The Social Dilemmas

"For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few. Each citizen will have a thousand sons who will not be his sons individually but anybody will be equally the son of anybody, and will therefore be neglected by all alike." -- From Aristotle's "Politics", Written c.a. 350 BC Unless you are in certain specialties of Liberal Arts in the academic world, you probably have never heard the term, Social Dilemma , a dilemma or paradox that commonly results from Collective Action . Like me, you may have read a little bit about the Prisoner's Dilemma a few years ago when it received some publicity in well known publications such as Scientific American . Most of you probably dismissed the Prisoner's Dilemma story as just another academic construction with little real significance. But I found the "collective action problem" -- the "social dilemmas" that is the fundamental characteristic of the Prisoner's Dilemmas, very intriguing. Since I like puzzles, paradoxes, and examples of the apparent diabolical nature of the universe, I became very interested in the subject and continued to give it much thought. From the Prisoner's Dilemma "game" I drifted into the more general and much more significant study of the Social Dilemmas . What I have found is that this little field of study, tucked away in several obscure corners of academia and little known by the general public, is concerned with one of most serious and baffling problems in the civilized world today! Uncontrolled government spending, the deterioration of the public schools, the near collapse of law and order, the loss of individual freedom, out