Mortal God—Dying God?

Mortal Multi-Armed Bandits

We formulate and study a new variant of the k-armed bandit problem, motivated by e-commerce applications. In our model, arms have (stochastic) lifetime after which they expire. In this setting an algorithm needs to continuously explore new arms, in contrast to the standard k-armed bandit model in which arms are available indefinitely and exploration is reduced once an optimal arm is identified ...

Evolving mortal networks.

We discuss a class of models for the evolution of tree networks in which new nodes are recruited into the network at random times, and nodes already in the network may die at random times. Stochastic mechanisms for growth and death of the network that are either sensitive or insensitive to the coordination number or degree of nodes are studied using simulations and mean-field approximations. Cr...

Bacteria and phagocytes: mortal enemies.

The research presented in this issue finds historical resonance in a classical scientific debate. Russian biologist Ilya Metchnikoff [1, 2] was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1908 for the development of the phagocyte theory, the central tenet of which was that the ‘swallowing and digestion’ of bacteria by circulating ‘white corpuscles’ (neutrophils and macrophages), enhanced by prior opsonization, ...

God Knows (But does God Believe?)

The standard view in epistemology is that propositional knowledge entails belief. Positive arguments are seldom given for this entailment thesis, however; instead, its truth is typically assumed. Against the entailment thesis, Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (forthcoming) report that a non trivial percentage of people think that there can be propositional knowledge without belief. In this paper, ...

Mortal outcomes when opportunity knocks.