WHAT'S SO FUNNY?

I want to spend a little time explaining why I seem to kid around a lot, because I have a feeling it is not clear to a number of my readers, who are accustomed to serious subjects being talked about in high toned and serious ways. Let me begin by quoting a paragraph from that 2014 series of posts on the Prisoner’s Dilemma.

 

“That payoff matrix contains the totality of the information relevant to a game theoretic analysis.  Nothing else.  But what about those jail terms?  Those are part of the outcome matrix, not the payoff matrix.  The payoff matrix gives the utility of each outcome to each player, and with an ordinal ranking, the only utility information we have is that a player ranks one of the outcomes first, second, third, or fourth [or is indifferent between two or more of them, of course, but let us try to keep this simple.]  But ten years versus going scot free, and all that?  That is just part of the little story that is told to perk up the spirits of readers who are made nervous by mathematics.  We all know that when you are introducing kindergarteners to geometry, it may help to color the triangles red and blue and put little happy faces on the circles and turn the squares into SpongeBob SquarePants.  But eventually, the kids must learn that none of that has anything to do with the proofs of the theorems.  The Pythagorean Theorem is just as valid for white triangles as for red ones.”

 

This paragraph is actually a deadly serious and vicious attack on a number of high-profile, distinguished, accomplished, well known commentators on nuclear deterrence theory and international affairs and other subjects of equal importance. In this paragraph I am mocking them, making fun of them, trying as hard as I can to ridicule them, suggesting by my facetious remarks about SpongeBob SquarePants that these important people, who start wars and risk nuclear encounters and do other terrible things while justifying what they are doing by appeal to high toned quasi mathematical theories, are actually silly children who have no idea what they are talking about.

 

I did exactly the same thing in my famous review of Allan Bloom’s book The Closing of the American Mind, by writing the review absolutely with a straight face as though Bloom himself was the fictional creation of Saul Bellow, who had supplied a preface to Bloom’s book.

 

In order for this sort of deadly satire to work, it must be grounded on a serious critique of the work of the individual being satirized. It is only because I can in fact provide such a critique derived from a real grasp of the mathematics of Game Theory that the satire of those folks babbling on about the Prisoner’s Dilemma has any chance of succeeding. I cannot emphasize this point enough.  It accomplishes nothing to attack people whose views you do not like by trying to ridicule them unless the ridicule is grounded in and can be defended by a serious straight up critique of what they are saying.

 

To compare Herman Kahn and Henry Kissinger to children who find it easier to learn the elements of geometry when happy faces are painted on the circles is, in my judgment, a deeper and more wounding critique than taking them seriously as nuclear deterrence and foreign policy experts and arguing against them as one would at a university debate. Ridicule does not always work, of course. But it has its moments.  My greatest triumph came when I learned that people had started calling the University of Chicago, after my review appeared, to ask whether Allan Bloom really existed.  After all, the most devastating thing you can say about someone whose views you disagree with is that he or she does not exist.

 

So pause for a moment and think twice the next time you see me making a joke.