Send in the Clowns

People criticize other people for playing games. Of course when sincerity is required, then playing games is a bad thing and those people can become annoying and tedious because they seem incapable of being serious- they do not know when or how to stop playing and certainly game-playing then can take on a rather malicious and neurotic aspect-- but playing games can also be good fun and provide a needed distraction from pain and suffering so it is not always clear really when game-playing is good or bad. Computers that are programmed to play games can often be good company when you need a distraction from pain even tho they are not human--sometimes better because you know what to expect from them.

Wikipedia defines game theory as "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers." I was watching a movie about Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies last night and the part about the trial of the Chicago Seven (originally the Chicago Eight until Bobby Seale the Black Panther severed his trial from that of the other defendants). At the time, I remember this rather odd and antic trial and when it dominated the news. In the movie Vincent D'onofrio plays Hoffman and he gives him this pretentious self-involved quality with some fake non-localizable accent that I found annoying but anyway, Hoffman was essentially a hyper-rational game-player--they got that part right. That was also why I didn't take him seriously at the time--he was an antic clown tweaking the nose of the stuffed shirt, irrational establishment. The country was in pain at the time and needed a distraction and he provided it. So, what is the point I am trying to make here? There was this bizarre phenomenon last year when clowns started spontaneously appearing. They were rather strange clowns because it seemed they did not know how to play. They just stood there. They were clowns who forgot how to be clowns. We are a country that has forgotten how to be in pain. The stuffed shirts are still running the country,--maybe we have all forgotten how to play--maybe it is time to send in the clowns. The real ones.