I'm sure most of you remember John Nash, the schitzophrenic main character of the acclaimed movie, "Beautiful Mind."Thoughts on that movie? Thoughts on the real life person/story?Just did some research on him on the web, and it seems that the movie is not a real good repersentation. His life could be the topic of many debates.Absolutely amazing, is his story, anyone here have some insights? Share all you insights on John Nash. After doing some research, game theory seems to be what he contributed. What can you tell me about game theory as it relates to derivatives? Market-makers VS speculators?

QuoteOriginally posted by: ManI'm sure most of you remember John Nash, the schitzophrenic main character of the acclaimed movie, "Beautiful Mind."I'm sure many people think of John Nash as the main character of a movie, just as they probably think of many other important thinkers, writers, artists and historical figures by fictionalized versions. But Nash was well known to economists since the 1950's for the Nash Equilibrium. His algebraic work has not found application in economics.Game theory is not very important in finance today, but many people consider it a promising research area.There is a long series of posts about John Nash, which you can find by a Search.

See hereP

The pevious post on Nash was interesting, and was not exactly what I was looking for.I am more curious about his discoveries (specifically game theory) and the parts of his life that were absent in the film.Parts of his life that could be rumors, but were left out the movie.1. Blew up a collegue, accidently by messing with explosive chemicals.2. Anti-Jewish, or was he more broadly anti-semitic (Against all Semite tribe descendents)?3. His marriage.4. His sexulaity, although not very important, just wondering the truth.Thanks!-Man

The first two points that you raise are of no relevance to his work. The last two are definitely of no relevance to anything at all.

For newcomers to the Forum, I should explain that Omar ensures we maintain the highest possible standards of political correctness! P

QuoteOriginally posted by: ManI am more curious about his discoveries (specifically game theory)Nash was the first person to get important rigorous results for nonconstant sum games. Unlike constant sum (usually called "zero sum") games, there is often no provable optimum point. The general problem is that some solutions have a high total utility, but individuals gain by cheating, but as more and more people cheat, you end up at a point where everyone is miserable.These are important for economic modeling, where most important problems involve nonconstant sum games. But, as I said, in finance we generally have the ability to redesign the game to make sure the markets get to the maximum total utility equilibrium. In fact, one way of looking at finance is we design abstract structures to get to global optimums, bypassing the rigidities and constraints of physical markets.

the film was based on a book by "Sylvia Nassar". Read the book!

Another book I can rec is "Prisoner's Dilemma" by William Poundstone (his other books are excellent too (exception: Sagan)). In this book Nash's work is placed in a context of economic game theroy in an easy-to-digest form. The applications to market segmentation theory and decision theory under imperfect information (uncertainty) are more easily understood.