"The film opens with John Nash arriving as a new graduate student at
Princeton University. He is a recipient of the prestigious Carnegie
Prize for mathematics. He meets his roommate Charles, a literature
student, who soon becomes his best friend. He also meets a group of
other promising math and science graduate students, Martin Hansen,
Sol, and Bender, with whom he strikes up an awkward friendship. Nash
admits to Charles that he is better with numbers than people, and that
he strives for a truly original idea for his thesis paper. He is
largely unsuccessful with the women at the local bar. However, the
experience is what ultimately inspires his fruitful work in the
concept of governing dynamics, a theory in mathematical economics.
After the conclusion of Nash's studies as a student at Princeton, he
accepts a prestigious appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), along with his friends Sol and Bender.
Russell Crowe as John Nash.Five years later while teaching a class on
Calculus, he meets Alicia, a student with whom he falls in love and
eventually marries. While at Princeton, Nash runs into his former
roommate Charles and meets Charles's young niece Marcee. He also
encounters a mysterious Department of Defense agent, William Parcher.
Nash is invited to a United States Department of Defense facility in
The Pentagon to crack a complex encryption of an enemy
telecommunication. Nash is able to decipher the code mentally. Parcher
observes Nash's performance from above, while partially concealed
behind a screen. Parcher later encourages Nash to look for patterns in
magazines and newspapers, ostensibly to thwart a Soviet plot. After
being chased by the Russians and exchange of gunfire, Nash becomes
increasingly paranoid and begins to behave erratically.
After observing this erratic behavior, Alicia informs a psychiatric
hospital. Later, while giving a lecture, Nash realizes that he is
being watched by a hostile group of people. Although he attempts to
flee, he is forcibly sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility.
Nash's internment seemingly confirms his belief that the Soviets were
trying to extract information from him, and that being taken by the
officials of a psychiatric facility was a kidnapping by Soviet agents.
Alicia, desperate to help her husband, visits a drop-box and retrieves
the never-opened "top secret" documents that Nash had delivered there.
When confronted with this evidence, Nash is finally convinced that he
has been hallucinating. The Department of Defense agent William
Parcher and Nash's secret assignment to decode Soviet messages was in
fact all a delusion. Even more surprisingly, Nash's friend Charles and
his niece Marcee are also only products of Nash's mind.
After a painful series of insulin shock therapy sessions, Nash is
released on the condition that he agrees to take antipsychotic
medication. However, the drugs create negative side-effects that
affect his relationship with his wife and, most dramatically, his
intellect. Frustrated, Nash secretly stops taking his medication,
triggering a relapse of his psychosis. While bathing his infant son,
Nash becomes distracted and wanders off. Alicia barely manages to save
their child from being drowned. When she confronts Nash, he claims
that his friend Charles was watching their son. Alicia runs to the
phone to call the psychiatric hospital for emergency assistance.
Charles, Marcee, and Parcher all appear to John and urge him to kill
his wife rather than allow her to lock him up again. After Alicia
flees the house in terror, Nash steps in front of her car to prevent
her from leaving. After a moment, Nash states "She never gets old" as
he observes that Marcee is the same age that she was when he first met
her several years before. Only then does he accept that all three of
these people are, in fact, part of his psychosis.
Caught between the intellectual paralysis of the antipsychotic drugs
and his delusions, Nash and his wife decide to try to live with his
schizophrenia. Nash attempts to ignore his hallucinations and not feed
"his demons". Nash is growing older while working on his studies in
the library of Princeton University. He still suffers hallucinations
and periodically has to check if new people he meets are real,
mentions taking newer medications, but is ultimately able to live with
and largely ignore his psychotic experiences. Nash approaches his old
friend and intellectual rival Martin Hansen, now head of the Princeton
mathematics department, and receives permission to work out of the
library and audit classes. He eventually begins teaching again. He is
honored by his fellow professors for his achievement in mathematics,
and goes on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his
revolutionary work on game theory. Later, Nash and Alicia about to
leave the auditorium in Stockholm, when John sees Charles, Marcee and
Parcher standing and smiling. Alicia asks John "What's wrong?" John
replies "Nothing." With that, they both leave the auditorium."
John Nash is one of the great, intricately constructed psychiatric
stereotypes. He is a uniquely western product, a social construct,
which in a display of nauseating sycophancy we all pretend to
understand and care for as an individual 'condition'. Just awful.
Why bother to support a pseudo-chemical-reality (insanity) just to
snuggle up to the psychiatrists bent view of nature?
When our qualia are *seriously* out of sync with others then this
could obviously become a problem.
Psychiatrists have nothing to do with it,
evolutionary pragmatism is all.
This is what we are trying to talk around.
Your views are so fundamentally hostile towards the idea that the
brain organ system can become ill much like any other organ system may
cause a reader to come to the conclusion that your idea's have been
hugely corrupted by our own negative personal experiences.
Do you consider antibiotics to be worthless?
I think what is most awful about the film is the fact that it did not
have the guts to be honest about Nash's sexuality.
The film pulled away from the truth that Nash was a homosexual.
So whilst the story qua film was moving and interesting, it fails to
engage with Nash's real dilemma. Nash was not alone, Turin was also a
gay mathemetician and was driven to suicide because of the social
stigma attached to homosexuality.
The film was just one big lie.
It is no wonder that many more of us do not succumb to schizophrenia
as we are all required to some degree to surpress aspects of our
natural tendencies and desires. Nash suffered from a life time of
denial and concealment due to his homosexuality. One can only imagine
to what degree his mental impairment might have been avoided
completely if he were to have been born into a more open minded
society which did not traduce and demonise his sexual orientation.
While i'm not defending the films main premise that nash had a mental
illness that caused him to hallucinate things that other people were
unable to also experience, I don't believe that homosexuals ordinarily
hallucinate imaginary subjects or that the theres a mainstream
conspiracy to coverup a prominant persons sexuality by concocting the
idea that they had a mental illness that manifests itself in such an
extreme manner.
Are you open minded to the idea of mental illness?
I am not one of psychiatry's poseurs, nor do I find their rationale
difficult to understand, so much as demonstrably shallow and
incoherent.
'Hallucinate' is the psychiatric term for 'vision'. Just more beads to
the indians.
John Nash has his own site and occassionally comes on line using
his own name. I was interested to read during an interview that when
asked how much of the cinema version of thesaga was true-to-life
he replied 'very little'
Has anyone seen the 'an angel at my table' ? its a true story.
two days before scheduled for lobotomy she recieved a Lauriate
for her literature. she is discharged with no apology, no explination
for retention or release into the outside world.
These are special people tho, occasionally someone is let out
of a hospital who has not great impact on the world of science
or literature. I recently heard of a woman now aged in her 60's
discharged a month ago, who was admitted in her teens as
'being pregnant while unmarried'.
"John Nash, the real-life subject behind the Oscar-nominated film A
Beautiful Mind, has spoken out against allegations that the movie
glosses over aspects of his life - namely that he might be bisexual,
antisemitic and a bad father.
Nash was interviewed for CBS's 60 Minutes and denied being anti-
Semitic, but claimed he could have said things that might sound that
way whilst in the grip of his schizophrenia. Nash and his wife,
Alicia, also said that he was not a homosexual. She said it was "just
not true. I should know".
The mathematician also denied that his relationship with his son from
a previous relationship was "non-existent". He claimed that he and
John Stier are in contact and that Stier even received a share of the
film's royalties."
http://film.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/Exclusive/0,,667864,00.html
Could you provide us with a list of chemicals you find acceptible?
What situations/enviroments do you think are acceptible? Will you
provide these things?
Is beer ok? Is chocolate ok? Soda? Is the excitement of buying
something ok? Is somebody finding themselves in a social enviroment in
which *you* are not available to offer your physical non-"chemical"
support ok?
Thats "all" as we are doing, so do it with awareness.
BOfL
The source of all conflict, and the 'rite of passage' to self realization.
BOfL
There is always conflict between the group and an individuals struggle and
desire for 'true identity'.
BOfL
What distinguishes Nash from others diagnosed with schizophrenia is an
uncommon amount of public attention. In 1994, Nash shared the Nobel
Prize with two other economists for the 1950 doctoral dissertation he
wrote at Princeton on game theory.
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/02/01/beautiful_mind.html
"There could be a mathematical explanation for how bad your tie is,"
he tells one classmate. While at Princeton, he came up with a
strikingly original contribution to games theory (which purports to
predict seemingly random human behavior) that would win him the Nobel
Prize in Economics nearly fifty years later, but a full 25 years in
between would be lost to schizophrenia (& further alternate awareness
of conspiracies of events & phenomena).
http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-169.htm
Nash was a brilliant mathematician, and at the age of 21 developed the
'non-cooperative games theory', the economics theory which today
dominates privatisation, megamergers, big government, and
international trade.
http://www.sfnat.org.nz/news%20and%20notes.htm
...his doctoral thesis in 1949, he established the mathematical
principles of modern game theory. In four papers published between
1950-53 he made seminal contributions to both non-cooperative game
theory and to bargaining theory...
...group of mathematical theories first developed by John Von
Neumann ... and Morgenstern restricted their attention to zero-sum
games, that is, to games in which no player can gain except at
another's expense. This restriction was overcome by the work of John
F. Nash during the early 1950s. Nash mathematically clarified the
distinction between cooperative and noncooperative games. In
noncooperative games, unlike cooperative ones, no outside authority
assures that players stick to the same predetermined rules, and
binding agreements are not feasible. Further, he recognized that in
noncooperative games there exist sets of optimal strategies (so-called
Nash equilibria) used by the players in a game such that no player can
benefit by unilaterally changing his or her strategy if the strategies
of the other players remain unchanged. Because noncooperative games
are common in the real world, the discovery revolutionized game
theory. Nash also recognized that such an equilibrium solution would
also be optimal in cooperative games. He suggested approaching the
study of cooperative games via their reduction to noncooperative form
and proposed a methodology, called the Nash program, for doing so.
Nash also introduced the concept of bargaining, in which two or more
players collude to produce a situation where failure to collude would
make each of them worse off.
The theory of games applies statistical logic to the choice of
strategies. It is applicable to many fields, including military
problems and economics; the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences was awarded to Nash, John Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten for
their work in applying game theory to economics...
http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/N/NashJ1F1.asp
1950-53
In four papers between 1950 and 1953 John Nash made seminal
contributions to both non-cooperative game theory and to bargaining
theory. In two papers, Equilibrium Points in N- Person Games (1950)
and Non-cooperative Games (1951), Nash proved the existence of a
strategic equilibrium for non-cooperative games - the Nash equilibrium
- and proposed the"Nash program", in which he suggested approaching
the study of cooperative games via their reduction to non-cooperative
form. In his two papers on bargaining theory, The Bargaining Problem
(1950) and Two-Person Cooperative Games (1953), he founded axiomatic
bargaining theory, proved the existence of the Nash bargaining
solution and provided the first execution of the Nash program.
Then you could say the same about Einstien and his accomplishments,
since Nash won the Nobel Prize for helping start the science that is
solving the paradoxes of our being and its evolution, no small
accomplishment;
Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is often used in
the context of economics. It studies strategic interactions between
agents. In strategic games, agents choose strategies which will
maximize their return, given the strategies the other agents choose.
The essential feature is that it provides a formal modelling approach
to social situations in which decision makers interact with other
agents. Game theory extends the simpler optimisation approach
developed in neoclassical economics... ...Game theory has played, and
continues to play a large role in the social sciences, and is now also
used in many diverse academic fields. Beginning in the 1970s, game
theory has been applied to animal behaviour, including evolutionary
theory. Many games, especially the prisoner's dilemma, are used to
illustrate ideas in political science and ethics. Game theory has
recently drawn attention from computer scientists because of its use
in artificial intelligence and cybernetics.
In addition to its academic interest, game theory has received
attention in popular culture. A Nobel Prize-winning game theorist,
John Nash, was the subject of the 1998 biography by Sylvia Nasar and
the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind. Game theory was also a theme in the
1983 film WarGames. Several game shows have adopted game theoretic
situations, including Friend or Foe? and to some extent Survivor. The
character Jack Bristow on the television show Alias is one of the few
fictional game theorists in popular culture.
Although some game theoretic analyses appear similar to decision
theory, game theory studies decisions made in an environment in which
players interact. In other words, game theory studies choice of
optimal behavior when costs and benefits of each option depend upon
the choices of other individuals.
Are you comparing him to Oprah?
W ; )
I'm not bothered to talk about this here. But anyone who supports a
chemical morality like 'correct levels' of serotonin is either a quack
or a threat.
Er....what?
What?
'Stricken with the disease schizophrenia'? God knows why people speak
with such self-assured surety about something never shown or
explained. It's a herding instinct, probably, to think in this way, or
not think.
Like I have said, we simply exchange new myths for old, new blind
spots for old blind spots.
You are sid-stepping the point. No one knows the causes of
schitzophrenia, bu tmost agree that there are stress related triggers
in early adulthood. Misfitting and denial of the self are serious
contenders of the causes of mental health.
If a film made so recently was unable to deal with or confront Nash's
homosexuality then what chance did Nash have in the late 50s?
Alan Turin, also a mathematician, and comtmporary of Nash commited
suicide becasue of his homosexuality - things were tough then.
Strange question. Depends what you mean.
There is no purely mental ilness. The mind is generated by the body:
there is a more than physical corrolary to "mental illness".
I have close at hand experience to Mental illness as my brother is
schizophrenic (one day I will remember how to spell it).
Can you explain the question?
What i don't like is those that assume the disease can be simply
contained in a few parameters: sorted out if only we had the right
chemical cocktail to redress the "imbalance". This sort of approach
ignores the reasons why mental states becomes problematic and how the
"patient" starts down the road in the first place.
Sex was tough then. And what about now; Prisoners? Catholic priests?
Could you also defend the idea that abnormal socialization produces
abnormal behaviour?
Nash has stated he is not a "homosexual". I believe him. Perhaps he
did things in the past out of a frustation that he later stressed
about. We all stress about situations but it's how we go about dealing
with the stress. Personally, I'm not prepared to fund zillions of
dollars in managing other peoples lifestyles in order to provide them
with the best care.
I'm not sidestepping the point. I am saying there is no point. There
is no cause for schizophremia any more than there is a cause for "?$
%^&.
The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).
'What' exactly is a disease? And how do you know you are looking at a
'disease'?
> I'm not sidestepping the point. I am saying there is no point. There
> is no cause for schizophremia any more than there is a cause for "?$
> %^&.
The same was said about diseases at one time, "Germs do not exist."
> The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
> medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
> ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).
It is very well defined.
> 'What' exactly is a disease? And how do you know you are looking at a
> 'disease'?
I know one when I read it.
We glorify the insanity as relegating possibility of deeper insight.
Truth is, those with intrinsic minds bent upon probabilitistic reasoning,
would have probably come up with the same logical extrapolations as Nash
did.
The insanity was the most exciting part of the movie, imo. Nash seems
pretty boring.
I think Sir fred is the "funnist" character on alt.philosophy. I
enjoyed his panda pleasure. Imaging panda's chewing deep in a jungle
of fast growing bamboo, immune to it all.
Duh! I did not say that abnormal socialisation produces abnormal
behaviour. I suggested that being gay in the 1950s was a fucking
stressful fact. That fact meant the you were not acceptible to
society. I person like Nash who was socially inept would suffer for
his orientation. I do not view homosexuality as abnormal, but natural.
>
> Nash has stated he is not a "homosexual". I believe him.
He did not have the choice or luxury of disclosure.
Perhaps he
> did things in the past out of a frustation that he later stressed
> about.
What on earth are you talking about here?
We all stress about situations but it's how we go about dealing
> with the stress. Personally, I'm not prepared to fund zillions of
> dollars in managing other peoples lifestyles in order to provide them
> with the best care.
What on earth are you talking about here?
For everything there exist causes. Nothing springs to being
spontaneaously.
>
> The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
> medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
> ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).-
Schizophrenia is a medical label, I agree. But those that suffer under
the label are suffering in other ways which makes it variously:
impossible to live with others; with themselves; without harming
themselves; without harming others; impossible to support themselves.
The reason for these problems is related to cognitive problems and
delusions. I'm not sure what you mean by "factual status" but they are
suffering SOMETHING.
The point about a disease is that it is physical and that there is
something physically wrong. There was never any physical evidence for
a diseased thought, nor could there be.
Schizophrenia is a cultural blind spot. A tradition of repeating
mechanically what one has been taught to say.
Oops. I replied to the wrong person.
Anyway. Is it a cognitive problem because a person is anguished or is
a person anguished because it is a cognitive problem? Aren't we just
multiplying or manufacturing synonyms and then just claiming that
there is a causal relationship between them?
What 'something' are you suffering when you are unhappy? What
'something' would count as an answer to your search?
I utterly reject your assertion that Schizophrenia is not a physical
disease.
I utterly reject your implication that thoughts have no physicality.
Talk to my brother for 30 mins, when he is not on his medication, and
then come and tell me that he does not have a disease.
That there is a physical remedy for his problem establishes the
physical corrolary of his failing thought process.
Your objections are old fashion 1960s revisionist bullshit. No one
goes for that appraoch anymore becasue it doesn't work.
I am not saying that thoughts are not associated with what is
physical.
BUT HOW ARE YOU going to assert that a schizphrenics thought is wrong
and anyone elses is right? Does a brain structure tell you what is
right and wrong? Of course not. We imply a sort of moral judgement
with this odd sense of wrongness. I've seen experiences that are
completely out of the norm, yet valued.
But more to the point, you can say that all thoughts are associated
with the physical. Name a thought that isn't.
>> > The only definition for schizophrenia is that it is the name of a
>> > medical practice. There's no other factual status behind it. You can't
>> > ask the cause of something you haven't defined, obviously (but sadly).
>>
>> It is very well defined.
>
> The point about a disease is that it is physical and that there is
> something physically wrong.
Yup.
> There was never any physical evidence for
> a diseased thought, nor could there be.
Diseased thought, indeed. Nice little sound-byte but you should be ashamed.
The mind is not all about thought. It does a lot more than thinking. It can
suffer from chemical imbalance which can caus distortions of perception and
that can lead to difficulty in how the person expresses what you call
thoughts.
> Schizophrenia is a cultural blind spot. A tradition of repeating
> mechanically what one has been taught to say.
So YOU say.
> BUT HOW ARE YOU going to assert that a schizphrenics thought is wrong
> and anyone elses is right? Does a brain structure tell you what is
> right and wrong?
When a person has brain damage and is impaired, do you believe it's just
another natural configuration of the brain?
> Of course not. We imply a sort of moral judgement
> with this odd sense of wrongness.
It is moral to care for another who is in pain.
> I've seen experiences that are
> completely out of the norm, yet valued.
In a mirror. Deluded.
> But more to the point, you can say that all thoughts are associated
> with the physical. Name a thought that isn't.
I can point to a thought that is associated with nonsense. It's in your
sentence above.
But I DO dare! I do, I do. When not on medication my brother's
monologue is incomprehensible to me, to others and when played back to
him it is also incomprehensible to himself too. His aggressive
rantings at the wall to imaginary persons and the destruction he
causes is an embaressment to him and a tragedy for others.
HOW DARE YOU imply that my brother is not suffering from an illness!
If you were to ask him, he would tell you how stupid you sound, and
how completely out of touch with the realities of his illness you
are.
> Does a brain structure tell you what is
> right and wrong? Of course not. We imply a sort of moral judgement
> with this odd sense of wrongness. I've seen experiences that are
> completely out of the norm, yet valued.
>
> But more to the point, you can say that all thoughts are associated
> with the physical. Name a thought that isn't.- Hide quoted text -
You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But you do not
know what the 'has' or the 'it' is to claim that 'it' is an illness.
You do not know the grounds for saying that he has an illness.
Incoherent babbling can be a helathy release. So it isn't the babbling
that's ill.
You have to say why he is 'ill', or rather, why he must be looked at
through medical eyes and as a patient.
You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But you do not
You can say that what your brother 'has' is an illness. But,
paradoxically at best and unfairly at worst, you do not know what the
'has' or the 'it' is to claim that 'it' is an illness. You do not know
the grounds for saying that he has an illness. You cannot sstate
clearly what exactly is 'ill' or why it is ill. Incoherent babbling
You are talking shit
Nash, he might have created a math that explains everything social and
much biological interactionism from the cellular to the social levels.