Saturday, January 14, 2012
John Nash Explains
Both how the Not-Romneys will hand the nomination over to Willard Romney, and how Conservatism is destroying America.
Because they cannot wrap their heads around the "...and the group" part of the equation.
I personally find it hilarious that the only way for the 75% of the GOP who fucking hate Willard Romney to deny him the nomination would be to act like a pack of evil S!O!C!I!A!L!I!S!T!S and put the interest of the group ahead of the interest of any one individual.
And doubly so when you consider that it was exactly this kind of "I've got mine so fuck you" mentality that made the GOP's direct lineal descendant -- the government of the Confederate States of America -- such a complete basket case.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
-
To date, this is how the very few interactions I've had with Never Trumpers have gone, because I want to talk about the Befor...
-
* (I will rarely do a modification to an existing post, but this seemed too sadly appropriate not to add.) This is a graphic-intensive post,...
10 comments:
(ancestor!)
great clip from a great movie, but this scene oversimplifies. I clearly see 5 girls standing there, and there are 5 guys at the table, but the mental calculation (and the happy result) involves 5 girls and only 4 guys. If all 5 guys went after the 4 friends, there would still be contention, and the blond would be insulted and would certainly not lay the guy who loses out with her friends. The solution presented makes it seem that nobody gets the big win, but everyone wins a little bit, and wins equally. However, everybody wins equally only because we conveniently forgot about the fifth guy. The hard part of developing a culture of altruism is convincing people that it is in their best interest to let someone else win big -- to let some other guy go after the blond -- in order to increase your chances of a second-rate but still beneficial solution. This scene completely sidesteps that issue.
I saw Nash exit the room leaving the 4-to-5 situation he had just explained to his friends.
The first stated motivation for the constitution is to enable us "to form a more perfect union."
The reason we are unable to develop a culture of altruism, based on societal unity, is that the constitution, as our self-governing principle, has been replaced/conflated with a predatory economic system based on individual greed.
John Puma
The suggestion is that Nash decided to "take one for the team", opting out of the game so that the remaining players would all do better. While commendable, that is not an optimal strategy, and it is unlikely that Nash would consider it. As has been noted by others, the scene is deeply flawed in that the 4-man solution he comes up with is not even in Nash equilibrium, which is what the scene is supposed to be about! My claim is that a 5-man solution is both in Nash equilibrium AND pareto optimal, if they can just decide beforehand who is the lucky man who gets the blond. That is the crux of altruism that the movie misses: how do we develop strategies to come to agreement on allocations that, while perhaps unequal, are still acceptable to all and inequitable to none. I very much agree with you that the current rules of politics and economics fail to achieve that. The promise that game theory holds is that there may be ways to restructure the rules so that even greedy, self-interested people make socially responsible choices.
Perhaps, in this case, it was a pareto improvement instead of a pareto optimal then. If the remaining 4 implement the strategy and succeed, all Nash has to do is return in an hour, claim the blond, and thus achieve pareto optimal. Whatev. More importantly, I want to know who represents Romney here. Is it Nash or the dumb blond. I vote the blond.
John gets jennifer conelly. Nuf said.
The brunettes are paid by Restore Our Revlon to fight each other, and make the blonde the only attractive choice.
And you can bet everything you have that putting the interest of the group ahead of their own is exactly what they'll do. Why? These are the most gullible and easily-manipulated people on earth. Once Faux News tells them to do that, they'll walk right off that cliff singing hymns of praise to the Job Cremator.
"
And doubly so when you consider that it was exactly this kind of "I've got mine so fuck you" mentality that made the GOP's direct lineal descendant -- the government of the Confederate States of America -- such a complete basket case. "
And, Oh, So, Predictable.
Um -- 'scuse me, but -- anyone consider that "the blonde" (not even a name?) might have some small say in the matter?
Or might not (I realize this comes as a shock, even now) be interested in any male, let alone one enoucntered at a random college bar?
Post a Comment