"It Must Suck to be You, Doreen."
Someone on an open board wrote: "It must suck to be you,
Doreen. You're always bored."
I take the accusations that are leveled at me seriously unless
there are good reasons not to. I thought about why though it doesn't suck to be
me, it is true that I am bored a good deal of the time.
I'm bored a good deal of the time, outside the rarified realm of
Laputa Manque, because the
world that people in the average IQ range have created for themselves looks
like the kiddy section of an amusement park to me.
In the course of doing research for a proposal for electoral
reform in
Kenneth Arrow's paradox, or impossibility theorem, is defined as
a *non-trivial game*. He was searching for a *social welfare function* that
will allow the will of the electorate to be maximally expressed in the make-up
of the government. He relied on game theory, of course, to try to come up with
such a function.
Game theory, per se, would bore me if it was in no wise
applicable to social welfare. It would be no more interesting than playing
poker, which I haven't played since I was a kid, except one time when the other
D2 and I started dating and he said I don't play games because I can't. I
proved him wrong and put playing card games behind me, probably forever. But
game theory has always been intimately tied to fair distribution when
absolutely fair distribution seems impossible, and so I find it interesting.
Game theory doesn't bore me - precisely because it is applied
toward social welfare. Mathematicians who do game theory get their Nobel Prizes
in Economics.
When I look at myself and the world I see around me honestly, I
come to the sad conclusion that precious few provisions have been made to
provide Human beings with entertainments that are at once enjoyable and which
effect positive changes, or attempt to. Most entertainments are frivolities and
fritter time away. They leave neither society nor the entertained edified or
bettered in any way. Usually the inverse is true.
In a world in which there are so few challenges presented in
everyday life to play games that are also searchings
for solutions to Human problems I'll remain bored a good deal of the time in
ordinary society.
It is their world that sucks.
Not me.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan,