Talk:John Forbes Nash
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Juana Summers was born in the late 20th century in Kansas City, Missouri. She has written many wonderful poems such as Tinfoil Angel, as well as short stories which tackle such subjects as suicide, abuse, and divorce. She also is an aspiring singer/songwriter whose work can be seen on her website, brownidgrrl.iwarp.com Through these works, Juana has helped worried adolescents get through the hard times. A friend once quoted, "Juana is the kind of person you get up to see. She's brilliant and strong. A good friend, person, and one hell of a writer."
Comments by Edward G. Nilges 2-12-2005
(1) I am certain that "attention must be paid" to Juana Summers, in the words of the late Arthur Miller. But the above paragraph has no place here.
(2) I added a few more details about the divergence of the film from reality based on my knowledge of Nash while at Princeton.
In the Wikipedia article of John Nash it is written:
- ...He remained there (in and out of mental hospitals) until 1970, unable to work or produce meaningful scientific results...
But on the other side John wrote in his autobiography for a Nobel prize this:
- ...And it did happen that when I had been long enough hospitalized that I would finally renounce my delusional hypotheses and revert to thinking of myself as a human of more conventional circumstances and return to mathematical research. In these interludes of, as it were, enforced rationality, I did succeed in doing some respectable mathematical research. Thus there came about the research for "Le Probleme de Cauchy pour les E'quations Differentielles d'un Fluide Generale"; the idea that Prof. Hironaka called "the Nash blowing-up transformation"; and those of "Arc Structure of Singularities" and "Analyticity of Solutions of Implicit Function Problems with Analytic Data"...
I do belive that this particular work of him should be mentioned and somehow slightly corrected. XJam [2002.05.31.] 5 Friday (0)
210.21.221.178 12:22, 9 Nov 2004 (UTC)I have made some corrections and added content based on my arm's length knowledge of and assistance to Nash between 1987 and 1992. It's untrue he has a still-"feeble" mind and the adjective is grossly off base; it is insulting to Nash and Alicia. Also, I add content on how interaction with Princeton's "computer center" was a part of his recovery, as was Alicia.
Most seriously, the article accepts a medical history when Nash's doctors, especially at the New Jersey public institute where he was warehoused for a time in the 1960s, may have iatrogenically worsened his condition.
I am treading on difficult terrain, but NPOV is not incompatible with critical psychiatry, and I hope my language is mild enough, to merely suggest that Nash's treatment (involving crude and primitive intervention with dangerous drugs) was far less effective than the unintended "treatment" dreamed up by a bunch of math professors and computer types, which was to let the guy mosey around Fine Hall and the computer center...a part of the Princeton COMMUNITY.
That's the POV of Sylvia's book: but for a truly neutral POV, we need to combine the traditional psychiatric view of the objectified patient (which is the tone of the unchanged article: that Nash as a patient was not interesting, and scarred into a "feeble" state) with the view of many other shrinks (like David Breggin) that psychiatry can use more humanistic methods...such as giving a person a guest account on a computer and letting him be.
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[edit] Admitted Bisexual?
Jonh Nash denied being homosexual or bisexual on 60 Minutes. Whether he was or not is beside the point. How can he be an admitted bisexual if he publicly denied it?
--172.158.107.157 21:58, 12 September 2005 (UTC)== 60 Minutes / Bisexual ==
The article states "Sylvia Nasar, Nash's biographer, cites evidence that Nash was bisexual. However, John and Alicia denied such on 60 Minutes in 2002.".
I haven't seen the 60 Minutes episode in question. However, Donald Capps, in his article in Pastoral Psychology titled "John Nash's Predelusional Phase: A Case of Acute Identity Confusion" (Vol 51, No 5, May 2003, specifically on page 363), says "Nash's wife Alicia has repeatedly rejected the idea that her husband is a homosexual. As she said in the '60 Minutes' interview when Mike Wallace broached the subject, 'I am his wife, and I ought to know.' ... Nash himself, however, did not answer Wallace's question directly, but made a general comment ... to the effect that we need to keep in mind that he was under the control of his delusions at the time, and that whatever may have been going on in his mind was a reflection of this obvious fact."
Thus, I find it inaccurate for the article to state that he denied his bisexuality in 60 Minutes. He seems to have wanted to convey a sense of denial, but he didn't actually deny. It's a subtle, but I think important, distinction. - Zawersh 01:45, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)
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- The article can claim, without proof, that Nash is homosexual or bisexual because that is in accordance with the usual Wikipedia practice. Such practice is to assert that all famous or noteworthy people are homosexuals. Any opposition to this procedure is understood as being reactionary, politically incorrect, and illiberal.72.73.217.117 14:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)OmarSimpson
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The article as it stands currently makes only one brief, oblique reference to Nash's putative homosexual tendencies--when it refers to "Nash's sexual adventures at RAND". Since Nasar's contention appears to be substantially speculative and since Nash appears to be critical of these speculations of Nasar, no further reference to them should be added. TheScotch 07:32, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV dispute of Feb. 2005
I've added an NPOV tag to the article. The writing seemed to be explicitly plugging for Nash and his wife Alicia; see, e.g., "worked courageously as a programmer" [paraphrase] or "adventures characteristic of a burnt-out genius" [paraphrase]...
Somebody who knows about Nash and his life should go over this and pick out what 's fact and what's advocacy. Meelar (talk) 03:53, Feb 14, 2005 (UTC)
Edward G. Nilges 2-18-2005
I am responsible for the "non-NPOV" phrases. I was a source for the Nasar book but my engagement with Nash and Princeton may itself have "biased" my contribution. I need to examine this issue in light of the charter document re NPOV, specifically this:
"We sometimes give an alternative formulation of the non-bias policy: assert facts, including facts about opinions — but don't assert opinions themselves. There is a difference between facts and values, or opinions. By "fact," we mean "a piece of information about which there is no serious dispute." In this sense, that a survey produced a certain published result is a fact. That Mars is a planet is a fact. That Socrates was a philosopher is a fact. No one seriously disputes any of these things. So we can feel free to assert as many of them as we can."
"By value or opinion, on the other hand, we mean "a piece of information about which there is some dispute." There are bound to be borderline cases where we're not sure if we should take a particular dispute seriously; but there are many propositions that very clearly express values or opinions. That stealing is wrong is a value or opinion. That the Beatles was the greatest band is a value or opinion. That the United States was wrong to drop the atomic bomb over Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a value or opinion. That God exists ... this can be a troublesome one. Whether God exists or not is a question of fact, not a question of value. But as the fact is essentially undiscoverable, so far as anyone knows, whether God exists will usually be couched in terms of opinion or value. To state as a fact that "the existence of God is an opinion", while seeming to be sensitive to the issue, implies that there is no fact being discussed (postmodernism or strong agnosticism), or that it is relatively unimportant (secular bias)."
Let me re-read the first highlighted phrase, that Alicia worked "courageously" as a programmer. The two alternative possibilities are that Mrs. Nash worked timidly, or worked neutrally, neither courageously nor timidly.
I am aware that ANY "fact" derived from the Ron Howard film alone would be likely an opinion and only randomly a fact. But Sylvia Nasar in the book, A Beautiful Mind, does say that Alicia was a pioneer, and as such, courageous, in going to work for Met Life (and later on at Princeton itself) and unlike Nasar's recount of Nash's morals bust at Rand, no serious dispute exists regards this fact.
I claim it's a fact that she worked courageously because of a background fact that is not, despite its political freight, in serious dispute. Computer programming in the 1960s was dominated by men. Merely because this is a "feminist" claim does not make it an opinion IF it is not in serious dispute that women were disadvantaged at this time (whether they are now is a completely separate issue).
The inclusion of women as a protected class in 1968 EEO legislation further makes a feminist opinion into fact. In 1968, the law recognized that women were having difficulty in entering professions. The "fact" was voted into existence and confirmed by judicial review, ergo prior to 1968 (and after, during the time in which the fact of discrimination became acknowledged) it took courage for a woman to work as a programmer.
Furthermore, independent of the questions of womens' status, it took courage for her to enter the work force to support both John and their son.
The defense of the second phrase is simpler. Only a writer COMPLETELY UNFAMILIAR with Nash, who had not read A Beautiful Mind, would deny burntOut(Nash) ANDALSO genius(Nash) as a proposition.
Lively language in itself need not violate NPOV.
The writer of the charter wishes, and I wish him well, to draw a bright line between facts and values. Unfortunately, this line does not exist at the border between the natural sciences and mathematics at the one hand, and social reality on the other. Social struggles, especially when they take to the law, are themselves attempts to establish facts on the ground.
For example, it is probably (owing to the story of Abraham and Isaac common to Moslem, Jewish and Christian tradition) a fact that human sacrifice is wrong in a way that I can (with some reluctance!) admit that the destruction of Hiroshima was wrong as some sort of received opinion.
I take this position because it is mere scientism to place the border at the boundary between science and society.
- Thanks for your response. I must disagree with your interpretation of the NPOV policy, however. Even writing down only facts can be non-neutral, if those facts are chosen or phrased in such a way as to influence the opinion of someone reading the article. Let's accept that "characteristic of a burnt-out genius" is factual, for argument's sake. Even though it is factual, when presented this way, it reads as a defense of Nash--thus, non-neutral. NPOV is not restricted only to allowing facts; it governs the presentation and tone of the entire article. Best, Meelar (talk) 21:47, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
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- I think the phrasing is fine. This is not the article on abortion, and some poetic justice is permitted. The fact of the matter is that many find it a touching story, and if you can't present evidence which shows Alicia was in fact not courageous, then he is simply stating a fact. --Alterego 21:48, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)
--User:spinoza1111 Edward G. Nilges replies:
OK, Meelar says that choice of facts can be selective and NNPOV. This is true. However, to avoid giving the reader a positive opinion about Alicia, one would have to eliminate all the facts about her! One would have to make her an invisible, normed scientific wifey-poo not recognized as a moral agent.
Suppose in an alternate universe, Alicia had divorced John's ass, and ran off to Brazil with a wealthy playboy. Then, A Beautiful Mind would have been the exciting story of how a scientific saint endured not only mental illness but also a bimbo attack.
There would not be a dry eye in the house.
Seriously, I don't think these facts would have been considered NNPOV and extraneous to Nash's biography.
I lived and worked in the Princeton community for five years during Nash's crisis and recovery and while I was not closely associated with Nash, I can report that the community, as a community knows (as knowledge is socially constructed) that Nash was getting better and that Alicia was a good sport.
I do understand that in many scientific, literary, and artistic biographies, the lady of the house is invisible. But you cannot know Picasso unless you know Dora Maar, Francois Gilot and a number of other Picasso wives and concubines. Knowledge of the personal crisis occasioned by the failure of T. S. Eliot's marriage helps us to understand The Waste Land and recent scholarship shows that Vivienne Eliot may have been more of a Muse than was formerly thought and less of a pest.
I understand that the biographies of most scientists can safely exclude family matters, and many scientists even request that such material be excised for fear of harming the careers of spouses and childen (Chomsky seems to have done so). But the Nash story cannot be untangled from emotional issues which are not understood, from any POV, without understanding Alicia.
NPOV is not the neutrality of the LAPD who when they enter a low dwelling assume everyone's a gemoke or a bimbo, and maintain this stance by not listening to tales of woe. NPOV has the inescapably normative need to recognize when a community, in this case that of Princeton, recognized Alicia's contribution. Now, it can keep this recognition at arms-length in service of some sort of outdated Logical Positivism by prefixing rumors of angels consistently with "it is said that", "studies show", "nine out of ten doctors agree", or "word to yo Mama".
But such would make for an unreadable article and is refuted by the very fact WHY we are neutral in the first place.
Why be neutral in the first place? Ethics, that's why, which shows that by praising what's acknowledged by a community of knowers to be good, and by dispraising things like concentration camps, torture, and cheating at cards, acknowledged by a community to be not good we show that our NPOV is not an outdated, and completely discredited Logical Positivism.
Postscript: the thuggish append ("BFD") below is precisely the sort of crap that doesn't belong here. If the Internet is to be anything more than the triumph of the anarchism of the petty bourgeois, it needs to be erased. Hey I can do that! OK, here goes.
[edit] John Nash's body of work
This article reads like a scandal sheet. Why is his work given such short shrift? How does an academician's personal life merit a huge article? —This unsigned comment was added by Harburg (talk • contribs) .
- Because the movie focused on his personal life. While I agree that the section on his work should be longer, most people are going to come here because of the movie. --
Rory09616:42, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Nash equilibrium
"Both games demonstrate what Nash worked on for years: the concept that in a game, one must win and everyone else must lose. (See Nash equilibrium.)" This is a grossly inaccurate description of what a Nash equlibrium is. The whole reason why Nash equilibrium is of so much interest in economics and why it is considered a breakthrough and an important generalization of what von Neumann and Morgenstern did is that Nash showed how to solve games in which it is _not_ true that _one_ must win. Most economically interesting games are exactly games, in which there is a potential for everybody to win. Robert Golanski (robin@robin.info.pl)
[edit] Nash's other work
There should be more mentions of his work in differential geometry which mathematicians probaly consider to be far more important than his work on game theory.
It should also be mentioned that he won the Steele prize in mathematics for the Nash embedding theorem.
217.210.4.92 12:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Factual sources
I removed a "fact" that as far as I know (having twice read the book "A Beautiful Mind", once about nine months ago) is a fabrication of the film: that Nash had an imaginary Princeton roommate. People editing this article should (if adding material) be careful that they find it in the book first (or some equivalent source) since the movie was, after all, deliberately romanticized, and (if editing material) be on the lookout for claims that are substantiated only by the film. Ryan Reich 22:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
- Yeah he didn't have imaginary room-mates. However I'm not sure if his hallucinations were entirely auditory as it says now. One thing a fair amount of what he went through were more like delusions than hallucinations. For example he'd think magazines or newspapers made coded references to him. He didn't "see different words" in them really, he just thought the words implied some alternate message they didn't. Still it seems like he did have visual hallucinations too, but I don't remember the details.--T. Anthony 13:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I think we can safely say that a delusion is quite distinct from an hallucination (although if you take an hallucination for reality it follows that you are deluded to this extent). As I remember it, the book mentioned no visual hallucinations at all, and it specified that the aural hallucinations came fairly late. Nash apparently didn't suffer them for some time. The thing that struck me is that in the movie Nash's fantasy world was depicted as something very coherent although utterly false (and also very circumscribed: he hallucinated only three characters and some embellishment of physical surroundings over the course of forty years), whereas in the book it seemed an unintelligible and highly variable mishmash.
Anyway, although the movie is obviously to a significant extent a work of fiction, it doesn't follow that we should necessarily take the book as gospel. (I'm not going to proffer specific criticism here, but I'd like to caution the editors of this article to bear that in mind.) TheScotch 09:23, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Sexuality
I think there was a section in the article on the facts/controversies regarding hetero/homo sexuality. I happened to notice it was removed once and I reinstated it, but I see it's gone again. Just thought I'd mention it here, don't know if it's a topic that should be covered. EverSince 17:14, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
- Nasar's biography had some on that. Although she never really made it that clear if he had any actual homosexual relationships, so far as I recall. She had some evidence he had a couple intense friendships with closeted gay men and was accused of exposing himself to a male cop. At one point she also alleges Isaac Newton had a male lover so some caution is maybe needed. (Modern logic seems to dictate that a man is incapable of dying a virgin, so any and all historic men deemed celibate were "really gay.") Still she doesn't say anything more about this in his later life and most in his early life is speculative. She had enough to convince me he probably was attracted to men, on occasion, but at the same time I really doubt he ever saw himself as bisexual let alone gay. Educated young men in the 1950s had some notions that occasional attraction to men was not particularly unusual or meaningful unless acted on. So I think it's possible both versions could be right. If he had an occasional attraction to men the idea this makes him bisexual or LGBT could be essentially absurd or meaningless to a man of his education and generation.--T. Anthony 11:01, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Re: "Although she never really made it that clear if he had any actual homosexual relationships, so far as I recall." I've been reading the book for couple of days, and I'm about halfway through. If an "actual homosexual relationship" is a relationship based on mutual homosexual attraction, then I think Nasar makes it very clear that Nash had at least three. What she doesn't make clear is the extent of the physical expression beyond kissing on the mouth (sometimes in public), which brings us to the Clinton conundrum: What is the meaning of the phrase "having sex"? Properly speaking, we all have a sex: we are either male or female. Since the phrase "having sex" is slang we might suppose it intrinsically imprecise, but I think it reasonable to interpret sex in this slang sense to mean coition, which is a thing physically impossible for two members of the same sex to perform together. I don't think there is really a homosexual analogue to heterosexual consummation of an erotic relationship, which is another way of saying that the definition of "actual homosexual relationship" I tentatively propose above is probably as good as any.
Re: "At one point she also alleges Isaac Newton had a male lover so some caution is maybe needed. (Modern logic seems to dictate that a man is incapable of dying a virgin, so any and all historic men deemed celibate were 'really gay.')" I don't know anything about Newton's sexuality, but I think you're right to be wary of this sort of thing.
Re: "She had enough to convince me he probably was attracted to men, on occasion, but at the same time I really doubt he ever saw himself as bisexual let alone gay." I think Nasar clearly states that Nash did not consider himself homosexual (or hadn't before he married, at least--further reading may reveal him to have changed his mind). TheScotch 09:52, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I finished the book four days or so ago, and further reading had nothing more to say about the subject, as I recall. TheScotch 07:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
- It's been awhile since I read it, I was just skimming through. I'm pretty sure though homosexuals can consummate a relationship. I don't know how graphic I should get, but am I correct in believing they can go into orgasm due to actions they do on each other? There are historical figures who clearly state they did that, I didn't think he was one. I'd forgotten about kissing and I think there were love letters. I think he was what we'd call bisexual, but how far he got with a man or whether he ever saw himself as bi I don't know.--T. Anthony 13:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I took the liberty of placing your paragraph where I think it belongs chronologically. Stuck in the middle of my comments it makes it look as if some of them were unsigned. Anyway, I didn't say that homosexuals cannot necessarily consummate a union, depending how literally one interprets the term. I said there is no analogue. Probably I should have said there is no homologue, if you'll allow my little twist on the biological term: Analogous things are alike in one respect or more and different in others; homologous things are alike in all respects yet not the same thing. Two suits in a deck of playing cards, for example, are homologous. Homosexuality and heterosexuality then are analogous, but they aren't homologous. Yes, of course orgasm is possible, but there is no compelling reason to make this the definition of "actual homosexual relationship"; the line is arbitrary. (The thing that traditionally "consummates" a marriage is coition. Coition is not a synonym for orgasm, and coition is physically impossible between members of the same sex.) How "far" did Nash "get"? The book doesn't say, and much of it what it does say seems to me speculative. TheScotch 13:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] M.I.T.
Maybe I'm overlooking something, but these are the only references in the article I'm finding just now about M.I.T.:
1) "At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he met Alicia Lopez-Harrison de Lardé, a physics student from El Salvador, whom he married in February 1957.
2) "The film's major departures from Nash's life and the Nasar biography include:....Nash is shown to join Wheeler's lab at MIT, but there is no such lab. He was appointed as C.L.E. Moore Instructor at MIT."
That was a only a temporary appointment. Later he was given a tenure track M.I.T. appointment, which appears to have been the most significant episode in his professional teaching career and thus deserves to be mentioned in the article--and not just obliquely. TheScotch 10:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] A Beautiful Mind--the Movie
I don't think it's a bad thing to mention this film en passant, as it were, but it seems inappropriate to me to devote an entire section of the article to it, especially when that section is longer than any other in the entire article! TheScotch 08:01, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
- I agree, I think this article need substantial expansion. I encourage you to make any additions you think relevant. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 20:31, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
Um...Expansion? Why? So that the film section will seem shorter in comparison? I think the article is approximately long enough for a biography and that a more detailed consideration of Nash's contributions to mathematics and economics is best consigned to separate articles. Above I'm proposing a subtraction, not "additions".TheScotch 07:15, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Asperger syndrome reference?
I've come across this citation: Arshad M, Fitzgerald M. (2002) John Nash: Asperger’s syndrome and schizophrenia? Irish Psychiatrist. 2002;3(3):90-94. and also an almost identical citation accessed from Prof Michael Fitzgerald's web site with the different title "Did Nobel Prize winner John Nash have Asperger's syndrome and schizophrenia?". I originally believed that this paper referred to the architect John Nash, but now it appears that Fitzgerald wrote about the mathematician. I don't have access to the journal that this is in. Could someone else read the article, and if appropriate, incorporate it into the Wikipedia article? I think the mathematician does have characteristics suggestive of AS. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.59.212.112 (talk) 14:00, 17 February 2007 (UTC).
Asperger's syndrome is very trendy nowadays, and the temptation to throw the term around willy-nilly needs to be resisted. In any case, unless Nash was officially diagnosed with the disorder (by a specialist who met with him face-to-face in a clinical setting), no mention of it should be made in this article.TheScotch 07:20, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Was Nash really a Hippie?
At the end of one of the paragraphs discussing Nash's childhood it states:
After a trip to Duluth, MN, he turned hippie.
Should we assume that is vandalism and remove it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Extremenachos (talk • contribs) 15:24, 14 March 2007 (UTC).
I don't know if it's vandalism--it may be well-intentioned--, but it certainly cries out for immediate removal. The term hippie is slang, and extremely vague slang at that. Moreover, to the extent it has any concrete meaning at all, it cannot apply to anything preceding the sixties. I'm taking this passage out now. TheScotch 16:58, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Fuck You Buddy
According to the BBC (quoted cheerfully here [[1]]) John Nash developed work labelled "Fuck you Buddy". If so, where's the reference? If not, please somebody write to the BBC (and clean up the entry above). Suspicions aroused when Googling "John Nash" + "Fuck You Buddy" and only getting references to the BBC series. Testbed 16:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)TestBed
[edit] Faked Illness?
Is it possible that Nash fooled everyone into thinking that he was mentally ill? The only reason that supports this claim is that no one has ever recovered from true schizophrenia.Lestrade 20:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)Lestrade
