What do you feel when someone you knew once- and haven’t seen for decades- dies?

I was confronted with these thoughts this past weekend.  Dr. John Nash died.  No, he didn’t die- he was killed by the errors of a taxi driver- who survived the crash, while John and his wife were killed in the wreck.

It makes you think.  You can die- or not- in a plane crash.  You can die- or not- in a train wreck.  When you survive a traumatic crash like that, your life’s view changes.   But, dying in a taxi wreck- that’s pretty bizarre.

But, John Nash has made a difference in my life- and yours, too!  Even if you didn’t know him, never saw the movie that was ostensibly about his life (A Beautiful Mind), you should know that his theories and concepts has changed the world’s view.

Dr. Nash won the Nobel Prize.  As a boy, I always wondered how that would feel.  As I grew older, realizing that I was never going to work in the basic sciences (yes, economics really is the dismal science), I knew that would never be in my cards.   But, John Nash earned it for his astounding work in understanding how we interact with one another- work he did as a graduate student.

His thesis was on game theory.  And, for most of us who don’t understand the terminology of mathematics, it really is not about games.  (Although if you saw the movie “War Games”, where the computer just wanted to play Tic-Tac-Toe, you can get the inkling of what it’s about.)   Dr Nash’s 27 page thesis described how we make decisions when we are in conflict with one another.

Only 6 years earlier had the field been defined, in that case by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern with their tome, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.   I’m old enough to recognize how this played (pun intended) a big part in our politics with the Soviet Union and our arms race.  Von Neumann and Morgenstern relied on the game of checkers (and not Tic-Tac-Toe), which is a zero sum game- one person loses and another wins.

 

 

The “beauty” of Nash’s concepts (yes, his concepts were beautiful) was that most of our interactions are never that simple.  He extended the concept to cooperative games- one where binding agreements are held, and non-cooperative games -where no binding agreements exist)   (Ah, yes, the Middle East…)  Yet, in both instances, there are possibilities for mutual gain.  (OK.  Maybe not the Middle East….)   But, the outcomes of mutual gain among adversaries are now known as Nash equilibria.

(The real problem is that rivals rarely know each other’s strategies- a condition that Dr. Nash assumed.  Now you know why the NSA spies on everyone- they want to know everyone’s strategies.  Keeping ours hidden means we have tremendous advantage.)

And, as I’ve often written, many a brilliant sci-tech is just a step away from mental impediments.  Whether it is schizophrenia or Asperger’s (by the way, Nash was not the best in social interactions- which is another reason why his life’s choice of game theory is astounding), among others.

What I always found of interest was Dr. Nash started out as a Chem E at Carnegie Mellon.  But, he switched to chemistry, finally settling on mathematics.  (His PhD was earned at Princeton; from there he went to MIT, only to return to Princeton.)  At MIT, he married Alicia Larde- from whom he was divorced as his mental instability overtook his life.  But, she still took care of him.  And, after his improvements, they remarried 44 years after their first essay.   And, Alicia was also taken in this wreck.

Just like we don’t know the strategy of our opponents, we don’t know the plans of the Supreme Being.  We just need to make the best difference we can each and every day.

Here’s to you, John.   You did.