The Cognitive Crucible is a forum that presents different perspectives and emerging thought leadership related to the information environment. The opinions expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of or endorsement by the Information Professionals Association.

During this episode, Prof Matt Jackson of Stanford University discusses social learning, game theory, and an optimization methodology for minimizing the spread of disinformation.

Research Question:

• There's a difference between entertainment and becoming informed. How do we produce systems which are both entertaining & informing?

Resources:

• Matt Jackson's Stanford Web Page
• Learning through the grapevine and the impact of the breadth and depth of social networks by Matthew O. Jackson, Suraj Malladi, and David McAdams
• The Human Network by Matthew Jackson
• Measuring Group Differences in High-Dimensional Choices: Method and Application to Congressional Speech by Matthew Gentzkow, Jesse M. Shapiro, and Matt Taddy
• The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich

Link to full show notes and resources

https://information-professionals.org/episode/cognitive-crucible-episode-116

Guest Bio:

Matthew O. Jackson is the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University and an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. He was at Northwestern University and Caltech before joining Stanford, and received his BA from Princeton University in 1984 and PhD from Stanford in 1988. Jackson's research interests include game theory, microeconomic theory, and the study of social and economic networks, on which he has published many articles and the books `The Human Network' and `Social and Economic Networks'. He also teaches an online course on networks and co-teaches two others on game theory. Jackson is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Game Theory Society Fellow, and an Economic Theory Fellow, and his other honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Social Choice and Welfare Prize, the von Neumann Award from Rajk Laszlo College, an honorary doctorate from Aix-Marseille University, the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize from the Toulouse School of Economics, the B.E.Press Arrow Prize for Senior Economists, the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Economics, Finance, and Management, and teaching awards. He has served on the editorial boards of Econometrica, Games and Economic Behavior, PNAS, the Review of Economic Design, and as the President of the Game Theory Society.

About: The Information Professionals Association (IPA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the role of information activities, such as influence and cognitive security, within the national security sector and helping to bridge the divide between operations and research. Its goal is to increase interdisciplinary collaboration between scholars and practitioners and policymakers with an interest in this domain.

For more information, please contact us at [email protected].

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