Notes Towards Day 20: Tragedy or Comedy of the Commons?

Notes Towards Day 20 of Food for Thought

I. Playing Prisoners' Dilemma: what happened?

theoretically: a non-zero-sum experience, in which
the best strategy increases your partner's pay-off
how to maximize one's own pay-off depends on partner;
there's no single best strategy

actually? experientially?

II. what experiences have you had of "playing"
prisoner's dilemma in your own life?

emily: A real world example of the prisoner's dilemma can be seen in The Tragedy of Commons essay, specifically the section about pollution

lraphael: my roommate in 9th grade (I went to a boarding school). We never spoke one word to each other the whole year. We were young and not ready to live on our own, so we only thought about our needs and didn't even bother to acknowledge each other's needs.

ihe: My real life example of Prisoner's Dilemma would be getting into trouble when i was young. We weren't allowed to chew gum in class, and my teacher caught me and my friend with gum. So we promised each other that neither of us would tell the teacher where we got the gum from. When the teacher spoke to us individually, I had said i didn't know wher ethe gum came from, and she told the teacher that i had given her the gum. got into trouble for that :(

SaraO: My own prisoner's dilemma (I'm sure I've had more but this is the easiest to remember) was in the 6th grade. A teacher of ours (he turned out to have severe psychological problems) accused me and a few girls from my homeroom of stealing his tax returns. He left varied "evidence" in two girls lockers. We had the choice of going our separate ways and leaving those two girls hanging out to dry, or to band together, and say we were all innocent, because we all happened to be together during the said incident. We stuck together, and we did well. Our principal realized that he was lying, and that he was a bit challenged. He was dismissed from the staff. 

cjewett: I would lose interest in my life if all I did was cooperate with everyone else, but I would become tired if I competed all my life.  For example, I have been practicting karate for eight years and I cooperate with everyone in my dojo to work on technique and help others.  But, it gets tiresome to always work at the pace of the slowest person and work as a group because naturally, everyone works at a different pace.  Once a year, we have a tournament and get to compete.  My really good friend and I compete against each other every year even though we spend all year helping each other with what we compete with.  That competition helps me stay focused on cooperating.

stephkim: ....?

mcchen: A prisoner's dilemma in my life would be when we used to play jeopardy in high school for extra credit points.  If we all wagered the same amount of points, we would all get the same amount of points.  But since we did not know how much other groups wagered, we would try to wager the highest amount possible to win because we all wanted to get the most extra credit points possible.

Anne: Peter and I have actually been trying to create a win-win situation in this class. Do you think that is possible? Can thinking out loud/reading/writing papers be a zero-sum game? If we all cooperate? When there's grading @ semester's end?

Yellow: I have played this game before, but in my economics class in high school, with other people (anonymously), and with consequence--EXTRA CREDIT POINTS. Unfortunately, while I chose to cooperate and accept the points my opponent offered, he ended up with 4 extra credit points and I only got 2. And my grade in the class needed the extra credit more. Playing the game in econ was to demonstrate the game theory.

Shoshi:...?

swhitt: Individually, I tend to favor competition over cooperation - I think when people are in competition they try harder and do more interesting things. I don't advocate a cutthroat approach, though.  To me, all of this discussion is contained under the assumption that the players agree and adhere to the terms of the fight (that there is an expectation of fairness).  In which case, as with all interaction, the foundation is one of cooperation (we cooperate in agreeing to play).  Without this, all bets are off.

mmg: Last year, when I was in boarding school, my room mate and I got into a 'fight' which involved us not to speaking to one another for five days. (We happen to be best friends, so that was hard). Both of us refused to initiate any sort of ceasefire. We cleaned our rooms every Sunday, and being that we were still in school, our dorm parent came in to check in on our rooms then. My 'prisoner's dilemma' involved around whether I should clean my room on my own or not clean it at all. There was a possibility that my room mate would clean it eventually, but she might not too, seeing as I hadn't cleaned it either. Given that we were in war, I did not want to wave any sort of white flag and do her part of the cleaning! Yet, if neither of us cleaned the room, it wouldn't go down too well with my dorm parent, to say the least. I ended up cleaning half of the room and noticed that my room mate did the other half. Even in war, we 'co-operated'. No, we did not start speaking soon after that.

Aybala, Lydia, Holly?

 
III. "The Point" of Prisoner's Dilemma here/now:
to get you to think differently about
your upcoming "ethics" proposal/paper
this is not your h.s. "debate" paper

we are asking you to define an issue,
report on how "both sides" conceptualize the problem,
and design a "win-win" response

we're not convinced that this is impossible!
we want solutions!

ex: Sarah and I went with our SJPP group to The Painted Bride
last night to see a performance of Underground America

audience member asked the panel (of immigration lawyers) what the solution was to the problems posed by having 25 million undocumented immigrants living (in fear) in this country

--one answer had to do with thinking about the philosophy of law:
what is the law? do we use it to reinforce or to change the status quo?

--another was that we need to have asylum for poverty, ambition
(not just for those in fear of their lives)

--another had to do w/ treatment in detention facilities, the courts

--another had to do w/ rethinking workman's comp, other benefits

--I was thinking about re-thinking the necessity of borders
(with "fences"): why are we policing them? what are we afraid of?

as you structure this paper:
do not line up the arguments in a debate in which 1 side will win
think of how you might re-configure/re-frame the debate altogether

why Prisoner's Dilemma is such an important game:
it shows you that (in the abstract)
two cooperating partners can both win
(caveat: both need to have the information/
agree to do this!)

how could that happen, in your dilemma?
who needs to talk to whom, in what venues?

IV. relevance of Milgram's "obediance studies"?
--those who stopped believed themselves responsible;
those who kept going held experimenter accountable
--on acting destructively w/out coercion: pressured to produce results
--other factors: uncertainty and time pressure
(rushed, disoriented: more compliant)
physical, biological, psychological differences:
need time to do right thing?

V. Cf. to "The Tragedy of the Commons"
two kinds of solutions:
technical and those requiring a change in human values/morals
"no technical solutions" include population problem
grows geometrically/exponentially
in a world that is practically finite
--not mathematically possible to maximize for 2+ variables @ once
--biological fact: problem of acquisition of energy
--need to make work calories close to zero
optimum population less than maximum
what is good? incommensensurables are comparable:
need only a criterion of judgment, system of weighting
exorcise Adam Smith's "invisible hand":
individual decisions not best for entire society
reexamine individual freedoms
"essence of tragedy: remorseless working of things"/
inevitablenss of destiny/futility of escape
tragedy of the commons:
rational being seeks to maximize his gain,
but costs are shared by all in a world that is limited
exs: Western ranges, world oceans, National Parks
reverse ex: pollution/commons as cesspool
overloaded bhemical/biological recycling processes
calls for redefining private property rights
morality of an act function of state of system:
need to know total system
morality is system-sensitive
(cf. trad'l ethics, don't allow for particular circumstances)
who watches the watchers? how legislate temperate?
invent correctives to keep custodians honest?
no negative feedback for exuberant breeding in the welfare state
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (wrongly)
places decision w/ family
exosomatic transmission (or: what's the point of education?)
to appeal to conscience selects against it:
condemns simpletons in exploitative world
double bind of conjuring up conscience in others:
we now doubt the value of guilt (focus on own anxieties, not object)
responsibility verbal counterfeit for quid pro quo:
get something for nothing
"product of definite social arrangements," which create mutual coercion
(ex: taxing; legal inheritance)
warfare between reform and status quo
thoughtlessly governed by double standard of perfection
commons justified only under conditions of low-population density
abandoned in food gathering; then waste disposal; now pleasure?
every new enclosure of the commons
involves infringing on someone's personal liberty
"Freedom is the recognition of necessity"--
and it is the role of education to reveal to all
the necessity of abandoning freedom to....what??

VI. go 'round:
share your ideas for final papers on ethical dilemmas:
why are you interested in these particular questions?
what is your personal relation to them?
what ARE the questions you'll need to pose/try to answer?
might you work together/help one another do research/write?
give each other advice:
how to frame your paper proposals, in the terms we've been using?