Roberto Infante

Cognitive computing · decision-making in humans and machines

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Roberto Infante

Awareness of unawareness

Uncertainty: exploring the current hypotheses inside your hypothesis set.

t = {h₁, h₂, h₃}

Unawareness: the feeling that the correct hypothesis h* is not in the set at all.

P(h* ∉ ℋt) > 0

uncertainty your hypothesis set h₁ h₂ h₃ ? "which one of these is right?" unawareness your hypothesis set h₁ h₂ h₃ h* (the right one) "...I feel like it's not even in here"

What does the agent do next?

We frame this not as search but as an information need: keep seeking information vs commit.

information need confident commit act on the best h still not confident information seeking ℋₜ seems adequate ℋₜ seems inadequate within-space seeking h*? space-expanding seeking
I don't know if we should condition on type of seeking or leave it general.

What alternative explanations matter?

Anything else that could cause the same information-seeking behavior without awareness of unawareness: ordinary uncertainty, low confidence, noise, missing evidence, misunderstanding, random exploration, a generic "always reconsider" strategy, search-cost differences.

Sequential decision-making

A decision problem is sequential when the agent does not choose only once; the agent faces later decision points whose circumstances may depend on earlier choices, information, or changes in preference.

bt action new evidence update bt+1commit final choice after the end learning

The final choice may or may not prompt action. The learning that happens after the end is outside our span (for now).

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Bounded agent

A bounded agent cannot consider every possible explanation, action, or future consequence due to limited resources.


What is h? tentative

Currently working on this — August 8, 2026