[MD] BBC documentary 'the trap'

[david buchanan]

Ian said to dmb and Khaled:
In defence of game theory - Nash's ideas were that most complex socio-intellectual actions are a game - moves that anticipate the moves of others - where we players are rational agents. This provided a way of modelling and predicting outcomes to help decision-making. The problems arise when people using such models take too narrow a "selfish" view of the agents "interests" and too crude a view of "rationality". Then we get self-serving "autistic" & "neurotic" economics - the kind that has been dragging us down since Friedman, Thatcher and Reagan.

dmb says:
Well, if you watch the documentary you'll learn that Nash isn't even willing to defend game theory anymore. As a matter of fact, we're talking about a model of human behavior that was invented during the cold war by a paranoid schizophrenic. The whole thing is based on selfishness, suspicion, paranoia and a little game that Nash called "Fuck you, buddy". This theory says that love, trust, altruism and the public good are sheer fantasies. I mean, the narrow, crude view of humanity is built right into it and so your defense of it is indefensible. On top of that, this way of looking at things is very, very different from the MOQ. 
I mean, game theory strikes me as the epitome of the amoral rationality that Pirsig is working against. This is the theory that has us all chasing that mechanical rabbit, that turns us all into strange, alienated, isolated creatures. This is the theory that says the meaning of life is to go shopping. 
In the film, you'll also learn that this is the model used by Dick Dawkins' genetic theories, Hayek's economics, Lainge's psychology of the family (which brings with psychopathic view of humanity into our most intimate human relations). It also describes the politics of Ayn Rand, the Rand corporation and all those randy Republicans in Washington. This is the theory that gave us the Bush doctrine and is presently behind the fanatical opposition to health care reform. I mean, dude, if you're willing to defend this poison, you are drinking some pretty toxic kool-aid. It's morally outrageous and just plain wrong. 
Funny thing is, I've heard the phrase "game theory" many times before but never heard an explanation until I watched that documentary. I had assumed it was a theory about games and so it just didn't interest me. I was quite surprised to learn that it is essentially a model of human behavior invented by a man who was terrified by humans because of his mental illness. That's why nobody except economists and psychopaths still believe in it. Nash doesn't even believe it anymore. That should give you pause, no?
The summary below can be located, of course, by searching some uncommon phrase of sentence from the quoted passage. But I'm sure you already knew that. I saved a chunk to make that search easy for you....  

** The deep assumptions lying behind the belief that markets are the most effective means of fulfilling peoples' deepest wants and needs arises from the assertion that human beings are selfish individuals, inexorably driven by a simple desire to fulfil their own interests, adjusting their behaviour to counter others' attempts to do the same. Game Theory, which supports this idea, is backed by complex mathematical models that purport to explain human behaviour. This theory has been adopted by some biological scientists, who postulate that humans, like all animals, are receptacles for and driven by, the selfish need of their genes to reproduce. In this sense, human behaviour is determined by genetics, people will follow a set of rules which can be understood by complex mathematical modelling. This theory was developed to predict adversaries' behaviour in the Cold War and eagerly taken up by some geneticists and economists.In case you think economic science has gone mad, all the above is fact. These theories have been enthusiastically adopted by many economists and politicians who assert that, given that people are driven simply by selfish individualism, then the market is a more effective means of giving them what they need than membership of society or democratic politics. The economics of Reagan, Thatcher, Blair and Bush have all been driven by Game Theory and its derivatives, even if they didn't understand that! The high priests of these wondrous theories are an economist, James Buchanan (who, when it was put to him that people had a social conscience and cared about others, said that he "couldn't compute" that) and mathematician John Nash, who made a recovery from the paranoid schizophrenia from which he was suffering when he developed his theories.These constructs are now being seriously challenged in both economic and biological domains and John Nash later described his own theories as being grossly simplistic and not at all representative of the complexity of human beings.Adam Curtis, who has produced a brilliant series of BBC TV documentaries on these themes, sums it up nicely: "The only people who still believe these theories are (some) economists - and psychopaths" And maybe the Economist magazine??




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