Limited power2000-09-19This is inspired by a feeling that we are a bit unfair against our elected representatives. There is a scientific concept known as game theory. It was invented by John von Neumann. He was a great logician. But one aspect of logic is that it sometimes leads to unpleasant results. Towards the end of the 1940s he deduced, with impeccable logic, that the USA ought to launch an essentially unprovoked full scale nuclear attack against the Soviet Union, before the Soviets had built a strike- back capability. I am not saying this to make anyone dislike the good John. I am saying it because it shows how logic isn't everything. To be decent you sometimes have to be illogical. You sometimes have to be irrational when logic leads to horrible things like mass killings. The worldly leaders of the United States never even threatened anyone to use their nuclear weapons in that period of superiority, as far as I know. I dont know whether it was their common sense or their religious beleifs that prevented such a course of events. But it clearly wasn't logical to stand by and watch while their opponent rapidly created a terror balance and thereby put millions of american citizens in danger of extermination. A risk that could have been circumvented if logic only had prevailed. Maybe John's reasoning was logical only in a limited sense. But he had a very sharp mind and he came to that conclusion. A guy named, I think, Suber wrote an original book, where he applied the said game theory to games involving a pair of opponents, one a hypothetical superbeing with unlimited knowledge, like God, and the other a fallible creature, like us. Can you beleive it, it turns out the latter sometimes wins against the superbeing, by acting irrationally. This is because it is sometimes at your disadvantage to know everything. Something to think about isn't it? If not even God always wins, how could we expect our leaders to be perfect? I think we would get further with this world if we try to help our leaders more than we do. Avoiding futile criticisms and when we must criticize I think we ought to try and come up with something constructive as much as we can instead of all the whining and negativism. This in no way prevents authenticity in news reporting. I think we should take on ourselves part of the blame for the failures we usually want the leadership to carry alone. If this kind of thinking is applied on the western world as a whole, it gives us an incentive to take more interest in what goes on in all the western countries and what might affect us. This way a fresh perspective may be gained from foreign observers. We have everything to gain from a more generous attitude. I wish we could bury all the whining. Return to Introduction |