I'm A Woman Altruist: That's Why I'm Uniquely Qualified To Prove John Nash Wrong Mathematically and Physically Even If I Lack A PhD

Today's blog is an official commitment: from henceforth, my academic scholarship will only consist of two problems: a) proving John Nash wrong in every way I can, and b) if I have time and I'm lucky, I will prove Stephen Hawking right. And while I may not have a PhD in physics, thus no degree, I have raw smarts, and my math and physics speaks for itself, and have a whole lot in common with the eccentric scientist Dr. Kary Mullis, who lived in the Midwest and worked at Kansas University (check out his bio). Freeman Dyson, the Nobel-caliber physicist whose work I’m vindicating didn’t have a PhD either, though I want one to be taken seriously.  Both/and. 

There are many roads or paths for me to do this, and much of math and physics are free or largely inexpensive, and even if I never do experimental physics (which is incredibly expensive, ask NSF) I can do theoretical physics with a pen and paper and textbooks anywhere, anytime because being a woman who is good at these subjects is fully legal, and the United States hasn't banned them yet, and a great Jewish spiritual teacher and couples counselor who prior to second career in New York danced the ballet as a teenager in Auschwitz to save her life for the Nazis and Holocaust survivor instructs that nobody can take away what's in the mind. Justice Kennedy himself would approve as someone who said freedom of thought is the most essential value of all, and thus I urge all my First Amendment colleagues all over the country like Mary Anne Franks to continue to do their important work even if I renounce it. 

Edith Eger, this great Jewish woman spiritual teacher (whose favorite movie is also the Wizard of Oz) instructs that being grateful is important no matter what, and no matter what I've "made it" even if I've been grieving, and I'm so grateful nothing could make me go back in time even if I had a literal time machine and used to complain and say I wished I could go back in time to highly specific moments and stop myself, the way the protagonist in the Time Traveler's Wife did. And even if my parents did too much for me that I didn't learn it myself, though I did fully learn to tie my shoes and was actually falsely told I didn't know how, and even if REI is a great store but refused to sell me the shoes I wanted and instead forced me to buy these shoes that I didn't want, though this incident actually saved my life all because REI refused to give me the shoes I wanted and that were a better fit. Next time, I should "just do it," and buy Nike, the American dream, even if it's ethically questionable. (I kid, Nike has great marketing, but I would never, ever buy Nike shoes, and I get all clothes I can second hand because I'm an altruist.)

I have a lifelong moral, spiritual, mathematical, and physical commitment to disproving John Nash. I consider Nash my nemesis/soulmate whose true life's work was arguably cryptography, and I happen to like him personally a lot because he was hilarious, even if he mocked people and didn't use existential humor like me, and incidentally left his pregnant girlfriend when she accidentally got knocked up before Nash got married to his gorgeous wife he met in a class at MIT in his capacity as her teacher, and Nash's wife was another math prodigy. 

But my commitment to this work was inspired not by Nash, though it's taken about 5 years for me to commit to this work and not regret it, about the amount of same time it took Junot Diaz to clean himself up, but by a new answer to a game theory game known as the “Pennies Games,” which is an asymmetric version of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” (PD) indebted to John Nash who is the most influential game theorist to have ever lived even though he wasn't that prolific, and which is beyond the scope of my lifelong commitment because it's an asymmetric game and I don't study those, so other game theorists if you like my stuff, feel free to use it, just please give me credit for it, as I would give to anyone whose work I used.

I am not going to explain the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” because it is so widely taught, but here’s the Wikipedia page to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which most often is played in repeated games, i.e., over time, between two players, and sometimes in a round robin. The “Pennies Games” is the same as the “Prisoner’s Dilemma” except instead two co-players are playing against one and other and have a choice, as in the Prisoner’s Dilemma, to play cooperatively or non-cooperatively, and one has more money than the other. How do most humans play in real life, and how can this be justified mathematically? Here’s a cute YouTube video that actually suggests my new answer to the PD in a single-shot game, i.e., one time, is actually what most regular humans choose even when there aren’t repeated rounds: namely pure cooperation because a) it’s utility maximizing for both if they don’t both betray each other (you’ll have to take my word on this, based on my new pre-print that isn’t ready to be posted), and b) because it’s the morally correct thing to do, and it’s a good outcome that what is morally right coincides with what is socially beneficial from the perspective of economics.

But, as stated, there’s a difference in the “Pennies Game” – one of the players has more power than the other and has more money. So why should that player decide to do “what is right over what is easy” (not to be confused with over easy eggs, which some people-pleasing women with no spine eat to please their partners) and voluntarily relinquish privilege so that the new outcome I proposed is created in the real world, as some amazing, badass African quantum scholars asked me? Currently, I cannot say that the more powerful player if purely acting in their economic self-interest alone has an economic justification to voluntarily give up gains. Nevertheless, it is equally true that throughout human history many, though not all, powerful persons have chosen to “do what is right over what is easy,” including all the billionaires and millionaires who have signed pledges to give up their wealth. (Okay, they might argue that it’s good for them because they’ll never be able to spend all this money for the rest of their natural lives, and if they die, it will be taxed, so there is a slight economic incentive to give it away, though some people aren’t doing it and have refused to sign the pledge.) 

In any event, a person or persons in a position of power may still voluntarily chose to do the right thing and settle in the Pennies Game for a (1.5, 1.5) outcome assuming that the pennies can be considered digital currency because of one of the greatest impulses in all of humanity, also known as altruism. That’s right, doing what is right can feel good, and can give humans a dopamine rush, and do gooders like me aren’t in it for the money, we (do gooders) are in it because we genuinely enjoy doing good, even if it sometimes means self-sacrifice, like when I was actually really hungry (by this I mean starving) and nevertheless gave away food to a homeless woman who had less than me, thereby diminishing the food I could eat. In fact, in developing countries, altruism is actually socially prevalent because many societies are less atomistic than in the United States and there’s a community ethos of taking care of the weak because it’s morally right (though Jared Diamond, the anthropologist might disagree because I saw him lecture in DC, and he stated that some societies leave elderly, sick, and poor to die instead of taking care of them). In addition, nature itself is cooperative, and in nature communities of trees nourish other, sick trees in what is also called the "tree internet.” (Credit where credit is due, I already knew about this, but I met a lovely African man yesterday who please connect with me on LinkedIn because I don’t know how to find you and who inspired me, and he’s the inspiration for this inclusion and in Africa this is called Ubuntu.)

But because I’m a scholar of law and economics, and because I’m a future law professor, I’ll present a “hypo” that is more common and that lawyers know about since I think many of my readers are lawyers. There’s a canonical problem that comes from real life: a child who is drowning in a lake. A bystander has the option to rescue the child, but that option poses some threat to their own life because there is a risk the drowning child will take their rescuer down. Scholars in other disciplines who see the world in Darwinian terms would suggest that the decision to rescue the drowning child would be based on a complex calculation of expected utility. They  claim the rescuer will calculate the likelihood in the future that the drowning child will  at some point either save the life of the rescuer, or pay enough favors back to make the  risk worth the payoff, an exchange of “reciprocal altruism.” 

            Or, the argument would  go, a sufficient population of rescuers and drowners exists to make this exchange  rational on a societal level. In classical law and economics, Judge Richard Posner rejects the theory  of reciprocal altruism but he and co-author William Landes suggest that rescuers act either due to economic motivations, or where no economic rewards are offered,  rescuers act out of a desire for “public recognition” such as media coverage or  accolades or due to the “enhanced probability that the rescuer [is] rescued (by the  person [they] rescued or by another) should time find [them]self in peril.” But, as  Nobel laureate and economist Amartya Sen notes, “if you are consistent, then no  matter whether you are a single-minded egoist or a raving altruist or a class conscious  militant, you will appear to be maximizing your own utility in this enchanted world  of definitions.”

A large empirical study of rescues takes the position that the decision to rescue  is usually not selfish or calculated, but instinctual. It may also be irrational as the majority of rescuers who are not trained as lifeguards die in the process, even if the rescue is successful. A strand of behavioral law and economics (also called the “law  and reality” worldview) observes that rescues are common, so common that “proven  cases of non-rescues are extraordinarily rare, and proven cases of rescues are  exceedingly common—often in hazardous circumstances, where a duty to rescue  would not apply in the first instance” and thus considerations of efficiency and  utility are not part of the equation. So basically people do the right thing often, even at great personal peril. 

That may not convincing enough to people who prefer to have something “in it for themselves,” though there are other forms of compensation that can come from “doing what is right over what is easy,” i.e. feeling good by actually being good. Do-gooders in general get a good reputation, which means Posner, Landes, and I actually agree for once (well, they agree on pure cooperation too, accidentally) and become well-liked and people like people who help them, and it improves reputational and social standing. Maybe that’s why some billionaires promote their giving so much. Doing good makes sense all around, even I lack a “force” in terms of raw economics to prove that while doing the right thing is intuitive, it is also self-interested economically. But morality is convincing, and Harriet Tubman convinced Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation when Lincoln initially wasn’t an abolitionist, and he did it. So, people can be convinced by pure persuasion to do the right thing, even if it requires a more powerful person or group of persons to do the right thing because it’s actually. . . right, and sometimes people cannot see their own self interest correctly due to a phenomenon known as "blindspots."

            Even Lucifer in the Netflix TV show decided being the devil was no fun, and decided he would rather be a good human because got tired of being the devil and he met a woman who inspired him through her doing gooding and wouldn’t sleep with him because his charms were completely ineffective on her no matter what he did and the only way to her heart was, that’s right, actually being a good person.  Sometimes being the devil is boring because Lucifer could have almost anything, but not actually everything, because some people said “hell no” to him, and in the show, he gave it up because doing the right thing actually redeemed him. Thus, no person is beyond redemption, even if I haven’t proven this mathematically yet, and maybe never will. Incidentally, sometimes being a good person also involves giving away a lot of money, just as billionaires do and did.

I mean, hey, Donald Trump could also decide to be a good person and renounce the Presidency, and cause all Republicans in the line of succession to resign if Melania refused to sleep with him, rather than giving him an ultimatum or was an amazing storyteller like Scheherazade the queen who voluntarily chose to risk her life in the story Arabian nights so her country could be saved and took the place of another poor woman who would definitely be executed and tamed the Sultan. Is Melania this persuasive? Never say never, but the mathematical limit approaches zero. But I'm a dreamer like MLK and zero is one of the most spiritual numbers in the whole number line mathematically and for many reasons, though it can also be a highly undesirable amount of wealth. But no dreamer ever changed the world by caring about plausibility or deniability, they just cared about equity, fairness, truth, and justice. 

Finally, 45 (i.e. Trump) is not a totally bad number, even if it’s a bad age for women to have children. A 45-degree angle in nature is the slope of an airplane flap that goes up and down on landing, and we all need 45-degree angles (no, not angels, but people have called me that) to make aeronautics work. Don't ask me, ask NASA. NASA, without 45-degree angles is flight possible? Didn't think so. Next time, refrain from using 45 as an insult because it does a lot of good, and even DT was/is good on "prisoner's" rights. 

p.s. I like angels v. devils, even if DT isn't my personal problem, and my "problem" (i.e., life's work) is John Nash, and maybe Stephen Hawking. And why all of my future scholarship aside from blogging will concentrate only on these two problems (and I'll even ignore fun math problems that are irrelevant to these, like Marilyn Vos Savant, who is wrong about the Monty Hall Problem, and I'll let Dominion's paper speak for itself, but Vos Savant's wrongness is unrelated to her gender, she's wrong on the merits) and this blog is just an outlet for my fun, creative, zany side (especially my bra-burning feminism, forgive me men, the world needs you too and couldn't function without you) and I give all these ideas away for free to the Universe to others who may want to write them because I have too many ideas, and the one and only way I can prove John Nash wrong or Stephen Hawking right is by having extraordinary focus, i.e. hyperfocus, and I'll let any and all of my lovely colleagues (or really, anyone else because everyone belongs and this is the entire point) find the political applications of my work because they are better at it than I am, and I aim to build a movement, not be an n of one, which is indeed the loneliest number and I sure hope I’m not single for the rest of my life. 

p.p.s. Despite actually having gone hungry in my life, I am not poor and have never lived in true poverty, and I have no right to judge other people with say, missing teeth or limbs, though my work, in the end, hopefully will change the whole planet's bottom line because if John Nash is wrong, all of cost benefit analysis will have to change, and that will hopefully benefit the whole planet because cost benefit analysis is used to calculate foreign aid. 

p.p.p.s. Cats are better than dogs, and my two cats are my spirit guides like this: I'm not against dogs cause I'm a quasi-vegan animal lover, but my cats literally help me with my math. And cats and dogs implicitly know math even if it's unconsciously, just like extraordinarily talented baseball players including the wife-beating Yankee star Joe Digamagio who must have been a supergenius at math and here's a link if you don't believe me: here's a link and anyone who writes Marilyn Monroe (MM, or "mastermind" a former nickname of mine) off as dumb because of the so-called beauty bias, which sometimes makes it harder for women, needs to read a history book. Any person on the planet can learn this stuff at any age, at any point, just talk to Barbara Oakley or the best educator on the planet at Stanford named Carol Dweck, who specializes in how anyone can learn anything at any point. This is why weeder classes are dumb and should be abolished, but that's beyond the scope of my commitment to a) John Nash, and b) Stephen Hawking, and why math and physics education need to be seriously reformed by people who care about actual pedagogy, i.e., a person like me who is a "just" a little 5'2 redhead former clinician and specialized in pedagogy because it was my actual job and I was paid to teach to all of my students, and did in fact do so, and my teaching evaluations also speak for themselves.  And even if I have yet to "Arrive" and hope I never do because on my tombstone even if I succeed, I want it to simply state "lifelong learner" because there's "no such thing as a crisis only a problem" and "everything is figureout"able" and even if the story of "Cain and Abel" needs to be removed from the Bible and isn't about a woman who picked the supposedly sinful Apple of knowledge without which none of humanity's achievements would exist. 

-Cortelyou C. Kenney (9/21/25, 9:51 am)