Re: is communication a requirement to collaborate?

On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 06:46:24 +0000, Christian Guttmann wrote:

>  > 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.

Assuming that there is some kind of flow of information (e.g. the
agents can observe the behavior of each other or detect the
outcome of their encounters) the answer is yes. In the Prisoner's
Dilemma there are examples of simulations that evolve cooperative
behavior; see for example

  Martin Nowak and Karl Sigmund
  "A strategy of win-stay, lose-shift that outperforms
   tit-for-tat in the Prisoner's Dilemma game"
  Nature, vol 364, pp. 56-58, 1993

(There may be better references, but I happened to have the
 above lying on my desk.)

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