Re: is communication a requirement to collaborate?

In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Christian Guttmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>Hello,

>I am currently looking into communication and collaboration among 
>agents. Does anyone have an educated answer about the following question.

> > Is collaboration possible without communication?

>By "without communication", I mean: no exchange of any information 
>whatsoever - not before collaboration, not during collaboration, not 
>through the environment, not through signals and not through direct means.

>In case, anyone has a positive answer, it would be helpful if there is 
>also a publication about this matter.

>I am looking forward to responses.

>/Christian

It depends on what exactly you mean by collaboration and how strictly
you interpret the "no exchange of any information" caveat.  If you
mean information in the sense of Shannon, the answer is probably no.
But if you allow that agents can simply observe each other's behaviour,
then I'd say yes.

Suppose you and I are walking towards each other on a footpath/sidewalk
heading for a collision.  We both notice this and deviate to avoid it,
perhaps using a model of expected agent behaviour to both diverge to our
respective left (or maybe right in the USA).  I'd call that cooperation
without communication.  Here cooperation is just avoiding interference,
while collaboration usually means working to jointly achieve a shared
goal.  But you could even argue that a shared goal "avoid collision" has
arisen by chance in this situation, so it is a case of collaboration.

More generally, provided they can observe each other's behaviour, agents
can learn to cooperate or collaborate without communication by building
and refining models of each other's behaviour, knowledge and motivation,
then using these to adjust their own behaviours.

David

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