Untangling Multipolar Traps

—Gaining Perspective

Behind many challenges threatening our world, from collapsing fisheries to social media outrage cycles, from political arms races to climate change, we find the same hidden pattern: situations where rational choices by individuals or groups add up to irrational, destructive outcomes for everyone. These are multipolar traps—the silent engines behind many of our most persistent global crises. Left unchecked, they drive escalation, depletion, and fragmentation. Yet by understanding their structure we gain the power to name them, expose them, and begin to untangle them. This course introduces the concept of multipolar traps, explores vivid real-world examples, examines strategies for overcoming them, and equips learners at every level—citizens, organizational leaders, policymakers, and global institutions—with the tools to recognize, avoid, and dismantle these traps before they ensnare us all.^[1]

The objective of this course is to help students identify, analyze, and untangle multipolar traps that sustain many of the grand challenges we face.

The “monkey fist trap,” often told as a parable, describes a container such as a jar or hollowed coconut with an opening just wide enough for a monkey’s open hand but too narrow for a clenched fist holding bait like nuts or fruit. Once the monkey grasps the treat, its refusal to let go keeps it trapped, allowing it to be captured. Whether or not this method was ever widely used in practice, the story endures as a metaphor for human behavior, warning that clinging too tightly to desires or possessions can lead to our own entrapment and loss of freedom.^[2][3][4]

It is tempting to dismiss the trapped money as foolish, thinking, from our enlightened human perspective, “why can’t they see the trap only works if you are impatient, greedy, and myopic?”

We can gain insights by comparing today’s multipolar traps to the monkey fist trap. From an elevated global perspective, we can begin to see that those ensnared in the multipolar trap can escape by choosing to cooperate and act for the greater long-term good rather than selfish, yet ultimately destructive, short term local gains.

This course seeks to provide that perspective.

What if the very rules of the game ensure that everyone loses, even when each player acts rationally?

Multipolar traps are situations where rational self-interested behavior by many actors leads to collective harm, even though cooperation would benefit everyone. They appear in economics, politics, ecology, technology, and social life.

The “multipolar trap” is a broad category, while “tragedy of the commons” (and others, like prisoner’s dilemmas, races-to-the-bottom, coordination failures, etc.) are specific types or instances of these dynamics

• Multipolar Trap (general case): Any situation where multiple independent actors, pursuing their own rational self-interest, collectively generate worse outcomes for everyone—even though cooperation would yield better results. It is a family of traps.
• Tragedy of the Commons (specific subtype): A situation where shared, rivalrous, and non-excludable resources (commons) are overused or degraded because no one has sufficient incentive to conserve them. It is one of the best-known multipolar traps.

So every tragedy of the commons is a multipolar trap. But not every multipolar trap is a tragedy of the commons.

Listed and described here are more specific types of multipolar traps.

1. Tragedy of the Commons (Overuse of shared resources)

• Definition: Actors exploit a common pool resource faster than it can regenerate.
• Examples:
  • Overgrazing communal pastures.
  • Overfishing oceans.
  • Pumping groundwater from shared aquifers. (Overdrafting)
  • Excessive carbon emissions (exploiting the planetary “commons” of the atmosphere).

2. Race to the Bottom (Competitive degradation of standards)

• Definition: Actors lower standards, regulations, or values to attract advantage, undercutting one another until the baseline quality erodes.
• Examples:
  • Countries slashing corporate tax rates to attract business.
  • Factories relocating to nations with the weakest environmental or labor protections.
  • Online platforms escalating clickbait to capture more attention.
  • Ships registering a flag of convenience to take advantage of lax regulations.

3. Arms Races (Escalation without endpoint)

• Definition: Mutual competition to gain a relative advantage results in everyone spending more, while no one is truly safer.
• Examples:
  • Nuclear weapons buildup.
  • Predatory pricing in business wars.
  • Athletes using performance-enhancing drugs to keep up with rivals.

4. Coordination Failures (Failure to agree on shared conventions)

• Definition: Everyone would benefit if they coordinated, but lack of trust or alignment traps them in suboptimal choices.
• Examples:
  • Driving on the left vs. right without coordination leads to chaos.
  • Competing messaging apps that fragment communication.
  • Lack of universal charging standards for electronics.

5. Information Hazards / Attention Traps

• Definition: Incentives push actors to spread low-quality, sensational, or harmful information because it gains attention—even though everyone’s information environment degrades.
• Examples:
  • News outlets exaggerating or sensationalizing headlines.
  • Social media boosting outrage posts.
  • Spam emails: each sender gains a little, but the whole system becomes clogged.

In summary

• Multipolar trap is an umbrella category.
• Tragedy of the commons is one flavor (resource overuse).
• Race to the bottom, arms races, coordination failures, information hazards, etc. are other flavors.

Each shares the same structural characteristics:

• Individual rationality leads to collective irrationality.
• Incentives push toward short-term/selfish gain.
• Long-term collective losses occur unless institutions, norms, or agreements intervene.

From nuclear arms races to overfishing, history and daily life are littered with stories of intelligent actors locked into collective folly.

Examples of Multipolar Traps^[5]

1. Overfishing Each fisher gains from catching more fish, but collectively they collapse the fishery.
2. Climate Change / Carbon Emissions Every country benefits from cheap fossil fuels, but the atmosphere degrades for all.
3. Arms Races Nations build ever-more powerful weapons to avoid vulnerability, but all become less safe.
4. Tragedy of the Commons (Shared Pastures / Land Use) Farmers overgraze shared land to maximize their yield, degrading it for all.
5. Antibiotic Overuse Patients, doctors, and farmers overuse antibiotics for short-term benefits, breeding resistant superbugs.
6. Political Campaign Spending Candidates escalate spending to outdo opponents; all waste resources while voter influence diminishes.
7. Attention Economy / Social Media Manipulation Platforms compete to capture attention, incentivizing outrage and clickbait, eroding public discourse.
8. Deforestation for Agriculture Each farmer profits by clearing forest, but biodiversity and climate stability collapse.
9. Corporate Tax Avoidance / “Race to the Bottom” Each government lowers corporate taxes to attract business, but public services degrade worldwide.
10. Workplace “Rat Race” / Overwork Norms Individuals work longer hours to signal dedication; soon everyone must, leading to burnout and reduced well-being.
11. Mass migration Mass migration refers to the migration of large groups of people from one geographical area to another. Mass migrations may be forced displacements, resulting from violence such as human trafficking, deportation or population cleansing. Mass migrations are disruptive to the migrating people and cause border control issues for various nations. This is an example of the larger issue of regulatory arbitrage resulting from regulatory inconsistency, in this case national or regional differences in upholding human rights.

Multipolar traps are also popular subjects of film and literature, as in these examples.

Notice these signs to recognize when you (or your group, organization, town, or nation) are inside a multipolar trap:

• Clue: Each actor’s choice makes sense in isolation, but the collective result is harmful or inefficient.
• Example: Working long hours because “everyone else does.” Individually rational, collectively destructive.

• Clue: The system trends toward runaway escalation (e.g., arms races, advertising wars) or resource depletion (commons collapse).
• Example: Overfishing—catching more fish helps you today, but everyone ends up with an empty sea tomorrow.

• Clue: The cycle continues unless external rules or agreements intervene. There’s no natural equilibrium that self-corrects.
• Example: Global emissions—every nation has incentive to emit until climate tipping points hit.

• Clue: Everyone invests more time, money, or energy, but no one is actually better off.
• Example: Political campaign spending wars—billions spent, but relative positions stay the same.

• Clue: Participants say things like:
  • “We have no choice.”
  • “If we don’t, others will.”
  • “That’s just the way the game is played.”
• Example: Farmers using pesticides: “If I don’t spray, my crops fail, but if I do, everyone else still sprays too.”

• Clue: Your gain creates costs that spill onto others, often invisible at first.
• Example: Antibiotic overuse—your health improves, but resistant strains spread to society.

• Clue: You benefit in the immediate term, but future conditions worsen for everyone—including you.
• Example: Clearing rainforest for farmland.

• Clue: Opting out feels impossible because everyone else is doing it.
• Example: Athletes doping: refusing gives you a disadvantage.

Ask yourself:

1. Does my “best move” depend on what others do?
2. If everyone does what I’m doing, do we all end up worse off?
3. Is it hard (or impossible) to stop without collective agreement?
4. Are we escalating, depleting, or racing downward?
5. Do I feel compelled to act this way even though I don’t like the outcome?

If you answer yes to two or more, you’re likely in a multipolar trap.

Recognizing the traps allows us to take effective action to untangle them

• Naming the trap shifts the mindset from “this is fate” to “this is a solvable problem of incentives.”
• Once identified, the question becomes: What institution, norm, or agreement would flip the incentive structure?

1. Identify any multipolar traps you are creating, leading, or managing.
2. Identify any you are trapped in.
3. Identify any multipolar traps you are impacted by.

The good news is that traps are not destiny—by reshaping incentives, building trust, and changing the rules, humanity has repeatedly escaped them.

These strategies can be used to untangle multipolar traps.^[6]

1. Regulation and Enforcement
   • Fishing quotas and marine reserves protect ecosystems from collapse.
2. Global Agreements
   • The Montreal Protocol is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion.
3. Mutual Disarmament / Treaties
   • Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty reduces arms race incentives.
4. Property Rights or Community Stewardship
   • Ostrom-style community rules for managing shared resources (e.g., community based management of irrigation systems in Nepal^[7][8]).
5. Medical Stewardship Programs
   • Restricting antibiotic use in agriculture and monitoring prescriptions.
6. Campaign Finance Reform
   • Caps on political spending or public funding of campaigns.
7. Platform Accountability & Algorithm Reform
   • Regulating recommender systems, banning manipulative design, and enabling user choice.
8. Sustainable Land Management Incentives
   • Paying farmers to conserve forests (e.g., Costa Rica’s payments for ecosystem services).
9. International Tax Cooperation
   • OECD’s global minimum corporate tax deal to prevent “race to the bottom.”
10. Cultural Shifts & Labor Policy
    • Promoting work-life balance (e.g., 4-day workweeks, mandatory vacation policies in Europe).
11. Approve or Disapprove a recommendation in its entirety
    • The US Base Realignment and Closure process uses an expert commission to make an overall recommendation on military base closures with the condition that it can only be approved or disapproved in its entirety

In general, multipolar traps can be overcome by changing incentives so that cooperation aligns with individual benefit—through rules, norms, treaties, transparency, enforcement, and cultural evolution.

This table^[9] summarizes several types of traps, the mechanisms they each use, examples of specific traps, and suggested solutions.

Trap Type	Mechanism	Examples	Possible Solutions
Tragedy of the Commons	Overuse of shared, rivalrous, non-excludable resources. Each actor maximizes short-term gain, degrading the resource for all.	Overfishing, overgrazing, groundwater depletion, excessive carbon emissions.	Regulation & quotas, community-based stewardship (Ostrom), property rights, international agreements.
Race to the Bottom	Competitive lowering of standards to attract advantage (economic, political, cultural). Everyone loses as quality collapses.	Corporate tax avoidance, weak labor protections, relaxed environmental laws, clickbait journalism.	Global coordination (OECD minimum tax), enforceable standards, cultural resistance to low-quality content.
Arms Races	Escalation of effort/cost to avoid vulnerability. Relative advantage cancels out, but risks & costs rise for all.	Nuclear weapons buildup, advertising wars, athletic doping, predator-prey biological escalation.	Treaties (NPT, arms control), verification systems, collective restraint, cultural bans (anti-doping rules).
Coordination Failures	Lack of trust or common convention prevents mutually beneficial alignment. Each pursues their own strategy, producing inefficiency.	Driving rules (left vs. right), fragmented communication standards, incompatible charging systems.	Standard-setting bodies (ISO, W3C), treaties, enforced conventions, interoperability requirements.
Information Hazards / Attention Traps	Incentives to spread harmful, false, or attention-grabbing information. Short-term gain undermines shared info environment.	Fake news, spam, sensationalist media, outrage-driven algorithms.	Fact-checking, platform regulation, algorithmic transparency, promoting slow/quality journalism.
Workplace Rat Races	Signaling competition drives everyone to overinvest in costly displays, eroding well-being and productivity.	Overwork culture, academic publishing pressure, conspicuous consumption arms races.	Labor law (work hours caps), cultural shifts (4-day week), valuing outcomes over signals.
Public Goods Undersupply	Everyone benefits from a public good, but individuals under-contribute since they can free ride.	Vaccination programs, basic scientific research, clean streets, Wikipedia.	Government funding, philanthropic support, norms of contribution, mandatory taxes.
Coordination on Harmful Equilibria	Actors converge on a norm/system that is stable but harmful. Hard to exit without collective change.	Fossil-fuel energy dependence, QWERTY keyboard, unhealthy food industry lock-in.	Policy shifts (renewable energy subsidies), re-standardization efforts, disruptive innovation.
International Tax Havens (special race-to-bottom)	States compete for business by lowering taxes, eroding their own revenue.	Offshore tax havens, shell companies, corporate tax inversions.	Global minimum corporate tax agreements, transparency initiatives.
Ecological Externalities	Costs are externalized onto others, so actors overproduce harm.	Pollution, plastic waste, industrial runoff, noise pollution.	Pigovian taxes (carbon tax, plastic tax), regulation, liability assignment, producer responsibility schemes.

Multipolar traps can occur at any scale and disputes are typically resolved by a governance system operating at the same scale of the trap or one level higher. In each case applying the subsidiarity principle ensures each trap is resolved at the lowest effective level, avoiding both neglect (too low) and overreach (too high), while preserving cooperation and efficiency.

Here is a cascade of multipolar trap examples across scales, showing how they can arise in daily life or scale all the way up to international crises. In each case the Subsidiarity Principle (resolving problems at the lowest competent level) is applied.^[10]

Small-Scale Disputes (Childhood / Everyday Life)

Example: Toy Sharing

• Trap: “I won’t let you play with my dolls if you won’t let me play with your trucks.” Each child tries to protect their own advantage, resulting in no one having fun.
• Resolution (Subsidiarity): Ideally resolved by the children themselves through sharing or trading; if not, a parent or teacher mediates.

Example: Playground Equipment

• Trap: Children rush to be “first on the slide,” each pushing and shoving to secure their turn, which slows everyone down and risks injury.
• Resolution: Children learn to self-organize taking turns; if that fails, playground supervisors step in.

Interpersonal Level

Example: Dominance Contests

• Trap: Two individuals find themselves trapped in an escalating dominance contest of some kind. This could be a petty dispute that only serves to preserve egos, or it could escalate and cause substantial harm. A notable and tragic example of this is the Burr-Hamilton duel.
• Resolution: One of the involved parties typically defuses the issue, reframes the issue, creates alternatives for mutual gain, or backs down to prevent the dispute from escalating further and causing additional harm. Alternatively, cooler heads may intervene to de-escalate the conflict.

Example: Child custody disputes

• Trap: Children often suffer from inadequate parenting during child custody disputes because divorcing parents are preoccupied with arguing who should have primary custody.
• Resolution: Family court resolves disputes the parents fail to resolve themselves.  

Household / Neighborhood Level

Example: Household Chores

• Trap: Each sibling avoids cleaning, thinking “someone else will do it,” leading to a dirty kitchen.
• Resolution: Parents enforce a chore rotation (lowest effective authority).

Example: Parking Spots on a Street

• Trap: Neighbors claim curbside spaces, hoarding them with cones or unused cars. Each family tries to maximize access, creating tension.
• Resolution: Ideally this is solved by neighborhood norms; if conflict escalates, municipal bylaws (e.g., time limits) are enforced.

Corporate Level

Example: Labor Strike

• Trap: Often as a reaction to low wages and unsatisfactory working conditions, dissatisfied workers strike and refuse to work, causing harm to the employer due to lost production and losses incurred by workers who are foregoing wages.
• Resolution: Strikes are typically resolved by arbitration, mediation, court action, agreed reforms, or exhaustion.

Municipal Level

Example: Noise Pollution

• Trap: One bar plays music loudly to attract customers; others follow suit to compete, resulting in unbearable noise for residents.
• Resolution: City ordinances set noise limits—local government intervention.

Example: Garbage Collection / Littering

• Trap: Individuals who litter or skip garbage fees reduce costs for themselves but impose health and aesthetic costs on the whole community.
• Resolution: Municipal sanitation laws, fines, and community education campaigns.

State / Provincial Level

Example: Water Use Among Farms

• Trap: Each farm draws heavily from a river or aquifer, depleting the resource.
• Resolution: State-level water allocation laws and irrigation management authorities.

Example: Highway Speed Competition

• Trap: Drivers increase speed to keep up with traffic, escalating danger.
• Resolution: State troopers and speed-limit laws regulate collective safety.

National Level

Example: Political Campaign Spending

• Trap: Each candidate escalates spending to outdo opponents, burning massive sums without real gains in democratic quality.
• Resolution: National campaign finance reform and caps on spending.

Example: Industrial Pollution

• Trap: Each company maximizes output by externalizing costs onto the environment. If unregulated, the whole population suffers.
• Resolution: National environmental laws, emissions standards, and enforcement agencies.

International Level

Example: Climate Change / Carbon Emissions

• Trap: Every nation benefits from cheap fossil fuels while degrading the shared climate.
• Resolution: International treaties like the Paris Agreement, carbon pricing mechanisms, and multilateral enforcement.

Example: Arms Races

• Trap: Countries stockpile weapons to maintain relative advantage, escalating global insecurity.
• Resolution: International treaties (e.g., Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty), trust-building, and verification systems.

Example: Overfishing the High Seas

• Trap: Nations overharvest international waters, risking collapse of fisheries.
• Resolution: International maritime agreements, regional fisheries management organizations.

The subsidiary principle is applied in each of these examples, allowing resolution at the lowest level possible, as summarized here:

• Children’s disputes are solved by kids themselves, with parents/teachers as backup.
• Interpersonal disputes are resolved when someone close to the conflict decides to take wise action.
• Neighborhood conflicts are ideally resolved by informal norms, or municipal bylaws if needed.
• Corporate level disputes can be resolved through arbitration, mediation, or judicial action.
• Municipal challenges can be handled by city ordinances, codes, and enforcement.
• State-level issues require broader regulation when resources or roads cross municipalities.
• National challenges are coordinated at scale when local efforts aren’t enough (e.g., pollution standards).
• Global problems need treaties, multilateral institutions, and cooperative governance.

We see in these examples that multipolar traps scale from playgrounds to planetary crises. Applying subsidiarity ensures each trap is resolved at the lowest effective level, avoiding both neglect (too low) and overreach (too high), while preserving cooperation and efficiency.

We also notice from these examples that resolution becomes more difficult as the scale of the trap increases. Traps operating at the national and international levels can persist for extended periods as the disputants strategically maneuver to prolong their individual advantages and evade resolutions.

Governance mechanisms and resolution forums at these higher levels are more complex and often slower to act than those at lower levels. Forums for resolving international disputes are still being formed and lack a final authority for resolving disputes and enforcing sanctions. International governance often relies on the consent of the parties rather than on uniform enforcement. Consequently, they are not yet fully effective. Therefore, the examples serve as aspirational works in progress, with national and international resolutions being incomplete agreements.

1. Identify one multipolar trap you are familiar with.
2. Describe how it can be resolved.

Everyone—from the voter to the head of state—has a role to play in spotting, resisting, and ultimately untangling these destructive patterns.

You can act to reduce the impacts and prevenance of multipolar traps.

A general approach that offers the possibility of untangling multipolar traps has this basic structure:

1. Study the problem in depth to determine if it can be usefully modeled as a bistable system currently operating at a destructive equilibrium.
2. Identify a constructive equilibrium that can provide benefits (win-win) to the participants. Choose this constructive equilibrium as the new desired target state.
3. Engage the participants in exploring the possibilities of this new, mutually beneficial equilibrium.
4. Assist the participants in migrating from their present destructive equilibrium position and moving toward the constructive equilibrium position.

Several specific solution approaches are described below:

1. Examine the various activities that you lead or manage. Include policies you oversee or norms you sustain.
2. Examine the various activities that take place, paying particular attention to the interdependencies, outcomes, side effects, and impacts on others that occur.
3. Compare those impacts to the characteristics used to recognize traps. Identify some multipolar trap that you are leading, creating, or sustaining.
4. Work with your colleagues to make them aware of the trap you are creating, the impacts it is having, and the inevitable future path that will unfold.
5. Work with your colleagues, and competitors, to take effective actions, chosen from the above list of actions and other sources, to untangle the trap you have created.

1. Work with your colleagues to understand the nature of the trap. Estimate, quantify, and communicate the negative impacts it is having on yourselves and other stakeholders.
2. Engage with those who are leading the trap or who can influence them. Use your impact estimates to encourage reform. Use your influence and persuasion to effect positive change.
3. Encourage them to take the steps described above.  

1. Exercise your agency for the good.
2. Take effective actions to improve the associated social systems.
3. Engage with people within the trap or impacted by the trap and encourage them to take actions described above.

One promising approach to untangling multipolar traps is the use of collaborative negotiation and decision-support systems. These systems help stakeholders move beyond destructive equilibria by:

• Structuring complex negotiations into clear issues and options
• Modeling preferences so that underlying interests, not just surface positions, become visible
• Providing a secure and neutral platform that keeps preferences confidential
• Revealing opportunities for mutual gain that are often hidden in multilateral or multi-issue settings
• Promoting fairness and balance through algorithms that seek consensus-oriented solutions rather than zero-sum compromises

Research and pilot applications (for example, simulations with Smartsettle Infinity^[11]) suggest that such systems can enable diverse stakeholders to explore a wide range of agreements, evaluate trade-offs, and converge on outcomes that all parties regard as both fair and superior to the status quo.

By shifting attention from unilateral moves to collaborative and fair optimization, decision-support systems offer a practical pathway for escaping the destructive feedback loops that define multipolar traps.

The SIMPOL book^[12] and website^[13] propose and describe in detail a campaign designed to solve global multipolar traps. They refer to the dynamic that underlies them as Destructive Global Competition.

Their solution is based on governments implementing policies simultaneously, so avoiding multipolar traps. It also offers citizens a novel way to use their votes to encourage politicians towards such an outcome.

They describe five criteria that define a Simultaneous Policy:

1. Simultaneous Implementation — each Simultaneous Policy package must be implemented by all or sufficient nations at the same time, on the same date.
2. Subsidiarity and Protecting National Sovereignty — SIMPOL is only concerned with global issues that nations cannot implement alone for fear of suffering an economic competitive disadvantage. All other issues remain for nations to determine independently.
3. Multi-issue framework — SIMPOL combines multiple issues because addressing any single issue in isolation inevitably means some nations winning and others losing.
4. Detailed policies, not targets – By specifying detailed policies, trust and transparency are enhanced because every nation knows what every other nation will do and when.
5. Verification and enforcement – because SIMPOL provides nations with a mechanism for solving problems they cannot solve alone, it will be in all nations’ interests to agree verification and enforcement measures as part-and-parcel of each Simultaneous Policy package.

This proposal is described in greater detail in the book, website, and information pack.^[14]

In the long term, ongoing work to evolve governance systems and the broader work of intentional evolution may provide more effective forums for untangling multipolar traps, especially at the national and international levels.

Undertaking the reformation workshop can improve our perspectives and prepare for these broader transformations.

1. Identify one multipolar trap you are concerned about.
2. Take action toward its resolution.

By tracing the logic of multipolar traps, this course has revealed how individually rational choices can converge into collective disaster—and why so many of today’s global crises share the same structural roots.^[14] Through concrete examples, we have seen how traps manifest in resource depletion, arms races, attention economies, and governance failures, and we have explored a range of strategies—from cultural shifts and institutional reforms to treaties and global cooperation—that can realign incentives toward shared well-being. Most importantly, we have emphasized that escaping these traps is not the responsibility of governments alone: citizens, leaders, and organizations at every level have the power to recognize warning signs, resist destructive defaults, and design better systems. Untangling multipolar traps is not easy, but it is possible—and by cultivating awareness and collective agency, we can turn these engines of crisis into opportunities for cooperation, resilience, and renewal.

Students who are interested in learning more about untangling multipolar traps may wish to read these books:

• Bunzl, John; Duffell (May 15, 2018). The SIMPOL Solution: A New Way to Think about Solving the World's Biggest Problems. Prometheus. pp. 253. ISBN 978-1633883932. 

I have not yet read the following books, but they seem interesting and relevant. They are listed here to invite further research.

• Goliath's Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse, by Luke Kemp (Available 9/23/25)
• The Sustainable Organization: How Organizations Address the 17 UN SDGs Using the 3-P-Model, by Peter Wollmann, Doris Pemier, Mersida Ndrevatja
• The Lesser Gamble: A Doctrine for Navigating a Future Foreclosed by Myopic Optimization, by Ihor Ivliev

1. ↑ ChatGPT generated this text based on an outline of this course.
2. ↑ "The Monkey Trap: Letting Go For True Connection". www.trinitycareofohio.com. Retrieved 2025-08-31.
3. ↑ Barnes, Myers (2021-07-07). "Let go: The lesson of the monkey's fist | Myers Barnes". www.myersbarnes.com. Retrieved 2025-08-31.
4. ↑ Caplan, Bryan (2018-03-29). "Inside the Monkey Trap". Econlib. Retrieved 2025-08-31.
5. ↑ ChatGPT generated this text responding to the prompt: “give 10 examples of multipolar traps and 10 examples of how they can be overcome”.
6. ↑ ChatGPT generated the first draft of this text responding to the prompt: “give 10 examples of multipolar traps and 10 examples of how they can be overcome”.
7. ↑ The Performance of Self-Governing Irrigation Systems in Nepal,  July 1994Human Systems Management, 13(3):197-207, DOI:10.3233/HSM-1994-13305. By Elinor Ostrom, Wai Fung Lam, Myungsuk Lee
8. ↑ Parajuli, Jagadish; Eakin, Hallie; Chhetri, Netra; Anderies, John M. (2024-08-08). "Institutional Change of Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems: Experience from Nepal". International Journal of the Commons 18 (1). doi:10.5334/ijc.1366. ISSN 1875-0281. https://thecommonsjournal.org/articles/10.5334/ijc.1366. 
9. ↑ ChatGPT generated this text responding to the prompt: “give 10 examples of multipolar traps and 10 examples of how they can be overcome”.
10. ↑ ChatGPT generated the first draft of this text responding to the prompt: “Provide several examples of multipolar traps beginning with very small disputes, such as childhood disputes at the level of “I won’t let you with my dolls if you won’t let me play with your trucks” that are typically resolved among the children, or by a parent or teacher. Then increase the scale of the examples to include various dominance contests, hold outs, standoffs, and legal disputes typically resolved by courts at the relevant level of jurisdiction and continue to include examples of multipolar traps at the municipal, state, national and international levels. Apply the Subsidiary principle where disputes are best resolved at the lowest level possible.”
11. ↑ "Algorithms". Smartsettle. Retrieved 2025-09-05.
12. ↑ Bunzl, John (2018). The SIMPOL Solution: A New Way to Think about Solving the World's Biggest Problems. Nick Duffell (1st ed ed.). Blue Ridge Summit: Prometheus. ISBN 978-1-63388-393-2. 
13. ↑ "Our policy - simpol.org". simpol.org. Retrieved 2025-08-31.
14. ↑ https://simpol.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Policies/Simpol_-_Information_Pack.pdf