Cooperation in Learning LO4411

William Courtney (bcourtne@jove.acs.unt.edu)
Fri, 22 Dec 1995 20:18:42 -0600 (CST)

I must admit to being a part-time lurker on this list ... so I may have
missed the thread(s) that speaks to cooperation in learning. In the spirit
of bringing something to the table I would like to point out the work
being done on computational ecology by Bernardo Huberman and co-workers at
Xerox PARC on cooperation. (If you follow this list via Lycos searches
just put Bernardo Huberman in as a search argument ... adding "learning
org" and getting no hits is what convinced me to finally post to this
list).

I think there is something to be learned about cooperation in learning
organizations... and the models described by Huberman and Natalie Glance
are truly fascinating.

As a sample of what you will find ... and a little light reading for the
holidays ...

Beliefs and Cooperation

Bernardo A.Huberman and Natalie S.Glance
(huberman | glance)@parc.xerox.com
Dynamics of Computation Group
Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Palo Alto, CA 94304

Abstract

Individuals in groups must often choose between acting selfishly and
cooperating for the common good. The choices they make are based on their
beliefs on how they expect their actions to affect others. We show that
for a broad set of beliefs and group characteristics cooperation can
appear spontaneously in non-cooperative groups after very long periods of
time. When delays in information are unavoidable the group dynamics
acquires a wide repertoire of behaviors, ranging from opportunistic
oscillations to bursty chaos, thus excluding the possibility of sustained
cooperation.

Merry Christmas ...
Bill Courtney

--
William Courtney <bcourtne@jove.acs.unt.edu>