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Jim wrote:
On Mon, 25 Mar 2002, Faustine wrote:
> Bah. I say it depends entirely on what the lie is, who's being lied to, and
> how confident and artistic the confidence artists are.
> If they were good enough (and their targets comfortable enough), all three
> could be lying their asses off about anything and nobody would ever be the
> wiser. Likewise, with three or more targets playing it the other direction.
>>There is a time factor involved. Inconsistencies must accumulate.
Maybe, but whether they're picked up on is the only thing that counts. We see
what we want to see: if something moves the target from a state of unfocused
suspicion to a tightly focused suspicion, they're going to be seeing
inconsistencies and drawing inferences where there are none. Which is what
makes being hypervigilant so dangerously counterproductive: if you're all wound
up and madder than hell about the idea of being fed a line of disinformation,
all anyone who wants to damage you and your informant has to do is insinuate
you're being taken for a ride: you find the "proof" yourself and take it out
on the innocent person. Classic Iago. "Credo in un dio crudel che m'ha creato
simile a se." heh. (who says a Wagnerian can't like Verdi? Magificent aria.)
>And I'm not sure the problem applies to somebody who WANTS to be lied to as you
>posit by implication with your extension.
The most obvious example here is a little kid whose parents feed them a line of
crap about Santa Claus. The kid wants to believe, and I never heard of parents
who tipped them off by not getting their story straight! Even after they
realize they're seeing different-shaped Santa Clauses in the shopping malls etc,
they still manage to convince themselves it's real. Why? Beacuse their parents
told them so, they saw the NORAD BS on CNN, they like the presents, they take
comfort in the the idea of a benevolent father-figure sailing through the sky...
He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!
Though this looks like the perfect set-up for a frothing rant on the evils of
religion, the state, and how we delude ourselves in the name of security, I'll
pass and leave you to draw your own conclusions. ;)
> There is an implicit 'critical' factor in the original problem as posed, we
>assume no cooperation between-all- the players, there is at least one 'honest'
>one.
Honest? You mean someone acting in good faith without the expectation of being
conned? Think of other games where someone is acting in good faith WITH the
expectiation of being conned, or acting in BAD faith without the expectation of
being conned. Honest, bah. Right now I'm thinking of the second half
of that Iago aria.
> The game where there is one honest player is -not- the same game as no
> honest players.
Who's the honest player in a game of Chicken?
Cooperate Not Cooperate
Cooperate 2,2 1,3
Not Cooperate 3,1 0,0
Just a thought...
~Faustine.
***
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from
oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that
will reach to himself.
- --Thomas Paine
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