Inequality and fairness with heterogeneous endowments.

People differ in intelligence, cognitive ability, personality traits, motivation, and similar valued and, to a large degree, inherited characteristics that determine success and achievements. When does individual heterogeneity lead to a fair distribution of rewards and outcomes? Here, we develop this question theoretically and then test it experimentally for a set of structural conditions in a specific interaction situation. We first catalogue the functional relationship between individual endowments and outcomes to distinguish between fairness concepts such as meritocracy, equality of opportunity, equality of outcomes, and Rawl's theory of justice. We then use an online experiment to study which of these fairness patterns emerge when differently endowed individuals can share their resources with others, depending on whether information about others' endowments and outcomes is available. We find that while visible outcomes lessen inequality by decreasing the statistical dispersion of outcomes across the group, endowments need to be visible for better equality of opportunity for the most disadvantaged.

Remote optimization of an ultracold atoms experiment by experts and citizen scientists.

We introduce a remote interface to control and optimize the experimental production of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and find improved solutions using two distinct implementations. First, a team of theoreticians used a remote version of their dressed chopped random basis optimization algorithm (RedCRAB), and second, a gamified interface allowed 600 citizen scientists from around the world to participate in real-time optimization. Quantitative studies of player search behavior demonstrated that they collectively engage in a combination of local and global searches. This form of multiagent adaptive search prevents premature convergence by the explorative behavior of low-performing players while high-performing players locally refine their solutions. In addition, many successful citizen science games have relied on a problem representation that directly engaged the visual or experiential intuition of the players. Here we demonstrate that citizen scientists can also be successful in an entirely abstract problem visualization. This is encouraging because a much wider range of challenges could potentially be opened to gamification in the future.