Russell, Yes, the German is a little slow for me, and I found no English link, so I'll have to hope I can ask a question or two guessing the approach from your comments. You say that under one set of rational assumptions the 'tragedy of the commons' in which collective behavior violates individual interests does not arise. I don't doubt that, but note that the dilemma for real participants is that they are each following rational assumptions of their own making.
As I see it, the problem for them is needing to come to discover why their world is producing irrational responses inconsistent with their assumptions, to look beyond everything they think they know. How do you deal with discovering problems that arise from outside your own model in that way? I use a variety of triggers for exploratory learning. If you assume everyone would act as if following one set of rules designed from a global perspective, would that actually address the core problem? I think I count three true world financial market collapses requiring sudden Fed intervention to stave off full disintegration of the world market system in the last 12 months, for example. Explosively multiplying bad bets is not good. The management question is how to tell what sort of misbehavior indicates that our models of reality are in need of updating in a non-trivial way. I think what we're running into is an impasse caused by the fundamental problem that our models are by definition self-consistent, but nature by definition is composed of countless independent systems that are by definition inconsistent. A system of independent behaviors behaves independently from any model we could possibly make of it. The world we 'see with our models' may appear consistent, but that may be only by means of our filtering the information we get accordingly, and that's the rub. Getting increasing signals that we're crossing lines of conflict with the world outside our models, in any number of directions all at once, seems to me to suggest we should 'look around' outside our models. If we never did that before maybe now would be a good time to start. Phil > -----Original Message----- > From: Russell Standish [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 6:47 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] can you have 4 operating systems on one buss? > > On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 10:55:01AM -0400, Phil Henshaw wrote: > > > > The canonical example is of a resource that begins with having no > limit for > > a small community of users with various cooperative habits for > exploiting > > it. If their habits constitute a growth system, the users will > usually know > > only their own individual experience and have no experiential > information > > about the approach of that limit. It's not clear what their best > source of > > information would be about it, or how they would choose what to do at > the > > limits. > > > > What kind of information might indicate the approach of common > resource > > limits? How would that be different from evidence that other users > are > > breaking their agreements? As independent users of natural > resources tend > > to have less information about, or interest in, each other's > particular > > needs than, say, cyclists in a peloton, how would they begin to > renegotiate > > their common habits when circumstances require it? > > > > Phil > > > > Interesting that you should have brought the tragedy of the commons > into this. I recently read a paper by Juergen Kremer > (http://www.rheinahrcampus.de/fileadmin/prof_seiten/kremer/MasterKeenEc > onomics.PDF) > discussing some work that Steve Keen and I have done on the theory of > the firm. In it, he mentions that our framework can be applied to the > tragedy of the commons case, and that under the same special > conditions of prefectly rational competitors and frictionless > response, a cooperative solution will emerge that exploits the commons > without overloading it. The paper is in German, but the idea is pretty > simple once you understand our theory of the firm stuff, which you can > get from my website. > > Of course, real economic agents are neither rational, nor > frictionless, and in our Complex Systems '04 paper, we explore just > how much irrationality and how much friction is required to break the > Keen ("monopoly") solution (corresponding to the benevolent dictator > ToC > solution) into the Cournot ("competitive") solution (corresponding to > over exploitation of the ToC). > > Cheers > > -- > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > ----- > A/Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) > Mathematics > UNSW SYDNEY 2052 [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > ----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
