The Uncertain Fate of Self-Defeating Systems

Complex patterns of human behaviour are difficult to capture in agent-based simulations of socio-ecological systems. Even knowing each individual agent’s strategy at one point in time may not help when trying to predict the collective behaviour of certain systems—if it is in each agent’s best interest to do the opposite of most other agents. In self-defeating situations, the collective population of agents may exhibit a panorama of simple or complex behaviour, depending on the extent to which information is shared. A well-known example is the El Farol bar problem, in which a simulated population of bar attendees oscillates in a seemingly random manner around a critical congestion level. In this paper, it is suggested that a family of resource management problems involving human interactions with ecosystems may possess a self-defeating character. This poses several new challenges for integrated resources management.A case in point is the potential over-fishing of fisheries, which is addressed in the paper and likened to a minority game.