Re: game theory

[Ted Winslow <egwinslow@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Devine wrote:

> Ted writes:
> > I think it's a mistake to see psychopathology as ever "functional."
>
> > "Success" can't be furthered by unrealistic thinking.<
>
> unrealistic thinking -- e.g., schizophrenia -- usually doesn't further 
> success in capitalist enterprise, on the level of practical reason. 
> But it does in other circumstances. Economist Robert Barro has made a 
> profession out of embracing unrealistic thinking and has gotten big 
> bucks. Some religious leaders are extremely unrealistic (at least on 
> the theological, theoretical level) but have convinced large numbers 
> of disciples to follow them and to give them money. There are lots of 
> other examples that suggest that unrealism can be quite lucrative as 
> long as it doesn't spill over into the nuts and bolts of practical 
> living (managing the books, etc.) or if there's some trusted 
> individual who will take care of those. (Even so, sometimes 
> unrealistic thinking as the stock market soars can pay off by luck (if 
> one sells at the peak).)
>
> On the other hand, when I referred to "psychopathology" (or 
> sociopathology or "antisocial personality disorder") I wasn't talking 
> about psychopathology _in general_ but specifically about the lack of 
> a conscience. That kind of psychopathology seems to be rewarded and 
> thus encouraged by the structure of capitalist society. (As Ken noted, 
> the corporation itself institutionalizes antisocial personality 
> disorder.) The main problem for a psychopath of this sort is to keep 
> others from knowing that he or she is one of those; this is called 
> "public relations."

In what you’ve cut out, I pointed to Marx’s idea of life in “the realm 
of freedom,” i.e. life as the activity of appropriating and creating 
beauty and truth within relations of mutual recognition, as the 
ultimate criterion for judging “success.”  Individuals are more or less 
successful to the extent that they manage to live such lives.

Such a life requires the kind of development indicated in the idea of 
the “universally developed individual.”  This is the “rational” 
individual; an idea of rationality very different from the idea of 
rationality in game theory.  Rationality requires a capacity to 
perceive truly.

Psychopathology, in the sense I’m using the term, always means 
irrationality of a greater or less degree, an irrationality 
characterized by an inability to perceive truly because of the 
influence of unconscious phantasy.  It can’t, therefore, be functional 
to “success” defined in the above way.

On these foundational assumptions, individuals can hold mistaken 
irrational beliefs about their self-interest.  This will be the case, 
for instance, if they are greedy.  Moreover, irrationality about ends 
is necessarily associated with some degree of irrationality about 
means. This isn’t inconsistent with, for example, individuals being 
very successfully greedy e.g. making lots of money.  Their 
psychopathology won’t have been functional to the achievement of this 
success, however.  Had they been less psychopathological, they would 
have been more successful and, as part of this, less greedy.

This way of understanding individuals is inconsistent with 
understanding them as utility functions.  Its understanding of 
rationality and psychopathology can’t be expressed in terms of the 
latter.  Its understanding of a psychopath, for instance, can't be 
expressed as a utility function without a conscience.

As it understands psychopathology, the utility function conception of 
self and others is itself psychopathological.  The conception splits 
self and others into externally related fragments (the "goods" that 
constitute the content of the function) and subjects them to 
obsessional control (the "mathematics").  Splitting, the attack on 
linking (that constitutes the fragments as externally related) and 
obsessional control are defences against persecutory anxiety.

The idea of "the realm of freedom" that emerges from this is radically 
inconsistent with Marx's.  Mirowski, for instance, locates Arrow's 
impossibility theorem within the socialist calculation debate and 
interprets it as demonstrating that  "dictatorial or imposed regimes" 
would be better able than democratic voting to realize "the realm of 
freedom" interpreted in utility function terms as "the welfare optima."

"For anyone steeped in the socialist calculation controversies of the 
1930s, it is hard to see it [Arrow’s theorem] as anything other than a 
reprise of the Cowles theme that the Walrasian market is a computer 
sans commitment to any computational architecture or algorithmic 
specification; the novel departure came with the assertion that 
democratic voting is an inferior type of computer for calculating the 
welfare optima already putatively identified by the Walrasian 
computer."  (Machine Dreams, pp. 303–04)

Ted