Epistemic Status: Further Research Needed, would be a shorter essay if I thought about it for longer.

Conspiracies exist. Some of them are quite large, involve people who met as adults and agreed to do crimes together, and do many heinous things that multiple co-conspirators know about for years without the police noticing.

Some organised crime groups start within families. If you were all raised in the same family-first culture and they're your cousin, you can be pretty sure they're not a cop. Others start in Lawlessness. If it's the jungle and nobody is a cop, you can be pretty sure they're not a cop. These aren't the situations I want to draw attention to here.

Many groups maintain control through massive threats of violence, bribing people more than the cops could ever equal, holding loved ones as hostages, reliably killing snitches, etc. These are closer to sovereign states than shadowy conspiracies, and also not our subject today.

Today, our topic is Conspiring as an Information Theory game. I think it is a very weird game.

Theory

Let me first describe a math problem:

You are a standard economist's perfectly rational logician, in a community of other perfect logicians. [...]

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Outline:

(01:14) Theory

(03:51) Practice

(06:33) 1) Different Behavioural Rules

(08:06) 2) Different Evidentiary Rules

(10:26) 3) Sliding Scales

(12:30) 4) Shared Knowledge (The Reason I Wrote This)

(16:52) Further Applications

(17:41) Challenge Question

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First published:
March 3rd, 2026

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/RKshf5JmqDQdEgTmj/game-recognizes-game

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Game Recognizes Game” by eva_

LessWrong (30+ Karma)