Cooperation and Competition (was Anarchy)

[Martin Taylor 2000.06.28 21.44]
Going back to before I went on holiday...

[From Mike Acree (2000.0501.1340 PDT)]

Rick Marken (2000.05.01.1310)--

>I have some questions.
>
>1. What is "cooperation"?
>
>2. How did Darwin (or any evolutionary biologist) know when
>it was occurring and when it was not?

Reasonable questions. It was my intention to be granting the most liberal
possible definition of cooperation in my example of the bees and the
flowers. But we should probably ask Martin. I don't necessarily fault him
for having introduced the terms without defining them, but I do think he
owes us an explanation (when he returns) of the very strange idea that
cooperation and competition are themselves in competition.

I thought I had defined them pretty well in the Web site discussed by
Mike: <http://www.mmtaylor.net/PCT/Mutuality/index.html&gt;, but
apparently not. Here goes, again.

In my terminology, "cooperation" occurs when the actions of one
control system eases the control exercised by another. "Competition"
occurs when the actions of one control system makes it more difficult
for another to control. Neither need perceive the existence or the
actions of the other. In the analysis that led to this discussion,
the effects were largely side effects. Neither "cooperation" nor
"competition" need be reciprocal.

"Cooperation" often happens because the actions of one control system
either reduce the influence of a disturbing variable on the
perceptual signal of another, or because the actions of one control
system affect the environmental feedback path through which the other
influences its complex environmental variable.

"Competition" often happens because the environmental variables of
two control systems are not orthogonal, so that the control actions
of one necessarily disturb the perceptions of the other. But it can
happen that it is the side effects of one's control actions that
disturb the perceptions of the other. In that case it is the output
vector of one that is not orthogonal to the perceptual vector of the
other, even though the two perceptual vectors may be orthogonal.

The two effects are labels for the poles of a continuum, in which the
central point is orthogonailty.

"Cooperation" wins out over "competition" in the sense that
reorganization tends toward conditions of better control. Better
control occurs more readily when the actions of one control system
ease control by the other system than when its actions make control
by the other more difficult.

Naturally, in a world of many control systems, a _global_ measure of
competition and cooperation will be a vector measure, and some of the
elements of the vector will be on the cooperative side and some on
the competitive side. The vector will have n*(n-1) elements of the
form Xij,
which is the degree to which the actions of control system i
aids/inhibits the control performance of control system j.

My contention is that in a long-evolved system of interacting control
units, the mean of Xij over all ij tends toward more cooperation,
despite the obvious fact that some competition is inevitable (some
Xij will be strongly competitive). That is the sense in which I claim
"cooperation wins out over competition." See
<http://www.mmtaylor.net/PCT/Mutuality/index.html&gt; for more detail.

Sorry to drag this up again after so long, but Mike did say I owed an
explanation when I returned, in a message I didn't see until after I
returned from a subsequent trip.

Martin

[From Bill Powers (2000.06.29.0029 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2000.06.28 21.44--

In my terminology, "cooperation" occurs when the actions of one
control system eases the control exercised by another. "Competition"
occurs when the actions of one control system makes it more difficult
for another to control.

I would like to see these two terms, cooperation and competition, reserved
to mean social perceptions that people control. You're using them to
describe objective situations -- as you're defining cooperation and
competition, it makes no difference whether the parties involved intend to
be cooperating or competing, or perceive that they are doing so.

Competing entails an objective relationship of mutual interference: our
word for that is conflict. A corresponding term for cooperation, as you
define it, might be facilitation, although there may be a better one.

By using the terms conflict and [facilitation for now], we can refer to the
objective situations as you have defined them. This leaves the terms
competition and cooperation to mean _deliberately selected and maintained
conflict or facilitation_. People moving furniture together minimize
conflict by intentionally seeking a relationship with another person that
aligns their efforts rather than pitting them against each other. They
control to maintain cooperation. Wrestlers seek a state of competition with
other wrestlers, which is what defines a wrestling match. They control to
maintain conflict.

Is this change of terminology acceptable?

Best,

Bill P.

[From Rick Marken (2000.06.29.0845)]

Bill Powers (2000.06.29.0029 MDT)--

I would like to see these two terms, cooperation and
competition, reserved to mean social perceptions that
people control...

By using the terms conflict and [facilitation for now],
we can refer to the objective situations as you have
defined them.

Is this change of terminology acceptable?

Yes. Great idea.

Competition and cooperation refer to controlled social
perceptions. Conflict and facilitation refer to observed
behavior. What is observed (conflict and facilitation) may
or may not be a side effect of controlling social perceptions
(competition and cooperation, respectively). The only way to
find out is to test for the controlled variable.

Best

Rick

ยทยทยท

---
Richard S. Marken Phone or Fax: 310 474-0313
MindReadings.com mailto: marken@mindreadings.com
www.mindreadings.com

[Martin Taylor 2000.06.30 10:35]

[From Bill Powers (2000.06.29.0029 MDT)]

Martin Taylor 2000.06.28 21.44--

>In my terminology, "cooperation" occurs when the actions of one
>control system eases the control exercised by another. "Competition"
>occurs when the actions of one control system makes it more difficult
>for another to control.

I would like to see these two terms, cooperation and competition, reserved
to mean social perceptions that people control. You're using them to
describe objective situations -- as you're defining cooperation and
competition, it makes no difference whether the parties involved intend to
be cooperating or competing, or perceive that they are doing so.

Competing entails an objective relationship of mutual interference: our
word for that is conflict.

No, what I called "competition" is not the same thing as "conflict",
not in the PCT sense of conflict. See below.

A corresponding term for cooperation, as you
define it, might be facilitation, although there may be a better one.

I don't mind "facilitation." It doesn't have the reciprocal
connotation of "cooperation," nor does it have a connotation that
apparently some people have--that "cooperation" must be conscious. I
think this connotation strange. Bees clearly cooperate, but I very
much doubt that they control a perception of cooperating!

Forcing this "controlled perception" connotation onto the notion of
cooperation is a very odd thing to do, but if saying "facilitation"
will avoid that issue, I'm willing to "cooperate."

Is this change of terminology acceptable?

Partially. Any change in terminology that can aid people to focus on
an issue rather than arguing at cross-purposes is good.

Why don't I like "conflict" as a substitute for "competition"
(incidentally, I don't really like "competition" either, but it's
better than "conflict").

"Conflict" has a technical meaning in PCT as I understand it.
Conflict occurs when two control systems each control a perception of
the same environmental variable (or two correlated environmental
variables, though in this case the conflict is resolvable).
"Competition" as I defined it occurs whenever the actions of one
control system reduce the ability of another to control. That can
happen in many ways. Remember that we are dealing with _elementary_
control systems (systems controlling one scalar perceptual variable).

Assuming that no external control system can influence what happens
inside the "skin" of another control system (i.e. the paths from
sensor input to effector output), here are some places where it can
influence the ability of the other to control:
    -- it can alter the environmental feedback path from the effector
output to the CEV
    -- it can alter the relationship between the CEV and the sensors
    -- it can influence the power supply to the affected control
system, which affects its output gain.
    -- it can produce a disturbance to the CEV of the affected system;
this comes in two forms: (a) side effects disturb the CEV, or (b)
conflict.

I would like a term that covers all these. "Negative facilitation" or
"anti-facilitation" would do, since the first three items in the list
could be either facilitatory or the reverse. But that's a bit of a
mouthful. "Inhibition" doesn't cut it, either. Technically, I suppose
"antagonism" would be precise if you go back to the Greek roots, but
now it carries connotations of higher-level perceptions even more
strongly than does "competition."

In sum, I have no term at hand that I would happily substitute for
"competition." I await further suggestions.

Martin