In real-life examples of strategy, you almost never find the kind of too-clever multi-level silliness you see in caper movies.
A: Realistic: “He think I’m going to do X”
B: Not realistic: “He thinks I think he thinks I’ll do X”
It gets indistinguishable from noise very quickly
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Thing is, in real life resources are limited. Each level of misdirection still requires some resources, even if fake wooden tanks are cheaper than real tanks. And as you spread signaling and real resources across options, marginal misdirection value declines very sharply.
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This is very related to the music tapping phenomenon. If you have a tune in your head and tap out the rhythm, you’ll believe it is far more legible to others than it actually is.
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We did see this level of ridiculousness in Cold War nuclear planning.
But otherwise I totally agree.
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