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My game theory teacher wrote a book, Global Collective Action, where he modeled global warming as a game between n countries and came out with a n-person prison
by navait 12y ago
My game theory teacher wrote a book, Global Collective Action, where he modeled global warming as a game between n countries and came out with a n-person prisoner's dilemma. the game is essentially the same.
And I think this belies the problem of global warming: it's far enough away that the actual consequences are distant, but emitting carbon is easy now, and each person's footprint is small enough. Denialism is a symptom, rather than the problem itself: a rationalization of our actions to justify the now.
So, I guess the problem with the eigendemocracy system is that it has no protection against mass self-delusion, though I think the same could be said of any system. Could the eigendemocracy also break people into completely unconnected networks, each thinking the other n networks are evil?
- baddox 12y agoDid your game theory teacher have any ideas for a type of government or society that could be expected to do a better job with climate change? Climate change seems like the final boss of the public good problem, and I can't think of any society likely to do a very good job with it (without some sci-fi paradigm shift). Functioning democracy, by which I mean a government whose policies closely match the desires of its population with each individual weighted equally, should be expected to do a bad job, because each individual accurately estimates that he or she is better off voting to not solve climate change. Dictatorships or non-functioning democracies, by which I mean governments whose policies are determined by a small group of people, should be expected to do a bad job, for the usual and obvious reasons.