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Article 3627 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: pollack@dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu (Jordan B Pollack)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: The problem of the commons
Message-ID: <POLLACK.92Feb10180646@dendrite.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 10 Feb 92 23:06:46 GMT
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There is a common meadow at a village of shepherds.  Each shepherd has
a few sheep. and the sheep are all happy and well fed, as is the
village.  But a couple of shepherds get the idea that having more
sheep would make them that much more wealthy. Its pretty easy to
reproduce sheep, and soon the other shepherds copied this behavior.
Now there is not enough grass to go around. 

So, we had a computer network to discuss philosophical aspects of AI.
I went away for a while and now come back to find no grass but just a
bunch of dirt (metaphorically speaking) and smouldering fires.  Sheep
so hungry now that they all must on every little sprout, as if they could
possibly own the whole common meadow:

4623: [ 15:jeff@aiai.ed.] Re: Functionalist Theory of Qualia
4624: [ 11:jeff@aiai.ed.] Re: Multiple Personality Disorder and Strong AI
4625: [ 19:jeff@aiai.ed.] Re: Strong AI and panpsychism (was Re: Virtual Person?)
4626: [ 56:jeff@aiai.ed.] Re: Robotic Follies
4627: [ 23:jeff@aiai.ed.] Re: Functionalist Theory of Qualia
4628:+[ 52:jeff@aiai.ed.] Re: Strong AI and Panpsychism

I mean no insult to Jeff, Dave, or Mikhail, but if each shepherd would
only keep fewer sheep, there would be some grass left for everyone to
chew. Write your dissertations or journal articles, instead.

This is called defection in the iterated multiway prisoner's dilemma
game (see Axelrod 1984.) Think about it first before you flame me.




-- 
Jordan Pollack                            Assistant Professor
CIS Dept/OSU                              Laboratory for AI Research
2036 Neil Ave                             Email: pollack@cis.ohio-state.edu
Columbus, OH 43210                        Phone: (614)292-4890 (then * to fax)


