The commons problem reflects the importance of knowledge capital.
How did humans progress from small nomadic families, to sending robots to Mars or probes into deep space?
The ancient Greeks were an amazing people. They woke up in the morning, and looked out to the world to try to understand it better or discover new knowledge. The Greeks made assumptions about sunlight, and measured the length of shadows to figure out the size of the Earth.
Such knowledge accumulated in different parts of the world, and was passed down over generations. These enabled us to design machines, build modern cities and provide cutting edge medical care.
Yet, such knowledge can be lost.
Europe went into the Dark Ages after Pax Romana. In 1633, the Roman Church condemned Galileo for his observation that the Earth revolved around the sun, and not the other way around. They held him under house arrest for the rest of his life. Such is the oppression of the Dark Ages.
Indeed, Europe has had to rediscover some of the basic knowledge known to the ancient Greeks. The Europeans, of course, added new knowledge, and dominated the world economy in recent centuries as a result.
Elsewhere, the Arabs and Chinese were great discoverers, before they froze the search for knowledge, and regressed. Other civilisations, like the Mayans, rose and fell into oblivion.
In the modern era, misinformation is still doing harm. For example, the cult of anti-vaccination is causing measles to spread again in some communities. Ignorance, false rumours and corruption in just a handful of countries – three countries to be specific – have delayed the full eradication of polio for all humankind.
Knowledge and facts can be lost amidst the mire of prejudices, ignorance and bigotry.
But we must not give up. We must continue to learn and discover, as individuals and as a society.
We need the intellectual humility to recognise when we are on the wrong path, and have the intellectual honesty to discard wrong knowledge or assumptions.
This patient and robust process of seeking truth from facts is how we expand our knowledge capital to enable progress.