arXiv 论文提出多智能体变分推理模型检验费耶阿本德理论多元主义
Can Network Models of Science Do Without Pluralist Agents?
有篇论文把费耶阿本德的科学哲学做成了多智能体变分推理实验，对比单一理论和多元理论社区怎么更新信念，哲学加建模的思路挺有意思。
这篇 arXiv 论文构建了一个多智能体变分推理实验框架，用来检验 Paul Feyerabend 的理论多元主义观点。模型对比了两类社区：能同时持有多个对立理论的多元主义智能体，和只能维护单一模型的 monist 智能体。实验演示了持有对立理论的社区如何经历不确定期后转向新理论，以及社区间通信的信息在各方观察不同时如何影响信念。论文还区分了分享理论支持度与在理论内部分享信念对集体信念动态的不同贡献。
Can Network Models of Science Do Without Pluralist Agents?
Science is a process of useful models being proven wrong time and again, but despite its many flaws, it somehow works. Why is this? Paul Feyerabend argued that it works because people dare to hold and defend incompatible rival theories against the accepted one, since a theory's failures often lead to its abandonment in the presence of a more accurate or simpler alternative. He called this view theoretical pluralism. We introduce a theoretical and experimental model in which this can be examined. It compares communities of pluralist agents, which can hold rival theories side by side and maintain beliefs within and between those theories, with communities of monist agents, which can only incorporate what they hear or observe into a single model of their own. In a multi-agent variational inference setting, our experimental demonstrations illustrate how communities with rival theories can go through periods of uncertainty followed by a shift in the theories they hold true, how the information that is communicated between communities affects beliefs when those communities make different observations about the world, and how sharing support for theories and sharing beliefs within them contribute differently to collective belief dynamics.
