Nicey
17-03-07, 06:16 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAluyt5_kic
1. "F**k You Buddy" (11 March, 2007)
In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behaviour filtered into economic thought.
The programme traces the development of game theory with particular reference to the formulae of John Nash, whose paranoid schizophrenia coloured his entire outlook of human behaviour; film of an older and wiser Nash recanting his earlier ideas about people is also shown. Nash believed that all humans were inherently suspicious and selfish creatures that strategised constantly. He invented system games reflecting this belief, including one called "Fuck You Buddy", in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner, and it is from this game that the episode's title is taken.
Curtis examines how game theory was used to create the USA's nuclear strategy during the Cold War. Since no nuclear war occurred, it was believed that game theory had been correct in dictating the creation and maintenance of a massive American nuclear arsenal — because the Soviet Union had never attacked America with its nuclear weapons, the supposed deterrent must have worked. This is a subject Curtis examined in his first series, Pandora's Box, and he reuses much of the same archive material in doing so.
A separate strand in the documentary is the work of R.D. Laing, whose work in psychiatry led him to model familial interactions using game theory. His conclusion was that humans are inherently selfish and shrewd and spontaneously generate strategems during everyday interactions. Laing's theories became more developed when he concluded that some forms of mental illness were merely artificial labels, used by the state to suppress individual suffering. This belief became a staple tenet of counterculture during the 1960s. Reference is made to the Rosenhan experiment, in which bogus patients surreptitiously self-presenting at a number of American psychiatric institutions were falsely diagnosed as having mental disorders, while institutions informed that they were to receive bogus patients "identified" numerous supposed imposters that were actually genuine patients. The results of the experiment fundamentally challenged the ability of psychiatric medicine to genuinely diagnose and treat mental illness.
All these theories tended to support the beliefs of what were then fringe economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, whose economic models left no room for altruism, but rather depended purely on self-interest, leading to the formation of public choice theory. In interview, the economist James M. Buchanan decries the notion of the "public interest", asking what it is, and suggesting that it consists purely of the self-interest of the governing bureaucrats. Buchanan also proposes that organisations should employ only managers who are motivated by money. He calls those who are motivated by other factors (such as job satisfaction) "zealots".
As the 1960s became the 1970s, the theories of Laing and the models of Nash began to converge, producing a widespread popular belief that the state (a surrogate family) was purely and simply a mechanism of social control which calculatedly kept power out of the hands of the public. Curtis shows that it was this belief that allowed the theories of Hayek to look credible, and underpinned the free-market beliefs of Margaret Thatcher, who sincerely believed that by dismantling as much of the British state as possible — and placing former national institutions into the hands of public shareholders — a form of social equilibrium would be reached. This was a return to Nash's work, in which he proved mathematically that if everyone was pursuing their own interests, a stable yet perpetually dynamic society could result.
The episode ends with the suggestion that this mathematically modelled society is run on data — performance targets, quotas, statistics — and that it is these figures combined with the exaggerated belief in human selfishness that has created "a cage" for Western humans. The precise nature of the "cage" is to be discussed in the next episode.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/617179
Question Everything:handshake:
1. "F**k You Buddy" (11 March, 2007)
In this episode, Curtis examines the rise of game theory during the Cold War and the way in which its mathematical models of human behaviour filtered into economic thought.
The programme traces the development of game theory with particular reference to the formulae of John Nash, whose paranoid schizophrenia coloured his entire outlook of human behaviour; film of an older and wiser Nash recanting his earlier ideas about people is also shown. Nash believed that all humans were inherently suspicious and selfish creatures that strategised constantly. He invented system games reflecting this belief, including one called "Fuck You Buddy", in which the only way to win was to betray your playing partner, and it is from this game that the episode's title is taken.
Curtis examines how game theory was used to create the USA's nuclear strategy during the Cold War. Since no nuclear war occurred, it was believed that game theory had been correct in dictating the creation and maintenance of a massive American nuclear arsenal — because the Soviet Union had never attacked America with its nuclear weapons, the supposed deterrent must have worked. This is a subject Curtis examined in his first series, Pandora's Box, and he reuses much of the same archive material in doing so.
A separate strand in the documentary is the work of R.D. Laing, whose work in psychiatry led him to model familial interactions using game theory. His conclusion was that humans are inherently selfish and shrewd and spontaneously generate strategems during everyday interactions. Laing's theories became more developed when he concluded that some forms of mental illness were merely artificial labels, used by the state to suppress individual suffering. This belief became a staple tenet of counterculture during the 1960s. Reference is made to the Rosenhan experiment, in which bogus patients surreptitiously self-presenting at a number of American psychiatric institutions were falsely diagnosed as having mental disorders, while institutions informed that they were to receive bogus patients "identified" numerous supposed imposters that were actually genuine patients. The results of the experiment fundamentally challenged the ability of psychiatric medicine to genuinely diagnose and treat mental illness.
All these theories tended to support the beliefs of what were then fringe economists such as Friedrich von Hayek, whose economic models left no room for altruism, but rather depended purely on self-interest, leading to the formation of public choice theory. In interview, the economist James M. Buchanan decries the notion of the "public interest", asking what it is, and suggesting that it consists purely of the self-interest of the governing bureaucrats. Buchanan also proposes that organisations should employ only managers who are motivated by money. He calls those who are motivated by other factors (such as job satisfaction) "zealots".
As the 1960s became the 1970s, the theories of Laing and the models of Nash began to converge, producing a widespread popular belief that the state (a surrogate family) was purely and simply a mechanism of social control which calculatedly kept power out of the hands of the public. Curtis shows that it was this belief that allowed the theories of Hayek to look credible, and underpinned the free-market beliefs of Margaret Thatcher, who sincerely believed that by dismantling as much of the British state as possible — and placing former national institutions into the hands of public shareholders — a form of social equilibrium would be reached. This was a return to Nash's work, in which he proved mathematically that if everyone was pursuing their own interests, a stable yet perpetually dynamic society could result.
The episode ends with the suggestion that this mathematically modelled society is run on data — performance targets, quotas, statistics — and that it is these figures combined with the exaggerated belief in human selfishness that has created "a cage" for Western humans. The precise nature of the "cage" is to be discussed in the next episode.
http://www.mininova.org/tor/617179
Question Everything:handshake: