Per Norback: Demoex - think global, act local
Previous page | Next page | Page: 2 of 7 |
Jump to page:
Page 2
The philsopher Derek Parfit showed in his book Reasons and Persons that Prisoner´s dilemma´s are common when many people are involved. One example is what Parfit calls "commuters dilemma". Imagine that you live in a suburb and you are to decide if you shall take the bus or the car to work. Your aim is to be at work as fast as possible. Then you can argue that "if the other will take the bus it´s better to go by car, because the bus have to stop at several stations. If the others will take the car instead it will result in a traffic jam, but it´s still better to take the car, because even the bus get stucked in the traffic." It´s better to take the car whatever the others are going to do. But if everyone takes the car the travel will take much longer time than if everyone took the bus.
Another illuminating example of Prisoner´s dilemma is the Fishermans dilemma. Suppose you are a poor fisher living with your big family close to a lake. Many fisherman lives in the neigbourhood and the fish in the lake is about to disappear. The local government decides to proclaim a fishing prohibition until the fishes recovers. Your family is almost starving, and you know that the fishes will recover even if you alone do some secret fishing in the nights. If the others keep the promise not to fish and you breaks it, it will gain your family extra. If the others don´t respect the prohibition the fish will cease, no matter what you do. Therefore it´s rationel for you not to respect the prohibition whatsoever.
We seem to be stucked in this problem. We impoverish the nature resources and exploitates the global market with the same rational logic, and when people really tries to do something to improve the global situation their efforts have no effect. We prevent each other effectively from "saving the world", just because we all want to do that in different ways. This is another important kind of the prisoner´s dilemma. The Messias complex. I want to save the world and you want to save the world. Because everyone wants to be the Saviour we work against each other, accordingly the world remains to be saved.
Previous page | Next page
