A Formal Critique of the Value of the Colombian Páramo

This article presents conceptual and methodological frameworks to prioritise interventions on the Colombian P\'aramo. The mode of analysis that our work takes up is that of questioning value and related categories as definite empirically perceived phenomena. We contend that the valuation of ecosystem services -- even in its post-normal forms -- and the ecosystem services framework not only fail to examine value-based categories, but reproduce the problematic aspects of value-based social relations, which ultimately bear on the ecological issues affecting the P\'aramo. Upon this premise we set out to formalise a (computational) dialogical scenario where arguments stating distinct, and often contradictory, actions delineate possible forms of appropriating the P\'aramo, while motivating the examination of their defining sociality.

Delegating via Quitting Games

Delegation allows an agent to request that another agent completes a task. In many situations the task may be delegated onwards, and this process can repeat until it is eventually, successfully or unsuccessfully, performed. We consider policies to guide an agent in choosing who to delegate to when such recursive interactions are possible. These policies, based on quitting games and multi-armed bandits, were empirically tested for effectiveness. Our results indicate that the quitting game based policies outperform those which do not explicitly account for the recursive nature of delegation.