 Here's a better question. Can I make a threat in a game like Paper Rock Scissors? Is there a way to threaten the other players without actually threatening to punch them with my rock post? Right, it's like, watch out, man. Next turn I'm throwing rock. You watch out. It's gonna be rock. Beware. So singling is distinct from making threats. Threats are a very interesting part of games because you cannot make credible threats unless there is one of three conditions. Press one, you're playing a game more than once. In Small World, to give you an example from a real game, or eventually if you played the original, I always threaten anyone who's coming on the board with the new civilization. It's like, if you come, when you're coming onto the board this turn, if you come onto my civilization, I will basically lose this game and destroy you and only try to destroy you and not try to win anymore. I might lose the first few games of Small World because I'm doing this. But eventually people learn that you actually do this. And then they stop coming in on top of you and now you win because their choice is to either, if they attack you, they lose too, or don't attack you, letting you win. So in repeat play, you can make credible threats in games. There's a whole mathematical theory around threats. It only works if you play the game more than once. Now, you need to establish the precedent. Think about all the ramifications of that. Say we play the prisoner's lemma once. I can't make a thread, because whatever. Say we play prisoner's lemma 10 times. Well, if I threaten, look, if you defect on me, I'll defect the rest of the game. I'll defect forever. So maybe he's got cooperates and I cooperate. All good. So now by both of us cooperating, we're king making, we're gonna win. Is there any reason for me not to defect on the 10th turn? He can't punish me for it. So... We know it's exactly 10 games. We know the 10th game is the last game. So I should just defect on the 10th turn. Now I get more points. I know he's gonna defect on the last turn. Because he's just as clever as me. That's right. Nobody's gotten any smarts more than anyone else does. We're both completely rational. We both know this is the last turn. His threat is completely worthless now. So he defect on the 9th turn. But I know he knows. I defect on the 8th turn. You see where this goes and everybody loses. That's true, Princess Bride. The second, it is the scene from the Princess Bride. The second way to make a credible threat is psychology. This isn't game theory, but psychology. You can wing people out. You can play head games with people and it totally works in the real world. The third way, and the reason I have a victory for steering wheel here is an example used in the previous panel. Let's say we're playing the game of chicken. Scott and I are gonna be in cars. Classic chicken, 1950s rocker chicken. We're going to drive cars at each other. Whoever swerves loses. So if we both swerve, we both lose. If neither one of us swerves, we both die. If Scott swerves and I don't, I get the girl. And vice versa. So let's try to make a threat. I'm not gonna swerve. I take my steering wheel and throw it out the window. I'm not gonna swerve. So what has Scott done? He's changed the nature of the game. He is basically, by taking his steering wheel out, he's removed his own agency. He didn't tell me what he's gonna, he did not signal what he is going to do. He already did it. I have no choice but to swerve and lose the game before to die along with Scott. So I'm gonna swerve, Scott's gonna get the girl.