What It Was Like to Glimpse John Nash's Beautiful Mind

While finishing my dissertation at Princeton, I had the distinct pleasure of taking a seminar with Nobel Laureate, John Nash. If you've read the book or seen the movie, "A Beautiful Mind," you'll know that Nash suffered from schizophrenia and this seminar was one of his first appearances since having brought that mental ailment under control. You'll also know that Nash, a genius, essentially "invented" non-cooperative game theory.

Not knowing what to expect, most of us graduate students signed up just to spend time with Nash. He was a legend. And though we'd seen him often lurking around Firestone library with stacks of paper scribblings, none of us ever spoke to him. Yet, we were curious about what a true genius might actually have to say and how one might think.

Strangely enough, Nash's seminar didn't make everyone on the faculty happy. I remember one game theorist telling me attending it would be a 'distinct waste of time'. Others even chuckled at the thought of a person with a mental disability giving a coherent seminar at Princeton. All this seemed ironic and cruel, given Nash's importance in the field and the fact that, with his work, most of their work would lack any importance at all.

Non-cooperative game theory is the study of how individuals or institutions might interact strategically if they don't communicate and Nash won the 1994 Nobel Prize for presenting the first, stable solution to such a situation. A player can do no better in taking an action given the actions of other players, given the inability to cooperate.

If you loved the films, "The Usual Suspects" or "LA Confidential," for example, those plots demonstrated Nash Equilibrium in its great, Hollywood form. In a nutshell, the principle characters are backed into situations where they make the best decisions they can given what they expect others to do. Everything becomes interesting when circumstance gives the good guys the upper hand.

Surprisingly, however, Nash didn't speak about non-coop game theory in our seminar. Instead he presented his work on cooperative game theory. Coop-game theory is about how groups of individuals enforce behaviour to achieve certain outcomes. Just about every spy movie with a dastardly syndicate influencing its members involves coop theory.

If non-cooperative game theory demonstrates powerlessness in the face of others actions, coop-theory does the opposite. It explains how power can be amassed, wielded and maintained--with due punishment as an enforcement technique. At the end of the day, however, what made Nash's presentation amazing was not so much the insights he presented but the way he presented them. He looked at things differently and that perspective influenced how he presented his ideas.

Nash painted the picture of an idea in an audience member's mind, then slowly brought that picture to life in the audience member's head. In watching and listening to him, it was truly a glimpse of how genius can be communicated.

After the presentation, our group went to a small room with Nash for cookies and discussion. Of course, while Nash wanted to talk about his research results and possible extensions, we wanted to know about his life and about how became "Nash".

I asked him, for example, who had influenced his choice of dissertation topic and he said, no one. Another person wondered whether Nash's work was accepted readily by people around the mathematics department at the time and Nash said, no. Finally, however, we hit the jackpot when we asked Nash how his current research model could explain the politics of the world we currently see.

All of a sudden, this 70-something year old man who'd seemingly awakened from 50 years of dormancy stood up and spoke to us with a 20-year old's energy. He started illustrating the interesting point that powerful, cooperative relationships actually stem from the lack of power, not from the possession of it. Enforcing the rules of a coalition was really about playing on the fears and insecurities of other members, not those of the less powerful, as one might think.

All of that made a sort of counterintuitive sense to us. It made me think, for example, about Hitler's rise to power and his ability to create alliances with the leadership of 'seemingly nice countries'. In school, we were taught that most of these countries fell under Hitler's sway for fear of Nazi invasion. Nash's model, however, suggested insecurity was what might have motivated the Axis powers to cooperate.

But while we pondered Nash's ideas, what further amazed us was his humility and hunger for intellectual interaction, even with us lowly grad students. He spoke to us as colleagues, not as pupils. He invited us to challenge, not merely to validate his thinking. He also encouraged us when he believed we were on the right track, and gently corrected us when we got things wrong.

While definitely the dumbest person in the room, I felt especially fortunate to interact with him in this way. At one point, when he complimented me on something I said, I remember thinking, "A genius has just said he likes the way I think: I gotta' tell my boys at home about this!"

Like all good things, our time with Nash eventually came to an end. And though I doubt he took much away from us, we definitely took a great deal away from him.

Nash taught me, for example, that brilliant ideas are not the exclusive domain of people with great minds; yet, it's hard to imagine many people deserving the title "great" without producing brilliant ideas.

Nash also taught me that we thinkers are no less artistic and creative in our ideas than the greatest of artists, unless we choose to be so. 

And Nash taught me that even geniuses need other people to correct their thinking and vet their ideas (as he had done in interacting with John Von Neumann).

Most importantly, however, Nash taught me that anyone's mind can be beautiful if it focuses on producing beautiful ideas.   

May John Nash's memory be eternal.

Maurice Ewing is a globally experienced risk and strategy consultant that has worked in over 50 countries. You can follow him on his blog and on Twitter @mauriceewing.