Introduction to group-level skills

Note: under construction: please check older version(s) at: (annotated Table of Content)

Working definitions:

• A skill is the capability to perform an action repeatedly, but adapted to current circumstances. Skills, therefore, control action and utilize perception. Skills are information structures, not physical objects. Innate skills are information structures that are encoded in the DNA of the individual.
• An action sequence (or action) is the observable activity that results from invoking or applying a skill.
• Action consequences are the 'real world' results of an action sequence.
• A plan is an information structure that involves the prediction of action-consequences associated with the hypothetical action-sequence resulting from the invocation of one or more skills.
• A task is an information structure that describes a desired action-consequence along with a plan.

A simple and very incomplete taxonomy of group-level skills, with illustrative examples.

Simple group-level skills, such as almost random mating without much ritual, do not involve intense information exchange between the first-layer individual-based coordinated skills, and therefore do not have much to simulate

• Mating rituals that have information exchanges need more complex individual-based skills for perceiving and generating these communication exchanges - and therefore should be treated at a higher layer of skill representation.
• Simple herd behaviour might just rely on simple mimicry without extensive skills at the group level
• Group behaviours that have divisiong of labour need more complex skills both at the individual and at the group level - and belong to a higher layer

 

An information-processing feasibility model is successful if it can simulate the phenomena to be described, within the simplifying assumptions that have been made explicit, and without violating major constraints that should also have been made explicit (such as not requiring a racial consciousness, and not requiring extra-sensory perception).