Distributed Knowledge in Simplicial Models

TL;DR

This paper introduces simplicial models for multi-agent epistemic logic, connecting topology, distributed computing, and logic, and explores how these models elucidate distributed knowledge and its relation to consensus tasks.

Contribution

It presents simplicial complexes as an alternative to Kripke models for epistemic logic, highlighting their topological advantages and applying them to analyze distributed knowledge and consensus problems.

Findings

Simplicial models reveal n-ary indistinguishability relations.

Distributed knowledge relates to weaker tasks like majority consensus.

Logical obstructions explain unsolvable consensus scenarios.

Abstract

The usual semantics of multi-agent epistemic logic is based on Kripke models, defined in terms of binary relations on a set of possible worlds. Recently, there has been a growing interest in using simplicial complexes rather than graphs, as models for multi-agent epistemic logic. This approach uses agents' views as the fundamental object instead of worlds. A set of views by different agents about a world forms a simplex, and a set of simplexes defines a simplicial complex, that can serve as a model for multi-agent epistemic logic. This new approach reveals topological information that is implicit in Kripke models, because the binary indistinguishability relations are more clearly seen as n-ary relations in the simplicial complex. This paper, written for an economics audience, introduces simplicial models to non-experts and connects distributed computing, epistemic logic and topology. Our focus is on distributed knowledge and its fixed point, common distributed knowledge. These concepts arise when considering the knowledge that a group of agents would acquire, if they could communicate their local knowledge perfectly. While common knowledge has been shown to be related to consensus, we illustrate how distributed knowledge is related to a task weaker to consensus, called majority consensus. We describe three models of communication, some well-known (immediate snapshot), and others less studied (related to broadcast and test-and-set). When majority consensus is solvable, we describe the distributed knowledge that is used to solve it. When it is not solvable, we present a logical obstruction, a formula that should always be known according to the task specification, but which the players cannot know.