Blairwatch: In the films you suggest that this narrow idea of freedom and the economic theories used stem from game theory�
Adam Curtis: They stem from r
ight wing economists like Friedrich Hayek, that's the sort of utopian vision as an alternative to communism. What Game theory provides is what seemed to be scientific proof that this vision would work because what Hayek is saying is instead of having planning we should just allow people to behave as they wanted and out of that would come order. That was his vision. What Game theory suggested was, well, that's true� and that's what I try and say.
Blairwatch: Game theory, starting as a mathematical formula seemed to be spread into so many other areas of research, from genetics to economics to war planning etc.
Adam Curtis: It seems to offer an explanation of how you can have complexes, create stability without having to have elites that guide them and so it explains how the natural world creates stability.
Blairwatch: And were there other Game theories that didn't assume that people were naturally selfish?
Adam Curtis: Well,
the real problem with Game theory is that its fundamental assumption is that human beings are self interested. I mean they only did that to make their models work to begin with. People like Nash (who was one of the originators of all this) didn't actually assume that that's what people were like; he made that assumption in order to make his mathematical models work. What then shifted towards economists is they began to assume that really is how human beings are and actually in my second film I show that Nash has now recanted or believed that things are much more complicated than that.
Blairwatch: Yes, I was fascinated by that.
Adam Curtis: It was a shift towards that assumption, but the really interesting story, I always felt the key to all this is that
when they tried to play on these games with the secretaries at the Rand corporation, really early on I think in something like the early 1950s, none of them behaved as one predicted, they just co-operated. And actually, there have been people subsequent to this who have done research in Game theory where you that if you play it over and over again (particular games) people very quickly learn that
co-operation is by far the most efficient way of doing things.
But no, the fundamental assumption that Game theory brought with it was that people are self interested. This is what I'm trying to show in these films; that behind our everyday world are certain basic assumptions about human beings and the fundamental one is that we are what economists call 'rational utility maximisers' and we pursue rationally what we want, and that's it.
Blairwatch: When this was brought into economics, I think it's in the second film, you mention the perceived breakdown of the British public services.
What would you attribute to this perceived breakdown other than the obvious financial stresses that were around at the time in the 70s?
Adam Curtis: There was obviously an economic crisis in the 70s which was leading to chaos,
but also within that failure of that post war project, people had no goals any longer in their bureaucracies and they began to pursue their own self interest. The question then is whether that then means that you then create a world totally based on self interest because you think that's what human beings are like or whether actually things are much more complicated than that but
if you actually have an organisation where morale is low people do become rather self-interested because they haven't got any one else.
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