Re: is communication a requirement to collaborate?

Christian Guttmann wrote:
> 
> 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.
> 

You may wish to read "The Invisible Hand" -- I think it was by Adam Smith
but I'm not sure of that.

It's about how humans collaborate to achieve the most efficient use of 
resources by using money as a universal medium of exchange.  

This is not really "with no communication of any kind" -- obviously 
an agent with no information input of any kind cannot collaborate with
anyone or anything.   But by creating a marketplace and negotiating 
prices at a local level in response to market conditions, individual 
actors contribute to large-scale market movements and drive fundamental
changes in the way things are done.  

They aren't really acting according to a plan, but the flow of money
in a free-market economy gives rise to a "collaboration" to extract
the greates possible utility, with a design far more complex and subtle 
than any single actor could have envisioned.  

                                Bear

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