27/11/2018
"The Tragedy of the Commons" is a tragic oversimplification.
New research by a team led by Yale microbiologist Sylvie Estrela (including SFI's External Prof M. Hochberg and Fmr Omidyar Fellows J. Van Cleve and E. Libby) adds space & time to social dilemmas, with very different outcomes.
From the press release:
'By accounting for the dynamics of the changing environment, the researchers revealed two layers of complexity absent from classic social dilemmas.
The first of these is spatial. Unlike simple social dilemmas that depict what Hochberg calls “perpetual interactions in a given space,” the new taxonomy allows bacteria to move from a hostile environment to a more friendly one."
The second layer is temporal, dealing with niche construction and evolutionary dynamics that play out over time. “The idea is that when we modify our environments, those modifications can be longer and more durable than our own lifetimes,” Hochberg explains. “The ecological inheritance of social behaviors will influence future conditions, but because of the complexity of the system, it is difficult to know just how."
Read more:
https://www.santafe.edu/news-center/news/complexity-commons-scientists-recast-social-dilemmas