If Iglesias has worked alongside many journalists whose prime motivation for being journalists is self-interest, and if, as he extrapolates from that, most journalists have only their own self-interest at heart, then we have the explanation for the failure of the profession of journalism over the last 30 years (since Reagan), and even more the last eight.

I didn't go into journalism for my own self-interest - I entered the profession driven by some overwhelming desire to be of service to the citizens of this country and my community on an individual and collective scale. When the business end of newspapers made it impossible for me to do my job with any sense of self-respect - in essence allowing the Chamber of Commerce to dictate what was reported - I got out, sick at heart because my longtime raison d'etre had been demolished.

What we're seeing in today's press are reporters and editors who apparently have no such altruistic motivation, who really do operate on the basis of what's best for themselves, not the public. The Constitution doesn't mandate a free press, but it certainly establishes its place as a vital component of a democracy - and so in a sense the journalists Iglesias hangs around are in violation of a basic constitutional mandate.

Something is truly wrong with these so-called journalists. What is it that has led them to this amorality? Something they're learning in j-school? Or a kind of socialization inculcated since childhood? It's as if they've all bought into game theory - you know, get what you can, do anything it takes, screw the other guy, a.k.a. "fuck your buddy."

This theory, the inamorata of such cold-hearted economic pragmatists as Hayek and Buchanan and psychologists like Laing who thought people are inherently selfish and conniving, was developed by the mathematician John Nash - and it was based in his paranoid schizophrenic hallucinations! He even admitted later, once his disease was under control, that his theory was baseless in reality, but that hasn't stopped a hell of a lot of people from using it as a founding principle of their lives. These are the people in power, those who seek power for its own sake and for their own self-interest.

And Iglesias thinks this is OK for journalists. In my view, journalism is a calling, one of the most altruistic of professions. I've said many times that many, many journalists these days don't know the first thing about the primary function of journalism and are both unwilling to learn and unwilling to consider criticism. They should go into marketing and public relations instead. After all, what they're doing for the most part is simply writing press releases for one side or the other anyway. They've brought shame on the profession, and cannot honestly call themselves journalists.

Thanks for replying - I appreciate it. Personally I think mathematicians are fascinating and totally beyond my understanding, as if I and they don't inhabit the same ethereal plane. As with any science, non-scientists are generally the ones who decide how scientific discoveries will be used - and often those decisions are based more on self-interest than altruism. I cannot blame scientists for that - their behavior seems totally natural to me, while the behavior of those who use their discoveries for evil are unnatural.

You're right, of course, about the origins of game theory - I revealed my faulty memory of the documentary "The Trap" (if you haven't seen it, it's well worth the time it takes and the depression it causes). However, everything I've read about Nash describes him as a mathematician, even though he won the economics Nobel and his game theory discoveries were used in economics. The documentary linked his paranoia to his work in game theory - and it does seem apt to describe as paranoid a perspective that humans are selfish, greedy and opportunistic and so you'd better screw your fellow humans to be sure they don't screw you.

And according to what I saw on "The Trap", game theory is most certainly used as a foundation for the anti-altruism theories of creeps (my word) like Buchanan, Thatcher and Reagan, among way too many others. I recall Buchanan calling people who serve in government for altruistic rather than self-interest reasons "zealots." If you're saying game theory is not a basis for this kind of selfish view of human nature, I'd say you're wrong; but if you're saying these creeps (my word again) are abusing game theory to self-fulfill their warped take on humanity, well, maybe you're right, and once again non-scientists are abusing science. Obviously I know next to nothing about game theory - I know only what I saw unfold on "The Trap" as spoken by Nash himself and Buchanan.

Somewhere in that documentary I also heard someone say that in experiments to determine the validity of game theory's predictions of human behavior, the only people for whom the theory worked were economists and sociopaths.