How do we know how to act together?

By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How do we know how to act together?
Jonathan Birch, London School of Economics, 2019/03/06
"Think of a simple act of cooperation: two people pick up a sofa together, carry it into a room, and put it down on the floor." This is a remarkable thing, and while Jonathan Birch wonders why humans can do this and apes can't, I'm more interested in wondering how it can be done at all. What's interesting is that "each person knows how to do their own individual part in a way that actively enables the other person to do the above three things." What do we need in order to make this work? Language? No, the cues can be non-verbal. Shared objective? Well, maybe, though the exact objective is constantly shifting and changing (sure, you want the couch in the room, but where exactly in the room?). Birch says, "what I can’t imagine is joint know-how without any understanding of each other’s thoughts." But suppose your couch-carrying partner is a robot without thoughts, but which behaves the same way your partner would. More...