[MD] BBC documentary 'the trap'

Fri Aug 21 23:41:35 PDT 2009

OK Dave, (John, I'd be interested in your input too)

I can work with that.
(Not sure where you got one third from ... I watched parts 1 and 3. as
I said I couldn't get the part 2 link to work, it just seems to
connect to the same part 1 episode ... I see the problem now, the
first 5 or 10 minutes is identical to part 1, not just a recap. And as
I also said I think part 3 actually supports what I'm saying. More
later.)

Anyway - I already said it was an interesting documentary full of good
stuff, if you strip out the "silly" political conspiracy-theory
motivated style and agenda - but hey, "that's entertainment" - it's
TV, it's meant to be silly. On balance it is a good interesting - if
silly - documentary. I chose to make only one point about the
MoQ-Discuss dialogue that had started - I have my agenda and limited
time too. Not sure if it is worth me doing a critique of the whole
documentary ? Who would read it :-)

So next, let's find some substantive content to discuss.

You suggested - have it both ways, weaseling ? I can see that's a
problem that bugs you and I'm up front about it - separating baby and
bathwater as I tend to put it. I'm definitely looking for a more
subtle interpretation than the idea that it (game theory, the
documentary, whatever) is all good or all bad.

You correctly noticed the "Dawkins" connection. Let me explain

I really do see and abhor the Rand / Thatcherite / Globalization
business & economic disaster - it is my ongoing activist agenda to
rail against it  .... and fix it, for ten years now, more probably.
But to fix it we have to understand what needs fixing, and how it
might be fixed. As I say (many times) Dawkins is part of the problem.

The thrust & style of the documentary (despite good content too), and
I think your attitude to it, is that the whole rats nest is a matter
of conspiracy and exploitation, by deliberately motivated people ...
from Nash onwards. I say, not so fast to condemn. So where does
Dawkins come into this ?

Well, it's my use of the word "meme" - again as you correctly pointed
out in your barbed rhetorical way (The meme "meme" in your head says
the meme idea is a crass reductionist mechanistic "amoral" science
take on human scale issues like the subject of this documentary. That
is largely Dawkins fault - he is that crass. But I'm not.)

My contention is that the "mimesis of ideas" (to avoid the word meme)
is the problem. And my contention is that this is entirely consistent
with the MoQ - evolutionary stance on levels, not just in biology, but
in the socio-intellectual levels, throughout in fact.

The prevailing idea in the world (and therefore in economists,
politicians and business people of all kinds, not to mention
scientists) is SOMism.

The idea that people are subjects, money and products and services -
even health-care - are objects. This misunderstanding leads to all
manner of hypocrisies and evils ... as we all know. This SOMist idea
is an idea that has spread (mimetically) from conventional western
rationalism throughout most brains in the world - including the best
and most powerful brains. (Incidentally health-care from Thatcher
onwards was a focus from which my activities originated ... "Friends
in Low Places" / "The Paradox of Progress"  ... and the fact that my
master's supervisor - Dame Sandra Dawson - a college principal at
Cambridge Uni is an advisor to UK health-care ... but no matter. I
have more than a passing interest here.)

My agenda is to replace SOMism with MoQism.

Discuss what I say here from "let me explain" - without baggage and
bugs (and sarcasm if possible).

Maybe I can suggest we add tangible - first hand experience - content,
rather than TV documentary hear-say. We could apply what I just said
to the interaction between me and you. Why my idea bugs you and why
that fact that it bugs you means that your "drivel" response actually
gets in the way of discussing or even seeing any content. Or you pick
a substantive point out of the above, Dave, or John, anyone ?

Regards
Ian

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 8:21 PM, david buchanan<dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ian said to dmb:
> ...I'm defending game theory (and system theory and network theory and social evolutionary models like the MoQ - well post-Darwin). What I'm not defending is people who put dumb objective (SOMist) assumptions about what the "rational agents" are in these models. I'm also, as is my habit, pointing out that demonizing Nash (or anyone else individually) as the sole creator of either the theories, or the defense and economic applications that took them up, as so simplistic that it is unhelpful.
>
> dmb replies:
>
> This is exactly the kind of thing that bugs me. It seems you want to have it both ways. You're defending game theory by condemning "people who put dumb objective (SOMist) assumptions about what the "rational agents" are in these models" and by objecting to the "demonization" of the man who won a Noble Prize for his mathematical model of that theory "as the sole creator". But the documentary you're objecting to has nothing to do with SOM and did not claim that it's all Nash's fault. The film explicitly connects game theory to a whole bunch of people including Hayek, Thatcher, Reagan, the neo-Cons, the Rand corporation and implicitly to Hobbes, Ayn Rand, just about every right-wing think tank in the country, the Republican party and, as I pointed out, it can be seen in the current health care debate. The film was produced for a general audience and it's scope was such that it is quite unreasonable to condemn it for being "simplistic". And what the heck does Darwin or SOM have t
>  o do with it? As I see it, you're just trying to weasel out of it by pretending you have a sophisticated MOQ version of the theory that based on the notion that people go around calculating how to screw the other guy and using strategies to cope with the other guy trying to screw you. That, sir, is nonsense. The MOQ isn't going to support anything like that, no matter how sophisticated it is. The whole thing is based on the idea that people self-serving monsters, as if poker players and prisoners accurately reflect what people are like. This is morally outrageous and I just don't see how a good person, let alone a MOQer, could defend any version of it.
>
> Ian said:
> Dave, if you can spare my sensitive soul your withering personally directed sarcsam, I would gladly debate the points in this thread in much further detail. They are very close to my heart, in fixing what is rotten in the state of global economics and politics - there is no other game in town for the foreseeable.
>
>
> dmb says:
>
> I don't think it's about your sensitive soul or what's close to your heart. I think it's about your ego and what's in your hairy brain. If you had a sensitive soul, you wouldn't be defending game theory. If you were interested in debating these points you'd offer some actual explanations of the various theories (game theory, system theory, network theory and social evolutionary models) instead of just naming them. Without that, you're not defending any theory so much as you're just defending your bruised ego. Intellectually speaking, your response was full of emptiness, almost entirely free of content.
> You only saw two thirds of the film and refer to its content only in the vaguest most inaccurate way! Typical. I think "drivel" is the right word for that and I think that would bug anyone who cared about the subject matter.
>
>
>
>
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