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Thanks, I never fully understood what people meant with that phrase. :)

• StavrosK 9y ago
  No problem, it's when something can be improved when everyone does the right thing together, but nobody has any incentive to do the right thing alone. Exactly like dumping trash everywhere, if you do the right thing alone, you're just inconveniencing yourself by spending money to dispose of trash properly while everyone else dumps it wherever.
  • stingraycharles 9y ago
    Thanks again, very informative. So does that mean that the prisoner's dilemma is unrelated to this ? The reason I mentioned that is that I figured there were two outcomes: - be rich/save money now, and get a possible competitive edge over other countries - invest in your future, long-term assuming other countries do the same
    • StavrosK 9y ago
      The tragedy of the commons can be modeled as a game, and the matrix can be similar to the one from the prisoner's dilemma, but they're not exactly the same. For example, if you properly recycle and I just dump my trash, I'm not better off than if we just both dumped our trash, which is what happens with the prisoner's dilemma. Basically, the prisoners have an incentive to deceive each other, whereas in the tragedy of the commons, you generally don't.
• deleted 9y ago
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