Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site l5.uucp Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!qantel!ptsfa!l5!laura From: laura@l5.uucp (Laura Creighton) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Hockey Message-ID: <258@l5.uucp> Date: Tue, 12-Nov-85 14:07:25 EST Article-I.D.: l5.258 Posted: Tue Nov 12 14:07:25 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 15-Nov-85 21:08:09 EST References: <237@gargoyle.UUCP> <252@l5.uucp> <242@gargoyle.UUCP> Reply-To: laura@l5.UUCP (Laura Creighton) Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco Lines: 70 In article <242@gargoyle.UUCP> carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) writes: >Laura Creighton writes: > >>The fact is that unhelmeted professional hockey players have chosen to live >>this way. They are not minors. Why are you in such a hurry to take this >>choice away from them? > >But what if both of the following statements are true: > >1. Each player prefers to play without a helmet, regardless of >whether anyone else is wearing a helmet or not; AND > >2. Given a choice between > > A. everyone NOT wearing a helmet, including himself; and > B. everyone wearing a helmet, including himself; > >everyone would prefer B to A. > >Then what do you do? If these statements are true, there arises a >multi-person Prisoner's Dilemma, a.k.a. a free-rider problem. Richard, I enjoy Prisoner's Dilemmas. However, I am not so flexible in my thinking that I can extrapolate very far on any given set of postulates. There is no way that I can view helmet wearing in these lights, because these choices are too unrealistic to me. It is not the case that having other people wear helmets is a benefit to other hockey players. But I can say something about the general problem of free-rider situations. 1. If a basic assumption is that you must get everybody to comply or else it fails, then forget it -- it is going to fail. We can't keep people from murdering others now. The best we can do is see to it that most people do not murder. 2. Some people's primary objection is that it is not fair that some people get what I had to pay for for nothing. However, if the benefit I get is sufficiently large, it is worth paying for the free riders. Of course, I would like to have the time to convince them that it is not moral for them to rip me off, but I am not all that fanatical about fairness. This ``not be all that fantatical about fairness'' is often called charity, and has worked in the past. I think that if it is to work as a general solution to most free rider problems it will be necessary to have an attitude change in a great many people. 3. At lot of people talk about a problem as a ``free rider'' problem, when what they are really doing is a thinly disguised attempt to force their will on other people. For instance, if I thought that you were serious about calling the hockey-helmet dilemma a ``free rider'' problem, I would have the sneaking suspicion that what you were really doing was constructing a logical-sounding argument to back you up, when your real problem is a desire to force hockey players to be more ``reasonable'' and wear helmets because their unreasonableness grates upon you. There are real free-rider situations, of course. It is in my interest that everyone receives as much education as they want, even if some cannot pay for it. But in a society where enough people are sufficiently moral as to not be fanatical about fairness and where this basic point is clearly understood, sufficient people will be willing to pick up the costs of other people's education that everyone can receive as much education as they want. How one can encourage the development if such a society is a good and interesting question. -- Laura Creighton sun!l5!laura (that is ell-five, not fifteen) l5!laura@lll-crg.arpa