| As Chariots Of Fire did for Eric Liddell and Braveheart | | | | and cooperate, they'll both get a minor sentence of |
| did for William Wallace, the 2002 film A Beautiful Mind | | | | five years. If neither man confesses, they'll both only |
| made mathematician John Forbes Nash a household | | | | get one year - But, and here's where it gets |
| name - without necessarily rendering his life, or his | | | | interesting, if one confesses and the other doesn't, |
| work, much better-understood. Audiences and critics | | | | the one who confesses walks out scot-free while |
| welcomed the movie - it won a 2004 Academy | | | | the other will do 10 years. What will they do? Will |
| Award - but enthusiasts of Nash's work insist that | | | | they trust each other and do what's obviously in their |
| even bigger rewards await those who study Nash's | | | | best interest, which is not confess?" Game theorists |
| real-life work, and the esoteric discipline, game | | | | assume that each person in this dilemma is out for |
| theory, in which he made his name. | | | | themselves; assigning values accordingly, they come |
| Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, in 1928, Nash was | | | | up with equations that predict the two burglars will |
| already carrying out bedroom scientific experiments | | | | betray each other - even though it makes more |
| at the age of twelve. He didn't excel in sports or | | | | sense to cooperate. |
| other stereotypically youthful pursuits, instead fixing | | | | It may sound crazy - how on earth can something |
| on E.T. Bell's book Men of Mathematics with the | | | | that seems as cut-and-dry as math make successful, |
| same intensity that a young would-be guitarist might | | | | predictive models of how humans will behave in a |
| bring to, say, Led Zeppelin IV. While still in high school, | | | | real-world situation? But mathematicians, economists |
| he took college-level math classes, and a | | | | and political scientists have used game theory to yield |
| Westinghouse scholarship to the Carnegie Institute of | | | | some startlingly accurate predictions. Game theorist |
| Technology (a school known, and revered, today as | | | | Benito de Mesquita used his own equations to predict |
| Carnegie Mellon) seemed to confirm his vocation as a | | | | the Ayatollah Khomeini's successor, in 1984; when his |
| mathematician - a vocation only confirmed when | | | | answer proved, several years later, to be correct, it |
| Princeton aggressively recruited him to its Ph.D. | | | | launched a career that now includes a rich consulting |
| program in mathematics. He finished his doctorate in | | | | firm and several Pentagon collaborations. Game |
| 1950. | | | | theory may not be uncontroversial, but it does look |
| Much of his important early work - including the three | | | | to be here to stay. |
| scholarly articles that defined and explained the | | | | Nash's own most famous work has to do with the |
| tendency that came to be known as "Nash | | | | way we can assume people will behave in certain |
| equilibrium" and which (many years later) helped | | | | "non-cooperative" games, i.e. situations in which |
| secure him a 1994 Nobel Prize - had to do with game | | | | people compete against each other. He showed, in |
| theory, a branch of mathematics that analyzes the | | | | general, that there are limits on the degree of |
| ways people interact. Game theorists construct | | | | success that can be achieved by people in |
| equations that reflect peoples' assumed motives in | | | | competition against each other - that, contra Adam |
| entering a situation, and then analyze the range of | | | | Smith (the father of modern economics), some kinds |
| possible actions they may take. They use | | | | of competition tend to reduce the amount of good |
| mathematical modeling to determine what the actual | | | | stuff available for everyone (rather than making the |
| outcomes of the situation, then, will be. | | | | total size of the pot bigger, as Smith is usually |
| A logical puzzler known as the Prisoner's Dilemma | | | | assumed to have taught). This is the insight for which |
| offers a good quick example of how basic game | | | | - decades later, after his protracted struggle with |
| theory works. Imagine two prisoners caught near the | | | | schizophrenia, and along with Reinhard Selten and |
| scene of a burglary and hauled in by the police. The | | | | John Harsanyi - he won the Nobel Prize. It may not |
| cops know that they've found their suspects, but | | | | be as photogenic as Russell Crowe (who played Nash |
| they can't get either person to admit guilt, so they | | | | in the movie), but it's - who knows? - probably more |
| offer each man a deal. As Michael A.M. Lerner, writing | | | | relevant to your life. |
| in Good Magazine, describes it: "If they both confess | | | | |