28.05.15 15:12 Age: 9 yrs
Mr. Edward Lehman Comments on the Death of John Nash
Beijing –May 25, 2015 – The CCTV (China Central Television) invited Mr. Edward Lehman, the managing director of Lehman, Lee and Xu, to take part the CCTV live show “Dialogue” discussing American mathematician and Nobel Prize winner, John Nash who died in a car accident with his wife on May 23, 2015. Mr. Lehman discussed the intellectual legacy of John Nash and his developments in game theory as well as his struggle with schizophrenia and how he overcame it.
Game theory is the study of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers in a mathematical context in an attempt to explain complex human behaviors.
A classic representation of the theory is the “prisoners dilemma” which is a scenario where two prisoners are held separately by authorities and given the opportunity to either stay quiet or to testify against the other prisoner. If both prisoners remain quiet, both will be held on a lesser charge for lack of evidence of a more significant crime, if one testifies against the other, and the other prisoner remains silent, the prisoner which testifies will be released and the other prisoner will be held on the stronger charge.
In practice, the prisoners, as rational self-interested actors, each end up testifying against the other, resulting in both being convicted for the greater charge. In this way, the prisoner’s dilemma demonstrates that rational self-interested actors can actually hinder mutual cooperation.
The panel discusses the nature of genius and abnormal behaviors that often comes along with it. Princeton University is praised for being such an accepting social environment. Mr. Lehman commented on the love story between Alicia and John Nash, and the tolerance of mental illness in the home and how important that acceptance is in the face of the social stigma associated with mental illness and schizophrenia. The host of Dialogue, Yang Rui, and co-panelist Liu Ke also bring up the state of mental illness in China and the three agree that there needs to be a push for a more open discussion on mental illnesses to eliminate the stigmas that often surround it both in China and in America.
