Re: Multiparticipant processes

drew.mcdermott@yale.edu said:
> Another example:  A neutral description of a simultaneous chess match
> between Kasparov and 100 patzers might say:

>     repeat until all games are over
>       repeat for i = 1 to 100
> 	 if game i is not over
> 	   patzer i makes mediocre move in game i
> 	   Kasparov makes brilliant move in game i

> But patzer i's egocentric description does not mention making a
> mediocre move; it just says, "Make the best move you can think of in
> the time alloted."  Kasparov's egocentric description says much the
> same thing. 

Drew,

I probably miss something important,  but I do not understand your example.  I 
expect that the process is described in the following way:

     repeat until all games are over
       repeat for i = 1 to 100
 	 if game i is not over
 	   patzer i makes move in game i
 	   Kasparov makes move in game i

The description of the process should not dictate what move they make or the 
quality of the move, that depends on the quality of the players and on their 
individual goals (Kasparov may have some reasons of his own to lose the game, 
so he may play really poorly.) Nor it should dictate what external observers 
think of the moves of the players. The description of the process should only 
dictate what each player does and when.  From this point of view I expect that 
the egocentric view can be derived from the neutral view.  For example, the 
description of the patzer's process contains only the moves that the patzer 
does and it should be something like the following:

     repeat until game is not over
	 I make move
 	 Kasparov makes move
 
While Kasparov's process is the following 

     repeat until all games are over
       repeat for i = 1 to 100
 	 if game i is not over
 	   patzer i makes move in game i
 	   I make move in game i


If I am correct, the distinction between neutral and egocentric view of the 
process becomes an implementation issue in which there are efficiency 
tradeoffs: the neutral view gives more control on the overall process by 
knowing what all the other participants are doing, while the egocentric view 
requires less information for each service, but possibly a lot of duplication 
across services.

What am I missing?

--- Massimo

Received on Tuesday, 9 October 2001 08:48:59 UTC