Lessons on Hong Kong politics, from game theory pioneer John Nash
John Nash's game theory can be neatly applied to the standoff over reform
Lavish tributes were paid last month when mathematical genius John Nash died in a car crash. But could the Nobel laureate, who inspired the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, yet have something to say on Hong Kong affairs through his most famous theory?
Nash was a pioneer of game theory - a way of using mathematics to study strategic decision-making, a concept that might shed light on last-dash manoeuvring ahead of this week's vote on electoral reform.
Our party insists there must not be any unreasonable restrictions
His Nash Equilibrium is used to determine outcomes in situations where people are unwilling to cooperate - as in the stand-off between the government and 27 pan-democratic lawmakers who hold the key to passing its model for the 2017 chief executive election in the Legislative Council.
In his doctoral thesis in 1950, titled "Non-cooperative Games", Nash posited a scenario in which "each participant acts independently, without collaboration or communication".
The Nash equilibrium has been applied to analyse the scenario known as the prisoner's dilemma, in which two prisoners are interrogated simultaneously. Both know they can win a lighter sentence by selling out the other, but if both sell the other out, they will receive a harsher sentence.
Each prisoner improves his own situation by switching from cooperating to selling out, given the knowledge that the other player's best decision is to defect.
So how will this play out in Hong Kong, where the government will table its reform plan on Wednesday, with a vote expected a day or two later?