Posted on 05/27/2015 5:56:33 AM PDT by OK Sun
John F. Nash Jr. is widely known as the subject of the Oscar-winning film “A Beautiful Mind,” but his contributions to the advancement of human knowledge are far greater. Nash paved the way for game theory to spread from a collection of toy cases in mathematics to a generalizable theory applicable to virtually anything — board games, economics, politics, international relations — to the point where now it’s practically a mode of critical thinking in its own right.
On Saturday, the 86-year-old mathematician and his wife, Alicia, were killed in a car crash in New Jersey. There have been many excellent obituaries about Nash’s life and accomplishments, so I wanted to briefly discuss a few details about what he did that was so important, and why his work is still so relevant today.
Nash’s 1951 article “Non-Cooperative Games” refined the definition of an “equilibrium” as a situation in which each player is employing a strategy that is optimal given the strategies of all the other players. For example, in the Prisoner’s Dilemma — a game formalized by Nash’s thesis adviser Albert W. Tucker — the two suspects betraying each other is an equilibrium, despite the best overall outcome being for both of them to remain silent. Nash’s definition would (appropriately) become known as the “Nash Equilibrium” — a term familiar to students in a wide range of academic disciplines.
(Excerpt) Read more at fivethirtyeight.com ...
Quite a mind and quite a story behind it all. RIP.
In the midst of the usual dreck we get from Hollywierd, there are these gems that bring to light some extraordinary stories. “A Beautiful Mind” was one of them and I am thankful that Ph.D Doctor John Nash AND his dedicated wife got their due while they were alive.
While they will be missed, they are now, I hope, in Heaven where all worldly maladies have been discarded with their earthly husks! May God bless their extended family and friends for their Earthly loss.
It was a case of F=Ma as they weren’t wearing seatbelts. Very sad.
May they rest in peace.
I remember, shortly after 9-11, DARPA set up a “Terrorism Futures Market” based on Nash’s game theory.
The Progs went berserk. The ones I talked with about it were completely taken aback that it was based on the work of the guy from A Beautiful Mind, the value of which had been proven over and over again.
I was a math major at Princeton at a time when Nash had definitely not recovered but was still a fixture around the math and physics buildings. I had some interactions with him.
He often hung out in the math/physics library and would sometimes ask me to use my key to let him into the math building. He saw connections between things that most people regard as not connected. He left a lot of funny and strange comments on blackboards I copied down one of the most amazing ones but unfortunately this didn’t make it into the book about him.
I remember that. At the time I thought it was an excellent idea. And then...
The Progs went berserk. The ones I talked with about it were completely taken aback that it was based on the work of the guy from A Beautiful Mind, the value of which had been proven over and over again.
Real world evidence doesn't work on moonbats.
Probably Asperger's Syndrome.
Economics takes for granted the problematic view that everyone acts in their self-interest, and that this is the best way of understanding the world. The latest research within the discipline is, however, transforming these fundamental assumptions.
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