Formalizing Deceptive Reasoning in Breaking Bad: Default Reasoning in a Doxastic Logic

The rich expressivity provided by the cognitive event calculus (CEC) knowledge representation framework allows for reasoning over deeply nested beliefs, desires, intentions, and so on. I put CEC to the test by attempting to model the complex reasoning and deceptive planning used in an episode of the popular television show Breaking Bad. CEC is used to represent the knowledge used by reasoners coming up with plans like the ones devised by the fictional characters I describe. However, it becomes clear that a form of nonmonotonic reasoning is necessary—specifically so that an agent can reason about the nonmonotonic beliefs of another agent. I show how CEC can be augmented to have this ability, and then provide examples detailing how my proposed augmentation enables much of the reasoning used by agents such as the Breaking Bad characters. I close by discussing what sort of reasoning tool would be necessary to implement such nonmonotonic reasoning.