Travel of the idea

John Nash had the idea first which he worked hard on. Imagine his times in classrooms racking his brains and talking to his colleagues. Then he wrote thesis and much more of which i am not precisely sure of. forgive me to be so flippant right now i am not so motivated.
so he dazzled the math world. struggled with his own mind, walked through the world as a mad man.
sylvia nasser wrote a book on his life. the book is a stupendous work and won the pulitzer prize.
Akiva Goldsman wrote a screenplay based on that book and won an oscar for it.
the creative geniuses ron howard and russell crowe portray the story on screen. the film is a huge success.
Since then economics professors use the movie as a tool to explain game theory.
back to where the idea began from - the classroom.

the turning point of the travel is akiva goldsman. he is the one who removed the complexity and brought it to the palate of the layman and made slots for the creativity of ron howard and russell crowe to fit in. in that sense i will say akiva goldsman's contribution is a penny more than that of sylvia nasser.
i am sure if you google and search into economics lectures you will find many professors giving lectures with the help of the scene in a beautiful mind. again i apologise for being so flippant, there are also some who say ron howard made fun of audiences' intelligence because he did not really get nash equilibrium and the portrayal in the movie is wrong.
but my point is - it is the movie makers who have more than monetary gain on their mind - who value creative achievement (and i believe this movie was made in that spirit) who contribute to society by portraying the obscure in a simple way.
even if nash equilibrium was wrongly portrayed in the film, then what is the right explanation? and you will find yourself flipping the pages of the economics text book, and believe me - the movie made you do that. and hence i salute these people - ron howard, akiva goldsman and russell crowe.
(I am not insane to be watching so many movies! that too again and again! - some good thought comes every now n then and i m sure there is more to this, even more, which maybe i will learn someday.)

on a similar note
I go to a shop in the neighborhood and buy butter, he charges me 20, i see mrp on it as 19.
"You cant charge more than the MRP, its against the law"
"it needs refrigeration so we charge 1 re extra"
"i can go to consumer court"
"i dont know my boss asked me to charge, so i do"

why is honesty the best policy?
next time i wont buy butter from him, the shop next door sell on mrp. whats more i ll also buy cola drink from the honest one.
there is something called the opportunity cost He lost on the sales he would have made in the future because he made the decision to earn an extra rupee today. we dont know the name opportunity cost, but a small shop owner in a village too can ask himself this question "will he come to me the next time? I am i losing out on future opportunities by making more profit today?"
given huge population in india losing out on one customer in mom n pop stores is not a big deal, he eventually makes same amount of money each month. but there is no such way of thinking which makes him realise the amount of money or faster rate of growth he would have made if he were honest.
one needs time to see economics in life, when its taught in mba classes its lost in the pile of assignments.
or even worse i just talk about it in an obscure blog post.

Wake up

I HAVE been living under a cave. I confess, i realized it so late in my life, but i guess its never TOO late.
I realized that policemen dont have any honour. its another job, like that of a autorickshaw driver. On the pre-paid auto-rickshaw stand on MG Road,Bnagalore, you will observe the racket of the rick drivers and road traffic policeman. both make sure they earn their money for the day.
I confess i dont have a voter's ID and neither do i give a damn about the country's elections.
I read The white tiger, and watched Delhi 6, Gulaal (the most excoriating one)to start looking at my environment and my past in a new light. and see the darkness.
links - arvind adiga's interview