In message <[log in to unmask]>, Wirt Atmar 
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>Roy writes:
>
>> To me, it seems crystal clear what happened to the last tree. (And
>>  without the need for the gratuitous denigration of persons of faith that
>>  you reproduce above).
>>
>>  The guy who cut it down had a hole in his house he needed to patch, or
>>  his old dugout was leaking, and he needed to build a new one. Or he had
>>  Kon-Tiki to put together, and he was still a few poles short. Whatever.
>>
>>  He may have felt slightly guilty or regretful cutting down the last
>>  tree. Or, more likely, he thought, shoot, I need wood, and this is the
>>  last of it - if I don't take it, there won't be any more. Maybe he
>>  thought that even if he didn't take it, his neighbour would anyway, so
>>  what's the point?
>>
>>  (And he was right - his neighbour on the other side had left the tree
>>  only that morning, while taking the last three but one, and hesitating
>>  to take the very last tree as well. But to no avail. And he drew the
>>  line at *defending* the last tree, especially as he had manifestly just
>>  had more than his share.)
>>
>>  A variant on the Prisoner's dilemma.
>
>In fact, it is specifically called "the tragedy of the commons". See:
>
>     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

In which you will read (if you read far enough):

Possible solutions to the 'tragedy'

The tragedy of the commons can be seen as a collective prisoner's 
dilemma. Individuals within a group have two options: cooperate with the 
group or defect from the group. Cooperation happens when individuals 
agree to protect a common resource to avoid the tragedy. By cooperating, 
every individual agrees not to seek more than his share. Defection 
happens when an individual decides to use more than his share of a 
public resource.

Game theory shows individuals benefit from defecting in the prisoner's 
dilemma (even though both would be better off if both cooperated than if 
both defected), unless there is some individual cost to defecting. In 
the iterated prisoner's dilemma, retaliation for past defection can make 
cooperation the best choice even for a selfish individual. Similarly, 
far-sighted groups that impose some sort of sanction on members that 
overexploit a resource can make over-exploitation unprofitable. This is 
trickier for larger groups.

>As for gratuitous denigration, stupidity can never be gratuitously
>denigrated, religious or otherwise.

As we are quoting wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophistry
-- 
Roy Brown        'Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be
Kelmscott Ltd     useful, or believe to be beautiful'  William Morris

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