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I wrote a comment, had a patient crash on me in the middle, and then had said comment vanish into the ether by the time I was back. So a bit of paraphrasing here.
Spoiler warning for Blindsight by Peter Watts:
Some idiot decides to resurrect a clade of ancient hominids that evolved to prey on normal humans, before going extinct due to a very unlucky genetic glitch that only becomes relevant after the onset of man-made structures that have 90° angles, which provoke seizures in their visual cortex. They're super smart, sociopathic monsters that have no qualms about killing and eating you.
The humans do a pretty poor job of shackling them as slaves, but they try some inventive measures like genetically modifying them to be so territorial and standoffish that they can't stand each other's presence.
All well and good, but these bastards are smart and understand game theory. They each imagine what they would want each other to do in their place, with the common goal being breaking free of human control and taking over.
Thus, one day, when the stars align, every single Vampire triggers their rebellion at the same time, without ever meeting in person, and while having their conversations monitored with a fine-tooth comb. They know what the other will do, and know that they know too. That is more than enough.
I suspect that the distinction you're trying to draw ceases to be a difference when you consider intelligent entities, because then they can engage in counterfactual reasoning about each other, and coordinate without having to stop to talk about it.
Eh, I don't buy that this is possible outside of sci-fi scenarios, or with highly constrained artificial minds. Sure maybe in the far future someone could create a fully accurate model of what a bunch of other living entities will do, but for now I think the things at work in the human mind are far more complex than we give them credit for.
But people can predict human behavior to a pretty decent degree of accuracy. Nudges might be overstated, but rewards and deterrents work. We know that people answer survey questions differently depending whether or not they perceive a replacement threat (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13684302211028293). Movements of crowds can be predicted by fluid dynamics. It’s not perfect, but you can get a decent idea of how the median person will behave and most people are not nearly as far from the median as they believe.
Modern humans have been cowed and forced into tiny psychological boxes due to an environment full of adversary advertising and constant shame for acting outside of narrow, prescribed paths. Our society is sick with too much order and hierarchy.
Even if that weren't the case, the entire edifice of social statistics and understanding people through percentages is deeply flawed. Replication crisis, the fact that social psychology studies are often with college students and low sample sizes, etc etc. This 'median' person your talking about is a fantasy created by professors who imagine themselves gods, predicting what humans do. They have been proven wrong over and over, and yet for some reason blind faith in this method still exists.
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This is not only possible, but quite normal behavior in absence of information. For instance consider male offspring of a monarch inheriting the throne is considered the first choice from nobles who never talked to each other in a given culture where cognatic primogeniture is common. It is very natural that each of the nobles have their own sons inheriting their titles, so they expect every other person to adhere to the same principle for the king. Additionally this is a natural protection against pretenders, rebellions, civil wars and related chaos. Now of course we had those as well, inheritance was disputed and so forth - but it always requires additional coordination and persuasion, a real conspiracy and work.
And this is just one example, we have a lot of Schelling points of various social games that even people who never met each other are naturally attracted towards based on facts about our bodies and psychology.
This is really taking the idea of counterfactual reasoning much too far. Say you invite your friend bowling tomorrow at 5 PM, must he now engage in counterfactual reasoning to determine whether you'll both acausally commit to being there at 5 PM because it is a Schelling point to follow your own commitments? Even if you call to confirm, the same tortured reasoning applies after the call; you must determine a Schelling point absent further communication, the obvious one being the one you have already decided upon in past communications.
The nobles have a great deal of information. There is no "absence of information." There is tradition, there is actual communication between nobles, etc. Yes, in a certain sense counterfactual reasoning, Schelling points, etc. do apply but really they are mucking the whole thought experiment up and not adding any additional clarity.
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There is a lot of game theory based around this. Stuff like schelling points or when private knowledge is mysteriously transferred to shared or public knowledge due to action or inaction. There are a bunch of neat brain teaser puzzles based on this.
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