At some point, one agent's goal will conflict with another. (e.g., WRECKER vs. BUILDER -- which might have been called by WRECKER earlier!) (NB: This is a basic issue with production system architectures, too.)
Minsky assumes "that conflicts between agents tend to migrate upward to higher levels. For example, any prolonged conflict between Builder and Wrecker will tend to weaken their mutual superior, Play-with-Blocks."
(NB: My sense here is that agents are "active", where activity = the ability to seize control. Conflict weakens this activity, and as a result weakens the ability of the superior agent to repress its competitors. Hmmm..this makes me wonder whether such competetive processes could be modeled in a hierarchical winner-take-all network, because obviously the superior agent is competing with other superiors, just as its subordinate agents are competing against each other.)
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