them, since they won't receive the reward if that happens. Agents wanting to do exactly the same thing will still bid against each other. And when agents want to do similar but not exactly the same things, there can be no concept of compromise. An agent either receives its full reward or nothing. The system would seem to be incapable of opportunism.
Perhaps we should relax the strict economic analogy and allow all agents to profit if one of them does good.
An interesting comparison can be made between how control switches in a W-learning creature and in an Operating System. Operating Systems implement a sort of time-based action selection, but different assumptions make OS ideas difficult to apply to our problems.
Agents get CPU time for some time slice. There is no concept of whether or not this is an appropriate state x for them to take over. Agents can be given a priority, which gets them more frequent timeslices, but still independent of x, although the concept of priority for mouse and keyboard responsive routines could be seen as a simple form of priority based on x.
There seems no way to express the loss an agent suffers by not being obeyed as being dependent on x and on who was obeyed. In an Operating System all losses are assumed the same - the agent just has to wait some time. There is also no concept that a non-winner can profit from what the winner is doing.
Another interesting comparison is with how the Ethernet [Metcalfe and Boggs, 1976] works. In an ethernet, stations only transmit when they find the Ether is silent. When multiple stations transmit at the same time, a collision occurs and they back off at different rates, so that one will be left to transmit while the others defer their transmission. When the winner is finished, the others will start up again. It has been compared to a civilized meeting where if someone wants to speak they raise their voice and everyone else quietens down.
In W-learning, agents raise their voices (W-values) to be heard, but if the lead is taken by an agent favourable to their plan of action they will be found lowering their voices again. At any moment, all agents may have low W-values, but only because they are all happy with the current leader.
For example, in our artificial world, when no interesting features of the world are visible, almost any agent with a "wander"-type behavior can take control relatively unopposed. In fact, the wander behavior may be split among a number of agents, depending stochastically on which got into the lead first in each state.
Interesting examples of competition can be set up where an agent can do well if it is selfish, but even better if it cooperates, so long as the other agents cooperate too. Such problems include the Prisoner's Dilemma.
In our model, an agent always does best when it is selfish and is normally expected only to do as well or worse when it is not obeyed. While action selection here is not exactly a zero-sum game - nonobeyed agents still collect rewards up to and sometimes equal to their highest possible - the best strategy for an agent is still always to try to be obeyed.
A more complex strategy might be if the agent accepts it can't win, but has the choice of saying who it would support to win instead. If it votes for a winner and votes are added, though, we might again run the risk of the collective methods, where sheer weight of numbers can drown out an unpopular minority opinion.
The problem of reconciling independent wills in a society is an old problem of economic and political theory. Because of different assumptions though, much of the work is not easily transferable to the Society of Mind.
In economics, utility [Varian, 1993, §4] is used as a way of ranking an agent's preferences. It can be seen as analogous to Q-values for actions. In the standard ordinal utility theory, the precise numbers are not important. What matters is only the order in which things are ranked. This is analogous to a single Q-learning agent on its own. It is interesting how difficult it often is to find such an ordering in economics. Many apparently arbitrary functions are used, once the requirement is dropped that the precise numbers be meaningful.
In cardinal utility theory some meaning is attached to the numbers. The utility of some choice can be said to be twice that of another, and so on. Here we can introduce an analog of W-values, where the difference between the Q-values is measured. We can ask the question: "You want choice A. If we force you to take choice B, how bad is that?"
The classic utilitarian or Benthamite social welfare function (the greatest happiness for the greatest number) is equivalent to Maximize Collective Happiness (see §12.1).
A "Nietzschean" social welfare function (the value of an allocation depends on the welfare of the best off agent) is equivalent to Maximize the Best Happiness (see §9).
A Rawlsian social welfare function (the value of an allocation depends on the welfare of the worst off agent) is a Minimize the Worst Unhappiness method, though not quite the one that we use (see §13.1).
Rawls sides with his agents, and takes note of their individual stories, out of ethical concern for their unhappiness. We side with ours not because we "care" about them (they are only parts of the mind) but because we want individual agents to have the ability, when they really need it, to raise their voices and be heard above the others.
One considerable difference between the Society of Mind and economic societies is that economic agents don't benefit from someone else's success. They won't be happy to see another win if they could have won themselves.
The Collective methods are analogous to old-fashioned majority-rule democracy (or "majoritarianism"). This is a simple majority vote where minority rights can be ignored.
W-learning is analogous to liberal democracy, where the test of a democracy is how well it treats its minorities. Liberal democracy here is the attempt to minimize individual hard-luck stories. Journalism in a liberal democracy focuses endlessly on individual problems and individual denials of rights, rather than focusing on the majority or the common good. A single individual's denial of rights can change the law for the whole population.
W=Q is analogous to anarchy, which is survival of the fittest, where no one is safe. Anarchy here means that individuals can trample on your rights, analogous to how the winner in W=Q will not compromise with anyone.
Figure 15.1: Political analogs of the action selection methods. Note that individual freedom is not identical to individual happiness.
This is summarised in Figure 15.1. Note that an authoritarian system would not be on this scale since it would not involve action selection at all - there would be a constant winner independent of state x. In an authoritarian system, a strong agent wins all states x. In W=Q (anarchy), strong agents win, but different ones in each x.
What is good for the Society of Mind of course may not necessarily be good for the Society of Humans, and I have no interest in making any statements about the latter. I think it would be uncontroversial though to say that, whether one is in favour of it or not, liberal democracy is a more complex idea than simple majority-rule democracy, which is perhaps why the two are often confused even in much of the democratic world. Similarly in action selection, Minimize the Worst Unhappiness is a more complex idea than Maximize Collective Happiness, which is why perhaps it has been generally overlooked. In the action selection methods in this chapter, we have noted the recurring popularity of Maximize Collective Happiness schemes.
So whatever about the Society of Humans, this thesis argues that the Society of Mind (or at least our first draft of a Society of Mind) should probably be a liberal democracy.
 Note that Grefenstette himself uses the word agent to refer to the whole creature.
 For example, in Northern Ireland "democracy" is repeatedly assumed to mean simple majority-rule democracy (with the opposing sides defining different territories over which to take the majority vote). I am not, of course, saying there is anything right or wrong with any particular model of society, but only noting that people confuse their terms.


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RSN reports: "Reader Supported News has filed a MOTION TO INTERVENE with the United States Army First Judicial District in the matter of the court marshal of Pfc. Bradley Manning. According to the Army, 350 reporters applied for credentials to the trial of Bradley Manning. Less than 100 received credentials meaning over 250 were denied. Reader Supported News was one of the publications denied."
eader Supported News through counsel William Simpich has filed a MOTION TO INTERVENE with the United States Army First Judicial District in the matter of the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning.
Manning is facing 21 criminal charges that include "aiding the enemy" and could face a life sentence if convicted of the most serious charges.
According to the Army, 350 reporters applied for credentials to the trial of Bradley Manning. Fewer than 100 received credentials, meaning over 250 were denied. Reader Supported News was one of the publications denied. The Army in its notification of denial said, "The U.S. Army Military District of Washington made every effort to ensure a variety of media were credentialed to provide the public (local, national, international) a continuous news feed of the legal proceedings." However the criteria for approval remains vague at best.
The Military District of Washington's media relations department has set up a two-tier system for coverage of the court-martial. They encourage reporters who were denied credentials to attend the hearings as members of the public. The public viewing area will allow those who were denied the ability to watch the proceedings, but they will not be allowed the tools of their trade. The reporters who received credentials will have access to their computers.
The reason given for the denial was that there was only room for 70 in the media center. We are requesting that they provide additional space for the media.
The lack of transparency is also an issue: with no access to transcripts, the media should be granted full access. Money was raised to provide a court reporter for the media to access. The stenographer who was hired was also denied access. Without access to transcripts the media reporting will not be as complete or accurate as it could be.
We are also arguing that if the members of the public and the media are allowed to view the proceedings on closed circuit tv, then why not let the public as a whole view the event? We are asking the judge to give the media access to the video feed for broadcast and/or streaming.
Our reporters and others were denied press credentials, and are now forced to struggle for a spot in the overflow room without knowing the basis for their exclusion. If the court does not increase the size of the media center, we deserve to know why our application was denied.
1. Pursuant to Rules of Court-Martial 806(a), 806(b) and 806(c), Petitioners William Simpich, Scott Galindez, and Kay Rudin of Reader Supported News make a request for public access; or, in the alternative, move to intervene to vindicate the right to public access and seek an order permitting full public and media access to the proceedings of the Manning court-martial.
2. The burden of persuasion is placed on the moving party. R.C.M. 905(c)(2). The party that is seeking to prevent the media right of access has the burden of proof to show, in specific, on the record, findings that (1) closure is essential to preserve higher values or compelling interests; (2) individualized, case-by-case findings that justify each closure; (3) closure is narrowly tailored to serve the compelling interest. Press Enterprise Co. v. Superior Court, 464 US 501, 513 (1984); Press Enterprise v. Superior Court, 478 US 1, 9-14 (1984).
3. PFC Bradley E. Manning was arrested in May 2010 and eventually was charged in this court-martial with various offenses arising from his alleged leaking of government documents to Wikileaks. His trial is scheduled to begin on June 3, 2013, at the Ft. George G. Meade military installation in Anne Arundel County, Maryland.
5. The courtroom has ten seats for the media and the public. A media operations center outside of the courtroom has been created to seat 70 members of the media corps, who will have access to their laptop computers to type their observations. In the past, a theater was made available as an "overflow room," which may be made available again for the more than 270 members of the media, as well as the general public, who will be unable to access the press room or the courtroom.
A. Based on past experience, the media and public barred from the courtroom and media operations center will be consigned to the overflow room, where they will only be able to passively watch these transmissions and write down their observations with pen and pencil. This situation creates a two-tier system - those who can type their observations, and those who cannot.
B. The court is exercising its discretion to have the military provide video and audio transmissions to the press and the public in the press room and the overflow room. However, the press and the public will not be allowed to capture the video and audio even though the military will retain the ability to capture these transmissions. This situation creates a two-tier system - those who can capture the transmissions, and those who cannot.
C. Two courtroom artists have been given access to the courtroom throughout the proceedings, and that relationship seems likely to continue. Petitioner Kay Rudin, the courtroom artist with Reader Supported News, deserves an equal opportunity to access the courtroom. A courtroom artist cannot accurately convey to the public what is going on in the courtroom without direct access to the courtroom itself. This situation creates a two-tier system - those who can portray the proceedings, and those who cannot.
D. Petitioners William Simpich and Scott Galindez are reporting on the Manning trial for Reader Supported News. They were mandated to provide articles on their previous military coverage as a prerequisite for obtaining credentials. These previous articles were critical of the military and its procedures. Mr. Simpich, Mr. Galindez, and Ms. Rudin have been denied press credentials, and are now forced to struggle for a spot in the overflow room without knowing the basis for their exclusion. These petitioners believe it is on the basis of their reporting and/or their association with one another. These petitioners are also informed that the stenographer hired by the Guardian newspaper from the United Kingdom at considerable expense was denied access to the media observation room, which means that she cannot perform her duties which would aid the entire media corps and the public.
6. Due to the facts above, these petitioners, as well as the media and the public, are unable to engage in careful observation and analysis in one of the most important cases involving the alleged disclosure of classified information since the Pentagon Papers.
7. Rule of Court-Martial 806(a) states that the court-martial shall be open to the public. The Discussion of this rule states that "when public access to a court-martial is limited for some reason, including lack of space, special care must be taken to avoid arbitrary exclusion of specific groups or persons. This may include allocating a reasonable number of seats to members of the press and to relatives of the accused." This directive is made more specific by Rule 806(b), which states that when specific persons are excluded from the courtroom, "the military judge must make findings on the record establishing the reason for the exclusion, the basis for the military judge's belief that exclusion is necessary, and that the exclusion is as narrowly tailored as possible." The petitioners have the right to know the process that was used to determine who was excluded from the courtroom and/or the media room, and whether the judge made the narrowly tailored findings as mandated by Rule 806.
8. Rule 806(c) states that video or audio transmission is generally barred, but that "the military judge may, as a matter of discretion, permit contemporaneous closed-circuit video or audio transmission to permit viewing or hearing ... by spectators when courtroom facilities are inadequate to accommodate a reasonable number of spectators."
9. Neither Judge Lind, nor any other government official, has indicated in the military court proceedings that the denial of public access as described is necessitated by a need to preserve secrets or classified information or to promote any other legitimate governmental interest.
10. A cloak of secrecy has been drawn over the Manning proceedings despite written requests made by several of the named plaintiffs (made on their own behalf and on behalf of the public) and by various other media organizations to the military court seeking greater public access on issues involving access to pretrial hearings and specific documents. On these issues, Judge Lind construed a letter from the Center for Constitutional Rights as a motion to intervene for the purpose of seeking to vindicate the right of public access to the Manning proceedings, and denied the motion. The Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces (CAAF) ultimately held, in a recent 3-2 decision, that the military appellate courts lacked jurisdiction over plaintiffs' claims. As the CAAF dissenters suggested, the Center for Constitutional Rights has now filed an action in an Article III Court.
11. As set forth herein, the public and press have First Amendment and common law right to prompt and contemporaneous access to the records of proceedings of the court-martial trial proceeding. It is also critical to honor the rights of equal protection under the law.
12. Petitioners are likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that defendants are violating petitioners' rights under the First Amendment and common law by refusing access to court-martial documents and proceedings. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, even minimal infringement upon First Amendment values constitutes irreparable injury sufficient to justify injunctive relief. The intense public interest in the Manning court-martial would be served by enjoining the military from continuing to deny adequate access to this proceeding.
13. If necessary, members of the press and public may bring actions for injunctive relief directly under the First Amendment. In addition, under 28 U.S.C. § 1361, "district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any action in the nature of mandamus to compel an officer or employee of the United States or any agency thereof to perform a duty owed to the plaintiff." This First Amendment right to access applies in military courts as well. Globe Newspaper Co. v. Superior Court, 457 U.S. 596, 603-05 (1982); ABC, Inc. v. Powell, 47 MJ 363, 365 (1997) ("When an accused is entitled to a public hearing, the press enjoys the same right and has standing to complain if access is denied".) Furthermore, the petitioners' right to equal protection under the law has been denied when the military failed to issue press credentials in a transparent process and without the requisite findings by the military judge.
14. Nixon v. Warner Communications, Inc. 435 US 589, 597 (1978) specifically addresses the right of access to information presented at trial, stating that both the media and the public have a First Amendment right to attend, see, and hear what transpires in a courtroom. In Nixon, the media was provided transcripts of the audiotapes. In Nixon, there was no issue of the government trying to prevent information from reaching the public. In Manning, the most crucial aspects of the trial are being actively prevented from reaching the public.
15. If the media or the public in the media room or the overflow room are denied the right transcribe the proceedings by typing their observations; or to capture the video or audio transmissions presented outside of the courtroom; or to adequately portray the proceedings inside the courtroom; or to obtain access to the courtroom, the media observation center, or the overflow room by means of a transparent process, valuable information will not reach the public while equal protection and Amendment rights are violated. It is the understanding of the petitioners that some of Judge Lind's views on this topic have been published - see Lt. Col. Denise R. Lind, Media Rights of Access to Proceedings, Information, and Participants in Military Criminal Cases, 163 Mil. L. Rev. 1 (2000). http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/Military_Law_Review/pdf-files/27608D~1.pdf As recognized in the aforementioned article, "right of access is the right to attend a proceeding and to hear, see, and communicate observations about it." Also see Richmond Newspapers, Inc. v. Commonwealth, 448 US 555, 576 (1980).
16. The Supreme Court considers an attempt by the government to delay publication of information as a prior restraint. Prior restraints are presumed to be unconstitutional. Nebraska Press Association v. Stuart, 427 US 539, 559-561 (1976) found a government order to delay publication to be a prior restraint. Preventing the media and the public from typing their observations in a room that cannot possibly disrupt the court proceedings is a similar type of prior restraint. Withholding the video and audio transmissions from the media and the public but not the military is an even more serious prior restraint. Delay will result because a reporter can type far more quickly than write with a pen or pencil. Nor is there any good reason to prevent the media and the public from capturing the video and audio transmissions of the trial. Security is not compromised in any conceivable way. If we can observe these transmissions, why can't we communicate these transmissions directly to the public?
17. Petitioners ask the Court to act on this request for full public access, with complete transparency, and to honor the request for equal protection under the law, pursuant to the First Amendment and the procedures as set forth in R.C.M. 806 as soon as possible, and ideally before the close of business on Friday, May 31, 2013. Copies of this request are being served on the judge and on the offices of the prosecution and the defense.
Knowing full well that subjectivity and selectivity were factors in determining who was and who was not allowed credentials. And acknowledging that there is no court room in the world large enough to accomodate all of the credential applicants plus others aspiring attendees, one is of the opinion that the "deciders" must publish their criteria and methods of picking the chosen few. Eg; Hypothetically, why FOX and not Al Jazerra/Current ?
After the Iraq/Afghanista n correspondent-e mbedment and news control processes openly exercised by the U S Military, their fair judgement and integrity have been as diminished as their capacity and proclivity toward propaganda has been enhanced.
A lottery is the only fair and unbiased way to have dispensed access credentials.
We acknowledge that there is not a courtroom large enough, but can't the Army provide a media center for more than 70? all they need to provide is 350 chairs at tables with access to outlets, and a large enough screen for everyone to watch the closed circuit broadcast.
actually I doubt 350 were reporters needing their laptops, I'm guessing their were lots of support staff for the broadcast crews.
With three major Academies and numerous Staff, War, PG, Logistics, etc Colleges and Schools, the military has the space and the capacity to do whatever the DOD choose to do. The major objective here is, as with all trials, is to bring closure to the matter and to keep a lid on both the trial and the news that it generates.
BTW: Why does the DOD not have a "Peace College" to complement our long-of-tooth War College?
Our little rag-tag group is actually making some noise (ala Oliver Twist asking for more porridge).
We're not just grumbling to ourselves anymore but taking a stand!
So which reporters received credentials?
Fox, Wall Street Journal, US News and World Report (any foreign media?)? Have they even made public such a list?
Why were the credential recipients selected? Lottery, random pin in paper list? Donkey's tail method.
Are they going over the many recorded trials of Roland Freisler, Hitler's "blood judge" for inspiration on how to conduct this "vengeance is mine"-based covert show-trial?
The world is watching, in spite of the fierce attempts at repression.
Get after 'em RSN -how can we help?
We will have a better idea monday...they did not send out a list of who did or didn't get approved..
I would really like to know which news organizations are being permitted to view these Court-Martial proceedings.
Uniform Code of Military Justice does not need a formal court room in which to make decision according military law. This is not a civilian court in any manner.
Therefore a big area could be used to give everyone the picture of the goings on.
I think it best for Bradley Manning to have as many people of various outlooks to watch this military court try to be 'fair' if that is their intention.
I think, too, that it's about time the US military was honest and up front about its not following up at all upon the continuous war crimes that it has been guilty of.
I do not, for one instant, agree with the attitude of the military and the government being held to higher levels than others.
Much the opposite is true as the USA ignores its continued war crimes and arrests and holds without trial or a date to be taken home.
Also, the military tribunal finding Omar Khadr guilty of a war crime as a boy is totally ridiculous considering the continued and obvious war crimes stacking up high as the Tower of Babel.
OMG! Someone has actually found a way to DO something. Kudos to RSN.
Who, where do we write/call to complain? Action instructions, please!
be a security leak, when the only real security is to cooperate instead of compete with each other regarding information.
This is just another experiment to see how far they can go with their "military" secret-keeping, their dissing the public's right to know, their arrogant contempt for all dissent and disregard for all us "little people in the village." Of course most of their rule-making makes no sense -- it's just another push to keep us in our insignificant, obedient little "place."
RSN, thank you for (in effect) mooning these wannabe Nazis. All we need to do to lose EVERYTHING this country has stood for is to cower and "go along." That way lies worse than death.
Why the surprise. There would be a better chance of planting a successful botanical garden on the moon than in getting unbiased reporting on this subject from RSN.
A 25 year old disgruntled Army PFC takes American secret documents & sends them to someone who has no use for America & will surely publish them.
To the folks on this board that disgruntled 25 year old Army PFC is the best person on the planet to decide what American secrets should be made public. Not only do they know Manning is the one to lead us on this, they also know that everything outside the US is the Garden of Eden & there is no risk at all that someone out there would use the info to take advantage of us.
Bradley Manning is a disgrace to his uniform & a traitor to his country. Anyone who thinks he should be the gatekeeper of America's secrets should not be allowed out without supervision.
Without a reply like this, how else would one know they were pursuing the right course? Who cannot drift with evolution here?
I was not referring to reporters when I made that statement. I was referring to ANYONE who honestly believes a 22 year old (at the time) disturbed & disgruntled Army PFC should be allowed to determine what Government secrets should be made public.
Only a blithering idiot would argue that the country's secrets should be entrusted to someone like that.
Warts & all. BS. For reasons I cannot comprehend liberals always seem to choose the rest of the world over the US. How the rest of the world would benefit from a media circus is easy to understand. But how does the US benefit. Expose more secrets? Have the crazies line up for a chance to tell the world what a garbage country the US is? How beautiful the world would be without us? One big - Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
The idea that we should have no secrets or that someone like Manning should be their gatekeeper is blatant stupidity.
Bradley Manning saw something wrong and had the courage to expose it. There should be more people like him and if there were, perhaps Governments and the military will think twice before creating mindless slaughter and endless wars that help no one except the mega rich. Having written this, my own son in law is in the Australian Special Forces and has served in Afghanistan.
Supposing all your assertions are right, JackB, how would the presence of a random sample of biased reporting be "without supervision."? Can you name a reporter whose lack of bias would be utter and unimpeachable, and do you know if this happy reporter is among the chosen? Let's have the selection process and the trial open to public scrutiny, and let's hear the points of view, biases, warts and all.
Oh, bother. Blaming liberal thinkers for the problems of the conservative lovers of violence again.
I would suggest thinking through things without a bias in either direction would be the best way to go here rather that jumping upon one band wagon or the other.
You speak for those that believe in the authoritarian rule and propaganda that we have in this country. I mean you really believe it!
This attests to the power and control that the elite have over many of us. Brute force isn't necessary if psychological means are used effectively. The most effective prison is the one you don't know that you're in.
A true liberal. You have zero knowledge of who I speak for (if anyone). It is simply your belief that I speak for someone other than myself. Then, based on your zero knowledge, you promote your belief into a fact.
Then you use your newly minted "fact" as an example of the power the elite have over us.
For a true liberal the distinction between truth & creative writing is meaningless.
Not sure what the "brute force" bit is intended to mean.
I like the effective prison idea. Whether someone is put into that sort of prison or puts himself there it is escape proof unless the person makes changes. I suspect that even if he become aware of his predicament it would be very difficult to change.
All State Systems utilize control (of some kind) over their people.
By "Brute Force" I mean things like government repression in the form of beatings, killings, and such, to control the populace.
But in your case it's not necessary because you've already bought into the propaganda and don't recognize that it's propaganda.
In the USA, it's commonly understood that Russia, China, North Korea and other countries with Military Might use Public Information to shape people's opinion.
They're rank amateurs compared to the sophistication of the USA/Corporate Spin Machine.
With all due respect, you think that you speak only for yourself but you are what Lenin would have called a tool or a "useful idiot".
Manning saw the utter corruption and disregard for human rights recorded in the "classified" documents and wanted the American public to know about it. It's our right to know since we pay for it.
Sensitive military secrets were redacted and a government agency admitted that no one was hurt by the remaining information in an Intra-governmen t memo. Publicly, however, we're told that Manning's actions put people at risk.
it really doesn't hurt my feelings much.
Being an American citizen requires holding our goverment accountable or "Freedom" will just be an empty word.
Obama, in one of his multitude of lies said he would protect whistle blowers.
You refer to Manning as "disgruntled." Do you include Daniel Ellsberg that same category? Do neither qualify as a "whistleblower? " Does anyone in your view?
My, my your hatreds and belligerent bias is aflame on this page!
Bradley Manning is a hero who has served his country far better than the men trying him. He has given evidence of crimes to the public because the military had concealed evidence of crimes.
He gave them to a leading international news organization, which is also under attack in ways that are clearly outside the law.
Whistleblowers have always been important to keeping government honest, and today our nation makes war on them.
No enemy was aided, unless you call we the people the enemy. Do you think the Afghans did not know Karzai was getting rich in American money?
A 22 year old disturbed & disgruntled Army PFC with zero credentials for analyzing military secrets votes himself the gatekeeper of those secrets & makes them available to the world.
Did you read what you wrote before you posted? Your argument is absurd. I would love to read your paper on Benedict Arnold being the country's first hero because he gave away military secrets.
Actually you are full of sound and fury signifying nothing -a true reactionary.
Au contraire mate, Manning was able to speak to Amy Goodman on "Democracy now" and in a couple of other written statements through his lawyer described in some detail how he joined up and was trained and rose a position of specialist in "secret" documents, which is how he became disillusioned by what he was being asked to hide and the devastating effects in many countries and the US cannon-fodder troops in the field and the survivors on their return home.
So there now -he WAS fully-qualified to interpret the intent of such messages, do what he was doing in full and growing comprehension of the cesspool of secrets he was asked to be witness to.
"Zero credentials"? I think not!
O' well, I've a feeling I'm wasting my digits and you are stuck with your mean-spirited faux-patriotic half-truths in a determined head-in-the-san d attempt to view the status-quo as always right -a bit like the humorless, blinkered bible-thumpers who treat the Bible the same way.
"A 1996 article in The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers "demonstrated, among other things, that the Lyndon Baines Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance".
It would appear (historically at least) that the US government may be the LEAST qualified to act as the gatekeeper of secrets.
Simply in reply, can you say "FINK"?!!! -Look in the mirror -it might be 'Cracked from side to side-!
The likes of you need mental and blinker-removal surgery and are an example of why the US cannot be even mildly termed either a 'democracy', nor 'civilized'.
NOW -get back into goose-step!---- : RIGHT-STEP, LEFT-STEP, (SHOUT) "EIN, VOLK, EIN REICH EIN DICTATORSHIP!!!!"
Hein?? DEATH to the TRUTH-SEEKERS, CONFORMITY FOREVER!!!
Actually, by law, all war crimes must be reported and they must be dealt with. These are conclusions drawn up in the Nuremberg Trials and the Japan Tribunals.
These are a part of the Geneva Conventions, the the USA ignores at its own pleasure.
These are laws by the International Criminal Court in the Hague the the USA uses only at its own pleasure.
It is the uniform that is in disgrace here and not the young man in it. The continued breaking of the laws governing war by the USA is the tragedy here and most certainly not a disgrace to Bradley Manning.
The military will try and convict Manning, because they can. Justice has nothing to do with this charade it is all about keeping future leaks of criminal activity under wraps. If Manning were the issue the entire Military Court would consist of PFC’s.
I don't know what I admire most, that you did this, that you have the basic courage to talk about it, or that you understand how important the issue is.
That I called the Military Commissions Act of 2006 "loathsome" and pointed out it would create guys like Manning made me the most censored loudmouth on fake news sites. The list of prior restraint sites grows all the time.
It's the most sensitive subject I've addressed. Notice that you don't see this sort of thing on other sites? They're afraid words will get them into trouble. Oh gawd, not that.
Silence is treason, and RSN is America's best friend.
When I was in the military, there was a saying: "Three ways to do something, the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way."
Today is seems that the wrong way and the Army way have become synonymous.
Well, without knowing what the criteria are for allowing a reporter access or denying access, it's hard to know if there will be fair coverage. For instance, can you get in touch with reporters from Truthdig, Truthout, Common Dreams and see if they have access? If not, who will report fairly? WE can not count on any of the major media to give a fair account.
I see a lot of people commenting out of ignorance. The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) REQUIRES Military Personnel to pursue their knowledge of WAR CRIMES. Manning tried to go up his chain of command and they blew him off. What do do next? He's 22, what does he know. Publicizes as best he can.
For an awful long time, I thought The United States of America would not do War Crimes. My Lai taught me different. NOW, I'm saddened to find that so many people just Do Not Want To Be Told, and are perfectly willing to KILL THE MESSENGER. Bradley Manning is a hero, even though he tried hard not to be.
Millions of dollars; thousands of man hours; thousands of pages of useless rhetoric - all for a defendent who should be given the Medal of Honor and sent home.
It's obvious that critical thinking is not our governmental and military leaders strong suit.
We have the greatest defense machine ever assembled...and I feel as safe as a worm on a hook.
In case anyone wants to know, I quit being a patriot when Reagan was elected and nothing I have seen since then has indicated to me that I should become one.
From the greatest country in the World...to one of the worst - in just 33 years(or more). What a waste.
I find it curious that we have a government that by law and policy maneuvers to know about all our emails, our phone conversations and essentially our thoughts while everything done by the government and their military is "classified." What is wrong with this picture? Could it be that democracy is dead--that we live under a totalitarian regime that, in addition to two hot wars, is secretly conducting World War III right there in the Oval Office?


Source Credit Added Pub. L. 106-113, div. B, §1000(a)(9) [title IV, §4604(a)], Nov. 29, 1999, 113 Stat. 1536, 1501A-567; amended Pub. L. 107-273, div. C, title III, §13202(a)(1), (c)(1), Nov. 2, 2002, 116 Stat. 1901, 1902; Pub. L. 112-29, §6(a), Sept. 16, 2011, 125 Stat. 299; Pub. L. 112-274, §1(d)(2), Jan. 14, 2013, 126 Stat. 2456.
(a) In General.—Subject to the provisions of this chapter, a person who is not the owner of a patent may file with the Office a petition to institute an inter partes review of the patent. The Director shall establish, by regulation, fees to be paid by the person requesting the review, in such amounts as the Director determines to be reasonable, considering the aggregate costs of the review.
(b) Scope.—A petitioner in an inter partes review may request to cancel as unpatentable 1 or more claims of a patent only on a ground that could be raised under section 102 or 103 and only on the basis of prior art consisting of patents or printed publications.
(2) if a post-grant review is instituted under chapter 32, the date of the termination of such post-grant review.
2013—Subsec. (c)(1). Pub. L. 112–274 struck out "or issuance of a reissue of a patent" after "grant of a patent".
2011—Pub. L. 112–29 amended section generally. Prior to amendment, section related to request for inter partes reexamination.
Subsec. (a). Pub. L. 107–273, §13202(a)(1)(A), substituted "third-party requester" for "person".
Subsec. (c). Pub. L. 107–273, §13202(a)(1)(B), substituted "The" for "Unless the requesting person is the owner of the patent, the".
"(A) In general.—The amendments made by subsection (a) [enacting section 319 of this title and amending this section and sections 312 to 318 of this title] shall take effect upon the expiration of the 1-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act [Sept. 16, 2011] and shall apply to any patent issued before, on, or after that effective date.
"(B) Graduated implementation.—The Director [Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office] may impose a limit on the number of inter partes reviews that may be instituted under chapter 31 of title 35, United States Code, during each of the first 4 1-year periods in which the amendments made by subsection (a) are in effect, if such number in each year equals or exceeds the number of inter partes reexaminations that are ordered under chapter 31 of title 35, United States Code, in the last fiscal year ending before the effective date of the amendments made by subsection (a)."
Chapter effective Nov. 29, 1999, and applicable to any patent issuing from an original application filed in the United States on or after that date, see section 1000(a)(9) [title IV, §4608(a)] of Pub. L. 106–113, set out as an Effective Date of 1999 Amendment note under section 41 of this title.
Pub. L. 112–29, §6(c)(1), Sept. 16, 2011, 125 Stat. 304, provided that: "The Director [Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office] shall, not later than the date that is 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act [Sept. 16, 2011], issue regulations to carry out chapter 31 of title 35, United States Code, as amended by subsection (a) of this section."
Pub. L. 112–274, §1(d)(1), Jan. 14, 2013, 126 Stat. 2456, provided that: "Section 311(c) of title 35, United States Code, shall not apply to a petition to institute an inter partes review of a patent that is not a patent described in section 3(n)(1) of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act [Pub. L. 112–29] (35 U.S.C. 100 note)."
Pub. L. 106–113, div. B, §1000(a)(9) [title IV, subtitle F, §4606], Nov. 29, 1999, 113 Stat. 1536, 1501A–571, required the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office to submit to Congress a report on possible inequities of certain inter partes reexamination proceedings no later than 5 years after Nov. 29, 1999.


text:
Conference “Public-Private Partnership in Transport Sector” was held on May, 20 at the Graduate School of Management St. Petersburg State University (GSOM SPbU). It was organized by the Center for PPP Studies, GSOM SPbU. More than 150 representatives of the Ministry of Transport of Russia, federal and regional public authorities, largest transport companies and higher educational institutions in the field of transport took part in the conference. Main participants were students, doctoral students and young researchers representing more than 10 Russian universities, institutes and academies doing research in the field of public-private partnership in different areas of transport.
Head of the Department of Public Administration SPbU, Minister of Transport of Russia Maxim Yu. Sokolov and Deputy Director of the Graduate School of Management SPbU Konstantin V. Krotov welcomed the participants of the conference, stressed the importance of research in the field of public-private partnership and pointed out the role of the Center for PPP Studies GSOM SPbU in creation and dissemination of knowledge in the field of PPP and expert support of real PPP projects. Minister of Transport of Russia highlighted the positive dynamics in educational activities of GSOM SPbU in the field of PPP: the number of bachelor students studying the academic discipline “Public-Private Partnership” more than doubled within a three-year period: from 18 in 2011 to 50 in 2014.
The first plenary session was opened by Maxim Yu. Sokolov. In his keynote speech “Application of Public-Private Partnership in the Transport Sector” he highlighted that the practice of large infrastructural projects implementation based on public-private partnership principles has already been established in Russia. The most successful experience of PPP, according to the Minister of Transport, is the use of concession mechanism in the road sector. Examples of this mechanism are the projects of the construction of “Western High-Speed Diameter”, a new exit on the Moscow Ring Road from the highway M-1 “Belarus” Moscow – Minsk”, individual sections of the highway M-11 “Moscow – St.Petersburg”. Maxim Yu. Sokolov also expressed the hope that successful concession experience in the road sector would be used in other sectors in transport, for instance, in the construction of railways, sea and river ports, airports and airfields.
Further presentations were made by the representatives of public and private parties in PPP projects, representatives of the academic community and young researchers.
The presentation of the Head of the Center for PPP Studies GSOM SPbU Svetlana V. Maslova was devoted to the current trends and research of public-private partnership in the field of transport. Particular attention was paid to the role of PPP in achieving Sustainable Development Goals which are going to be adopted by the UN General Assembly in September, 2015. Svetlana V. Maslova also showed the goals and content of the UNECE International PPP Standards. The Center for PPP Studies will take part in the development of these Standards for roads, airports and railways.
Deputy Chairman of the Board on Legal Questions of State Company “Avtodor” Konstantin I. Popov described the experience of concession agreements implementation for federal toll roads based on two major models – direct toll concession and concession grantor payment. He presented specific characteristics of the prequalification stage and tender evaluation criteria for road projects M-11 “Moscow – St. Petersburg” (15 – 58 km), M-1 “Belarus” – passby of Odintsovo (projects are at the stage of operation), M-11 “Moscow – St. Petersburg” (543 – 684 km) (project is at the implementation stage).
Head of Legal and P3 Department of the Federal Road Agency Elena N. Semenova characterized the development of modern intellectual transport systems (ITS) in PPP projects, capable of ensuring road safety and maximum comfort for drivers. Particular attention was paid to the existing intellectual transport systems in Russia, mechanisms of ITS implementation, financing of ITS in PPP projects.
Deputy Head of Infrastructure Capital & Project Finance at VTB Capital Andrey V. Kiselev identified key factors of successful implementation of the project of construction and operation of “Western High-Speed Diameter” (WHSD). He also described the process of WHSD Central Part construction.
Representatives of “Northern Capital Gateway” Margarita V. Belyaeva and Yaroslav G. Zubilov shared the experience of the implementation of PPP project on construction and operation of Pulkovo Airport.
Bachelor students of the programs “Bachelor of Management” and “Bachelor of Public Administration” GSOM SPbU Andrey Zinchenko, Sofia Gromova and Sofia Gladushchenko made a presentation on international experience of PPP projects implementation in the field of transport. The cases of Athens International Airport (Greece), Limerick Tunnel (Ireland), Canada Line Light Rail (Canada) were considered by the students.
The next event of the conference was conducted by Svetlana V. Maslova and Head of PPP and External Relations Department at St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region Transport System Development Directorate Olga A. Potiforova as a workshop “Implementation of Joint PPP Projects in St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region”. A distinctive feature of this event was the fact that bachelor students of GSOM SPbU Ruzalia Mingazova, Alesya Gubanova, Anastasia Trofimova, Sofia Gladushchenko, Andrey Zinchenko and Ksenia Bakay acted as PPP experts showing their deep knowledge of public-private partnership and practical skills of structuring the PPP projects. They shared their vision on the perspectives of the PPP project implementation on construction and operation of the Transport Hub “Devyatkino”, by considering financial, legal, technical aspects of the project as well as the possibility of multiple public partners’ (Russian Federation, St. Petersburg, Leningrad Region) participation in the project.
At the second plenary session, chaired by the Chief Researcher of the Center for PPP Studies GSOM SPbU Andrey E. Ivanov, presentations of young researchers, students and doctoral students as well as novice PPP practitioners were shown. Doctoral student of Far Eastern State Transport University and Consultant at the Government of Khabarovsk Krai Danil Grigoryev described the PPP project on the construction of the highway “Khabarovsk Bypass 13 – 42 km”. GSOM SPbU master student Svetlana Kolokoltseva characterized the methods of risk assessment in PPP projects, including the application of Monte-Carlo method for the project “Western High-Speed Diameter”. Doctoral student of St. Petersburg State University of Economics and Leading Legal Adviser of “Northern Capital Gateway” presented the methods of balancing public and private interests in PPP projects. Doctoral student of the Admiral Makarov State University of Maritime and Inland Shipping and Head of the Financial and Economic Department at Rosmorport Naina Yu. Bodrovtseva presented the mechanism of public-private partnership in the construction of seaports. Ruling in the financial strategies of PPP with large transport corporations was considered in the presentation of the Associate Professor of Rostov State Transport University Olga V. Andreeva. GSOM SPbU bachelor students spoke about different aspects of PPP in transport sector. Ruzalia Mingazova presented institutional aspects of PPP development at the national and international levels. Anzhelika Gurkova presented the application of PPP mechanisms to solve the problems of monocities, Yulia Lychagina considered the prospects for the creation of the PPP Center in the transport sector, and Alesya Gubanova presented various techniques of risk management in PPP projects in the transport sector.
All the events of the conference were accompanied by the lively discussion among young researchers, PPP experts, representatives of the transport sector and academic community. Summing up the conference, Maxim Yu. Sokolov expressed his hope that the conference would become a tradition, and next year even more participants interested in the development of PPP in Russia would take part in the event.

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