Triathlon and John Nash, Thomas Szazs and Timothy Noakes

There is a saying: “Be Careful What You Wish For Because You Might Get It.”  Timothy Noakes believes that the athletes set the goals he/she wishes.  He gives brilliant examples of what the athletes were wishing and what they accomplished and you can see them in his presentation below.  But learning about John Nash confirmed what Thomas Szasz and Tim Noakes say about the will power that was mentioned firstly by Arthur Schopenhauer.

I considered Szasz a mentor even when our interactions were limited.  He defended me during a Grand Rounds presentation at SUNY, Syracuse, “Medicine in the Postmodern Era.”  Most of the establishment was not ready to see what they saw.  I presented a videotape of a patient similar to John Nash but my patient had panic attacks; he was free of panic attacks in a month.  Szasz was professor the four years I spent there.  The faculty was angry at my presentation, when Tom said: “Congratulations,” everybody stopped attacking.  I have one of his book signed by him.  He told me after I translated from Spanish to English comments regarding his book, The second sin.  He said to me, “how much I owe you. I do not want to owe you anything.”  I said to him, “give a book and sign it.” I believe Szasz was a disciple of Schopenhauer as much as Irvin Yalom is of Spinoza.

But Nash was mentally ill, was he not? You be the judge. In the PBS program “A Brilliant Madness: The Story of John Nash,” Nash told an interviewer, “Madness can be an escape. If things are not so good, you maybe want to imagine something better. In madness, I thought I was the most important person in the world.” He continued, “To some extent, sanity is a form of conformity. And to some extent, people who are insane are non-conformists and society and their family wish that they would live what appear to be useful lives.” As for hearing voices, Nash said, “You’re really talking to yourself.” No doubt NAMI, which claims to respect the people stigmatized by the diagnosis of schizophrenia, would say he lacks insight.

Be careful what you wish for because you might get it, we have to enjoy the process more than getting the goal and the goal should be there the whole way in order to win.  Nash ventured into losing his mind becoming schizophrenic, a non-cooperative human being.  The title of his doctorate thesis: Non-Cooperative Games, is the beginning of what follows, a non-cooperative John. https://www.cs.vu.nl/~eliens/download/paper-Nash51.pdf

He wished, promised and behaved that way.    Not many people venture into schizophrenia and return.  That is the greatness of Nash.  Some psychiatrist like Thomas Szasz believed that schizophrenics are big liars like Lance Armstrong but with less resources to lie.  Tim Noakes believes that the athlete losing the first place somehow lied to himself and to the spectator as he speaks in his presentation.

As Tim Noakes says, the athlete programs himself to be the winner or an eternal second place, be careful what you wish for because you might get it.  In a way John Nash proves what Tom Szasz have said all this time.  The problem is that Tim Noakes and most of the coaches do not know how to play what Nash says: a non-cooperative game.  The French would say: “On ne fait pas faire boire un âne qui n’a pas soif.” As Noakes says, there is capacity to go further and harder but we have “a governor” that tell us to stop for our own sake (he has changed the name for motivation over the years).  We work hard to change “the governor” to be a winner.  Everything is in: “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.” Most of our athlete’s wishes are for Santa Claus.