  Everyone wants clean air, peace and other public goods but is tempted to
freeride on others' efforts. The usual way out of this dilemma is to impose
norms, maintain reputations and incentivize individuals to contribute. In
situations of high uncertainty, however, such as confrontations of protesters
with a dictatorial regime, the usual measures are not feasible, but cooperation
can be achieved nevertheless. We use an Ising model with asymmetric spins that
represent cooperation and defection to show numerically how public goods can be
realized. Under uncertainty, people use the heuristic of conformity. The
turmoil of a confrontation causes some individuals to cooperate accidentally,
and at a critical level of turmoil, they entail a cascade of cooperation. This
critical level is much lower in small networks.
