Re: Mirowski on Nash's "brilliant insight"

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Ted Winslow writes: 
> I had understood you to be claiming that Nash's equilibrium 
> concept was
> brilliant.

I had written: 
> > Einstein's Gedanken (sp?) experiments and Nash's brilliant insight
> > come from non-neurotypical thinking.
> >
> > I do think that Nash's equilibrium [NE] concept was brilliant.

"brilliance" is a relative thing, dependent on the context. Within the narrow confines of the game-theory mentality, NE was brilliant. (It "cut the Gordian knot" of game theory, coming to a simple solution to a complex problem.)  From a larger perspective that uses game theory only carefully and critically, it's no big deal, especially since it seems irrelevant in most empirical situations. The key, as I said, is to figure out in which empirical situations NE is relevant. 

A comedy of errors! First (seemingly based on dyslexia), JKS concluded that I was attacking game theory in general, a top-to-bottom rejection. (This misinterpretation may have been partly my fault, encouraged by the fact that I was trying to undermine the common academic adoration of game theory (and its obverse, the total rejection of GT) by writing in a humorous way.)  Then, in explaining my viewpoint to him, I tried to restrict the scope of my message by simply referring to NE as brilliant. So Ted assumes that I thought it was brilliant in general rather than in a very specific way. But I hope that we're reaching some sort of understanding here.

Jim Devine