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Hi Dan,
A lot of people are interested in that paper, and to date I haven't
found my copy of it, although I know Dad's cache of copies is in the mountain
range in my basement (boxes and boxes and boxes...). The good news is that I'm
told I'll have lots of help early in the new year, sorting and cataloguing
all those boxes, in preparation for relocating my father's reference library. A
good-sized team of helpers would make the work go very fast; about a week, maybe
two at the outside. Right now, it's kind of a low priority for me because I've
got way too much to handle as it is, and I've added BioTheory onto the list of
"things to do".
When I find the cache, I'll post an announcement on the list, I
promise!
Judith
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, December 16, 2004 3:37
PM
Subject: Re: [ROSEN] A novel way to look
at mathematics...
Judith Rosen wrote:
snip
> *I've mentioned on the list
before that my father wrote a paper based on
> "the tragedy of the
common", where he showed, mathematically, that what
> is optimal (in
terms of strategy with the common and one's herd of
> sheep) using a
short time horizon turns out to be very sub-optimal if
> the time
horizon is lengthened. So the decisions made based on a
> short-term
view are very different from the decisions that would be made
> if the
view of time were lengthened. I should think it would be possible
> to
show, mathematically, how small changes in context can radically
>
alter values and plug the results into a similar gradient like the one
> involving time. Time is also a context, so this kind of analysis can
be
> extremely useful in a cautionary way. Any takers on the
list?*
snip
Judith,
Can you tell me the paper re: Tragedy of
the Common, give a
citation or link to online version? I'd be interested to
read it.
Avoiding this effect is an interesting aspect of the
part-whole
relation in living systems and provides a neat comparison
of
the fundamental and systemic/relational difference between
non-human
vs human-dominated living systems. Non-human
systems (like forests, other
natural communities/ecosystems)
seem largely to avoid this tragedy and in
fact show the
opposite - a kind of bounty of the commons. This bounty is
seen
in the various forms of stored and accumulated "natural
capital"
such as soils, biodiversity, uniquely adapted
communities,
novel evolved organisms, etc. etc. By comparison,
humans
consume all these forms of shared capital and more, like
fossil
fuels. Understanding the organizational differences that lead
to
tragedy of commons on one hand vs bounty of commons on
the other could be
great for helping us navigate The Great
Transition or the Great Turning as
some call the transition to
sustainable human societies and
human-environment relation.
One last related point - a paper I have on
a software field called
collective intelligence (or COIN) mentions the
danger of the
tragedy of the common as arising when interacting
adaptive
software agents put individual fitness or utility functions
above
some global fitness/utility function. This paper also talks
about
another part-whole, group dynamics pitfall, the "liquidity
trap",
which I am not familiar with. I can send the link for this
paper
if anyone is interested.
Thanks for any info on your father's
paper on this...
Dan
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