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Alicorn comments on Thomas C. Schelling's "Strategy of Conflict" - Less Wrong
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Comments (148)
In the radio example, there is no way for me to convince you that the receive capability is truly broken. Given that, there is no reason for me to actually break the receive ability, and you should distrust any claim on my part that the receive ability has been broken.
But Schelling must have been able to follow this reasoning, so what point was he trying to illustrate with the radio example?
It can be difficult to pretend to be unable to hear someone on the other end of a two way communication. The impulse not to interrupt is strong enough to cause detectable irregularities in speech. Actually breaking, or at least turning off, the receive capability might be essential to maintaining the impression on the other end that it's broken.
A banal observation: everyone is assuming that the radio speaker is disabled while I transmit (or that I use an earpiece that the microphone can't overhear. I'm guessing the first is actually the case with handheld radios.
It is difficult to consciously pretend. That's why our brains don't leave this particular gambit up to our consciousness. It does seem that this, as you say, involves genuinely breaking the receive capability, but evidently the actual cost in terms of information wasted is worth the price.