How can a simple idea change the world?
Let us examine the case of a misunderstood young genius named John Nash — a delicate brainiac, whose intellectual power wasn’t measured in IQ — but in detailed clarity of meditative thought, critical thinking and courage of expression of scientific innovation.
In 1950, then a 22-year-old graduate school mathematician and PhD candidate, John Forbes Nash Jr, submitted his University Doctoral dissertation, as his thesis, only a couple dozen pages long. It read easily, without much of the Math and of the technical terms and in the end, it contained just a couple of references — one of which was actually his own previously published & cited work.
Yet, that powerful new & utterly simple thesis, and according to some a ridiculous idea — introduced a new theory that would revolutionize our World, starting from Human reproduction (dating), Economics, Political strategy, Barstool selection, Getting laid, Evolutionary biology, Darwinian selection, Getting married, Pick-up-artistry, Artificial intelligence, and all Algorithmic systems in Computer Science, in Machine learning, in Maths, in STEM, in Emergence Applied Physics, in Decision making intelligence, and in Nuclear, Astro, & Quantum physics, just the same.
Yep…
All of it changed.
Nash’s new theory, was the foundation of what we now know as the Game Theory.
At its heart, the kernel of its existence is the famous Nash Equilibrium — a novel mathematical proof that clearly states amongst many other implications, that even in competitive situations, there’s always an equilibrium, a balance point, a dynamic position, where no one can improve their outcome, without impoverishing, destroying, or simply making someone else worse off.
Imagine two companies competing for the same market. If both lower prices beyond a certain point — profits suffer. If both companies raise their prices — both of them risk losing customers.
The Nash Equilibrium is that sweet spot where neither company benefits from changing their strategy, unless the other company also does.
Indeed Nash’s work on equilibriums now explains, How nations negotiate in peace, & war, Why tariffs & Trade Wars sometimes work and sometimes do not, Why animals in the jungle or the wild, sometimes cooperate instead of competing, Why Reproduce, and most importantly, what you need to do in order to easily reproduce.
And for the eternally horny young men and lusty young women, this is “How to quickly pick-up “ladies” at the bar and get laid” same as it is for the entrepreneurial women AKA lusty ladies.
So, if you want to know how to use the same infamous “Dark Art” of picking up partners for fun and games — read my pamphlet from a few decades ago. As for today, Nash’s scientific work showed us How Artificial Intelligence systems can make better strategic decisions, and indeed “How all Human Constructs, and even How Natural Systems, could make optimal, suboptimal, and even stupid decisions.”
It is an exceptional mechanism to deliver the best optimal understanding of “How online auctions and digital marketplaces optimally operate” and ultimately, how we choose our partners in life, out of the many available suitors, or even how to find these elusive “mates” so that we do not all have to die as singletons, incels, and eternal vestal virgins.
Or God forbid the lost ones who can’t figure the biological plumbing, and where the appropriate bits fit with each others’ bits — and the poor sods get so confused that they start identifying as “baby seals” or some trannies from outer space, or libidinous homoerotic nymphs of the fairy forests of the Pacific Northwest… and the LochNess monster presently in Sabbatical from Scotland and residing in the deepest parts of lake Washington…
Go look for her — if you are not afraid.
Heady stuff — John Nash taught us all kinds of esoteric knowledge, including how to get “head” by angling up to the bar, and choosing a potential sexual partner with panache, by applying to all the good looking interested girls quaffing alcohol, all around you.
Or how to get “ahead” in the Academic, the Business, or even the Governmental Career track, by “gaming” your daily Play.
In short — John Nash taught us all “How to Be A Player” and we owe him a great debt of Gratitude for this teaching that truly has changed our life and improved our lives”Game” exponentially.
Still, besides a small retinue of devoted followers and even dedicated apostles of his sacred knowledge — recognition didn’t come easy for John Nash, because his stuff was so revolutionary, as to be “unthinkable” for modern Academia devoted to Newtonian Math & Physics.
Indeed, for many decades, Nash’s theories were seen as an academic curiosity.
Only in 1994, over 40 years later, his genius was recognized, when the Academy of Sciences sought him out, and offered him the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
Yet, in the in-between years, John battled his own deliberate demons, and he even fought the onset of bipolar depression and schizophrenia, alone save for his devoted mate, the wife he found using Game Theory. A woman who gave him far more than any reasonable man could ever expect from a Mate.
Still he continued working in an especially rich scientific environment, because he undertook some high level government work, as he was asked by the Feds, and thus he worked hard on many secret projects. Yet, the paranoia of the Cold War Era, and the rabid “Red Scare” and his continuous observation by the FBI, caused his delicate mind to spin.
As he spent these difficult decades in a state of Agoraphobia, isolated from the University community, and far away from the whole of Academia — with only the support of his strong wife; John Nash was fighting his own ghosts, while the world had willfully forgotten, the brilliance of his incredible mind, but had never lost sight of his equations, and the development of his theory into the domains of Computer Science, Physics, Maths, and all other Sciences.
But life was lucky for John, because he did not commit suicide, and he kept his overall wits about him. Because, as you see — he had used his own “Game Theory” to choose a strong woman to mate with him, and she had stood by him, the whole time, propping him up, when he needed, and cuddling with him when he was bereft of reason, being lost in the mental fugue that great minds occasionally retreat when troubled by the harsh world all around them….
Thus, John, continued with his daring life, and his always increasingly deep and complex calculations, mind games, and theoretical abstractions — that all together gave rise to incredible advancements in Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence, and far more sexual escapades, pregnancies, and even marriages, in College campuses than anyone else could ever be responsible for…
John Nash showed to the initiated in the secret world of mathematics, deep learning within the libraries, and the mathematical geeks, how to score.
And not just scoring, but how to “get-laid” far more than the lettermen, the jocks, and all the athletic fraternity boys combined — by simply being Brainiacs who read, understand, and experientially apply, Game Theory in the context of natural selection of your next “between-the-sheets” sex-games partner, when you show up as yourself in the bar, looking to score, same as in any other contextual contest of our lives.
That is what having “Game” really means, amongst the men and women, who really understand Math deeply, and grog Nash’s Game Theory, and willing to risk believing it at its core — while acting out its theoretical premise daily, always, and willing to walk the high tight rope of uncertainty, fear, doubt, and anxiety, failing consistently and being ridiculed, yet maintaining cheerfulness, and undiminished enthusiasm, all the way to doing complex aerobics in the bedroom, exchanging bodily fluids, reaching orgasms with the frequency of the metronome, while sending more women in Outer Space than NASA, or the uber-rich boys with the dick-rockets, ever could.
That is why I am so grateful to John Nash, and that is why his Nobel came fittingly well. Snug and supple. Rewards at their finest. More pvssy than kitty-cats in Teheran. Because when it rains it floods…
After the Nobel prize award, and even after John Nash became a celebrity, and his life became the basis for a new film “A Beautiful Mind” which won four Academy Awards, as it introduced the world to one of its quietest yet troubled modern day geniuses — a pamphlet that I had written during my rather hyper-active University nights with the coeds, and many far more mature women, who gossiped about my prowess, and libidinal powers — I had to write down the Secret recipe and share with my friends who were pressuring me for lessons in the ancient Art of How to Mate, for best reproductive results.
So, in a totally Darwinian state of mind, I decided to write and publish my own Thesis based on John Nash’s “Game Theory” and distribute it amongst my UW college mates, for the minimum payment of the subsidy of costs payable to my valet upon delivery. Much later I found out that he made money, hand over fist, as the man who encapsulated my mojo of picking up scores of girls, in a three page script, that he also used game theory to sell it at a handsome profit.
Ahhh, what a rascal, what a crap-scullion, what an apparatchik, but still a lovable assistant, my partner in crime, and my wing man par excellence, none-the-less.
Yet as we give Thanks to John Nash, whose genius, went unrecognized, for many decades, because his work was not easily understood by the hoi-polloi of academia, PhDs, or professors, and consequently efaced from journalistic attentions, since most all of his government work was classified as top-secret, and thus hidden away in black datasets — John’s true legacy was masked behind a vellum of secrecy, that to this day remains hidden from all of our eyes.
But the few of us, who applied his genius to our true sporting nights of exuberant Romantic and even Loving game of chess — we toasted his name every time that we drank whisky, smoked a cigar, and remembered his teachings, always pontificating “The Art of Atom Physics” after a game of thrust intercourse, in the wilds of our bedrooms, in vivo in school, or in the actual wilds, that expanded our mind, one serial Orgasm after another…
What a drug…
But going back to Jahn isn’t easy without mentioning how his work influenced my own Academic endeavors and serious physics quests, that allowed me to develop novel concepts in Nuclear Physics, in Quantum Physics, and in the highest Elementary Physics of the Cosmos — that to this day command my attention as the greatest discoveries of my life & day.
But I am not counting on any recognition yet, because I learned the painful lesson from John Nash experience — that the misunderstood genius is seen as crazy by all the idiots, the simpletons, and the hoi-polloi, out there; who lack the necessary intelligence to understand our Conceptual Reality, let alone to apply it in the STEM world, or in their own life, even for basic reproductive purposes.
And as always when you point the easy path to the Stars away from this Earth — all assorted idiots are looking at your finger
And that is just as fine, because Darwinian processes always take effect and the “stupids” fail to find a mate to reproduce with… so that their DNA as well as their patrilineal RNA gets snuffed out.
Yet, by carefully following mown fairy tale muses – unlike John Nash whom we all now recognize as genius mostly because the Nobel prize committee told us so, and the newspapers repeated it ad-nauseum, I invented and invested in Business Innovation and Technology, always informed by proper Science, and always away from the anemic physiognomy of Academics who don’t know how to sell, or even how to make a dollar, even if their lives depended on it. Salary men, are not employers, and that is all I am going to say on this subject.
Yet for the ones of us, who knew Nash’s Game, far ahead of anyone else, and especially for those of us who had applied his science, to score “babes” by the busload, money by the shovel, and parties by the hundreds — his basic genius, same as his ultimate legacy wasn’t ephemeral, nor just mathematical, nor economical, nor political science regulated, nor it was governmental reasoning, but an eternal truth.
It was Science writ large — same as if it had been written in marble tablets that came down from the heavens, held aloft in the hands of a new Moses of the Mind & Sex.
I recently recommended to the current administration to use Nash’s Game Theory to troll China and her leaders, in order to win this Trade War, and I think that the Top Man in the oven office is listening. And the same goes for outfoxing Iran and Russia in the game of chicken that all previous administrations had been engaged before the Orange man came to try to get the chestnuts out of the fire, with his bare hands…
Still the very fact that US diplomacy today relies on Game Theory is fundamental and quite enjoyable, as expected from my vantage point having been the Author of that sea-change.
Nash’s story rocks, but his Game Theory is salve for our national Soul.
As for his memory — well, its a most clear reminder that simplicity of thought, depth of knowledge sprinkled with Courage, always matters far more than voluminous encyclical academic pronouncements and published papers in prestigious academic journals.
Crystal Clear.
And in a world obsessed with opaque diatribes, fancy published and cited academic papers, data dumps, and intentional Institutional overloads, an endless death by power point presentations ensues — and we are all ending up dead, like a man after a massage without a happy end.
Which by the way, is how John Nash regularly looked after a day’s hard work in Academia.
No wonder he went nuts…
Yet, in a boring Academic world — John Nash still managed to show how a single elegant idea, expressed in a tiny pamphlet, can change the course of history.
Hey, no biggie, because I did the same.
Albeit, with a slightly smaller pamphlet, based on Nash’s Game Theory, unfortunately without citing his genius, without attributions, and certainly without any profit, since my manager/valet, drank all of our profits and most importantly all of my royalties, pissed away in my legendary parties at all the infamous drinking holes of the University Avenue…
But were blessed many young men who impregnated many young women and then naturally had the proverbial shotgun wedding, and are now proud fathers and all around good family men…
Please bear with me, because in my thesis, and on the merits of being a great Academic at the UW, I cherished the fecund years spent there, as it all came back to my memory recently, when a friend and colleague came to my home recently, with his family. We then visited in Seattle, and I also gave them the obligatory tour of the opening Freshman Day, at the University of Washington, where his young daughter aspires to study.
Am sure that she will have a wonderful time there — mainly because I hear that my pamphlet is still circulating secretly in the hidden places behind the shelves of the Suzzallo library in the Great Study Hall…
“Ideas are fleeting – yet, sound reasoning lasts forever.”
—John Nash
Yours,
Dr Churchill
PS:
Yes, an idea whose time has come, truly changes the world.
You just need a brilliant, brave, and rational mind, to compose the thesis in a few paragraphs…
Obligatory dress code, when one is searching for my scientific pamphlet “On Reproduction” at the Graduate Study Room of the Suzzallo library of the University of Washington.