Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling

The Optimistic Guru

By Marjorie Smith, 8-21-06

I went to hear Nobel Laureate Thomas Schelling speak the other night because I wanted to see what the guy looks like who came up with an idea that sometimes gives me hope for the human race. For the record, he looked a bit like a leprechaun, younger than his 85 years, almost bouncy as he paced about the stage in the Museum of the Rockies’ Hager Auditorium, telling us something he wants the world (and especially our nation’s leaders) to remember: Nuclear weapons are only useful as deterrents.

They tell me Thomas Schelling is an economist. I suppose that’s true since his degrees (bachelors from UC Berkeley, PhD from Harvard) are in economics and so is his Nobel Prize (awarded in 2005 for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.”) But if it were up to me, I’d call him a sociologist or political scientist, especially considering that economics is sometimes called “the dismal science” and Thomas Schelling makes me feel cheerful.

Of course it’s entirely possible that I’m not really grasping what his discovery (or articulation) of the Schelling point really means, that I’m adopting it in an interpretation peculiar to me. The fact that I was first introduced to the concept of Schelling points by a professorTerry Anderson who is now executive director of the Property and Environmental Rights Center (PERC) one of Bozeman’s two libertarian think tanks, and that at the Museum of the Rockies Schelling was introduced by John Baden, the chairman/founder of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE), Bozeman’s other libertarian think tank, makes me wonder if I’m not using the Nobel Laureate’s idea to support something he’d be surprised at, since I am rarely in sync with the libertarian establishment around here, or even in my own family.

The Schelling point is part of game theory, (which, if you’ll allow me a definition from Wikipedia, “studies the choice of optimal behavior when costs and benefits of each option are not fixed, but depend upon the choices of other individuals.”) A Schelling point (also called a focal point, and once again borrowing from Wikipedia) “is a solution that people will tend to use in the absence of communication, because it seems natural, special or relevant to them.”

I first learned about Schelling points in a course on economics and the environment; the professor barely mentioned the term in passing but I was utterly charmed. A favorite example of a Schelling point is this: Students are assigned to meet in New York City on a certain day, told part of their grade depends upon their success, but no time or place is specified. The students are not allowed to communicate with each other, and yet – according to the story – on the appointed day, they all show up at noon under the clock in Grand Central Station.

Many years ago I wrote about Schelling points in my Friday column in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, asking if we had any such focal point in Bozeman so that I could call a meeting on Monday, and folks would show up at the same time and place. Months later I ran into one of Bozeman’s oldest and most distinguished citizens. “I have a bone to pick with you,” he said. “I read your column and at 9 AM on Monday I was at the post office. Where were you?”

Well, the truth is, I was in Austin, Texas, attending my daughter’s graduation. I remember trying to explain Schelling points to some of her friends. “I don’t get the problem,” said one guy. “Didn’t their machines pick up?”

When I first heard about Schelling points, I decided that’s what happened back in 1870 when the Washburn Party came out to survey the rumored wonders of Yellowstone. According to the story, at one of their camps, the members of the expedition spent the evening in excited conversation about how they were all going to get rich from this natural wonderland: they would build hotels and spas and divide up the bounty between them. And then they awoke the next morning with a new idea: this place should belong to all the people -- and the world's first national park was born.

Who cares if it’s apocryphal, it’s a great story – although I expect the folks at PERC and FREE might object to my interpretation since they hold that the market economy is the best solution to every problem and have been known to preach that Yellowstone would be much better preserved if it were in private hands.

When I tell people about Schelling points they often chime in with other examples of times when a group of humans came to an unexpectedly mutually beneficial consensus. “Like the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention,” said one friend whose mother served in the convention which gave Montana one of the most progressive state constitutions in the nation, one with strong environmental and human rights protections.

Thomas Schelling gave several examples of enlightened human consensus the other night at the Museum of the Rockies, although he was so modest he never designated them as Schelling points. He pointed out that no nuclear weapons have been used in anger since those first two in August of 1945 seared themselves on human awareness, and expressed the hope that we have reached a consensus that the weapons simply cannot be used. Of course, there has been endless communication on the question of nuclear disarmament, treaties having been negotiated, so perhaps this doesn’t qualify as a Schelling point for purists. But it works for me, because I believe that no matter how much negotiation and debate has taken place, there has to have been a certain evolution of human understanding for progressive documents to be adopted (as in 1972 with the Montana constitution).

Schelling also pointed out that after World War I with its horrors, no legitimate national leader has used poison gas against an enemy army (Saddam Hussein having vented his poisonous weapons on his own people as did Hitler). Long before there were chemical weapons treaties (and, therefore, communication on the subject) nations seemed to have achieved agreement on the unacceptability of poison gas.

As Bozeman Chronicle reporter Scott McMillion wrote after the speech at the Museum of the Rockies last week, Schelling believes that nuclear weapons should never be looked at as “conventional weapons,” and the United States should never “do anything to suggest they can be used as casually as a bullet.” Schelling says our country’s leaders, “should never do anything to lead anybody to believe that the United States would be the first to use the terrible weapons.”

It was clear that evening that these ideas about nuclear weapons mean a great deal to Schelling. He has been pushing them since he made his Nobel acceptance speech a year ago and realized that he had suddenly acquired one of Theodore Roosevelt’s bully pulpits.

But it is the basic optimism that I see embedded in the Schelling point – the idea that humans do evolve into progressive consensus on important matters – that draws me to the man and his theory. Is it possible that too much communication (round the clock news and talk shows, for instance) has the effect of making us so weary of whatever is the subject du jour, that we are led toward consensus without further discussion, toward new Schelling points?

Is it possible that in less than three months enough Americans will agree to meet at certain understood places at certain understood times and, without discussing it on that day, vote to set this nation in a new progressive direction?

Thomas Schelling gives me hope that it could happen.

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