Thinking About the Crypto Unthinkable

[Tim May]

On Sunday, August 26, 2001, at 07:15 PM, Faustine wrote:

> Tim wrote:
> On Saturday, August 25, 2001, at 02:46 PM, Faustine wrote:
>
>> ...But the ones I really admire are the mathematician-analysts, the 
>> hard-
> science analysts: they tend not to hog the limelight like some of their
> more voluble counterparts, but their influence is still enormous.
>
>> I'd be interesting in hearing whom you think are good examples.
>
> Herman Kahn, Thomas Schelling, John Nash. You already mentioned von
> Neumann, he was the first to come to mind.

Yes, we talk about these guys here. I read "On Thermonuclear War" in the 
60s (well, I skimmed most of the "escalation ladder" details). Schelling 
points figure heavily into many of our analyses, and Nash equilbria are 
just that... (BTW, there's at least one good book describing Nash's 
swerve into insanity and his road back.)

This said, I wouldn't advise _anyone_ to study "policy" (or its earlier 
incarnations, "Operations Research." "Systems Analysis," or the utterly 
execrable "General Systems," a la Bertanlanffy).

Guys like Kahn and Schelling and Nash were mathematicians who happened 
to be in on the founding of a hot field in the 50s: game theory. Von 
Neumann and Morgenstern actually founded it, but the heyday was when 
RAND, Hudson, etc. were doing studies of nuclear war, disarmament, games 
of chicken, and so on. This has all been pretty much explored now, and 
these think tanks are pale imitations of their former selves. Certainly 
they contribute very little to "policy" of the sort of interest to us. 
(There may be applications...as we have talked about for many years. See 
the archives, searching on "game theory." However, this will come from 
someone versed in various kinds of game theory approaches who turns his 
gaze to crypto games. Likely to come from a mathematically-inclined 
person, unlikely to come from a sociology/poli sci/policy grad student.)

If there are Herman Kahns out there, thinking about the crypto 
unthinkable, they are probably us. Not to put too fine a point on it.

> Given that most all the people on your list and mine are precisely what 
> the
> author was driving at, I think the "Super Analyst" approach is certainly
> worth aspiring to. And as far as I've been able to tell, policy analysis
> PhD programs offer the most flexible way to pursue a multidisciplinary,
> scientific approach while striking a good balance between the 
> theoretical
> and the practical.

Well, good luck. I disagree. I can't see someone coming out of a Ph.D. 
program in "super analysis" being magically endowed with the skills to 
influence policy.

An obvious point that perhaps needs to be emphasized: all of those 
scientist-policy wonks we have discussed were first and foremost 
brilliant scientists. Their discoveries gave them cachet, not a major in 
"general analysis." Do the math, so to speak.

--Tim May