XPost: comp.ai.alife   
   From: dnk@OMIT.cs.mu.oz.au   
      
   In  Christian Guttmann  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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