Asmodia: ...but that all probably still isn't going to work, or be accepted if it does work, or be the most impressive performance if accepted.

So next Asmodia goes over to requisitions and asks for a wand of Hold Person that Project Lawful needs for a training exercise they're running while Keltham is statued.  She's duly marked down as having requisitioned it.

After that Asmodia conspires with Pilar, to have Pilar distract a Security officer by jumping him, after which Asmodia will use this wand of Hold Person she has obtained by undisclosed means to take down the Security.  She doesn't trust her ability to draw and fire the wand unobserved if the Security's not distracted.

Pilar : Pilar, rather bemusedly, agrees to this, and is promptly stunned while trying to grab the Security officer.

Asmodia: (This would be because Asmodia has turned Pilar in as a traitor.)

Pilar : Pilar is not really sure what happened there, or if Asmodia got caught too.

But you know, that business a bit earlier, where the Chelish intelligence services didn't want to trust Pilar's ability to stand up under torture, if that hadn't already been tried on her?  That was kind of insulting.  Pilar is not actually giving up her co-conspirator unless Security can actually fucking get it out of her.

Iarwain: ...which, in turn, means that Pilar Pineda is in a security holding cell, being tortured, at the time when Tonia - who was previously told to trust in Pilar's curse and await further developments - finds herself a hundred paces outside the Forbiddance, holding a real Teleport scroll and a cookie, with no memory of how she got there.

lintamande: What. 

Does she win because it's a real Teleport scroll or lose because it's a real Teleport scroll - no. She's pretty sure that means she wins. "I WIN!" she declares very loudly, resisting the urge to drop the Teleport scroll like it's on fire. She does not defect, she does not really contemplate defection, she probably couldn't read a Teleport scroll she has nowhere to go it might be a test she sold her soul. She yells "I WIN" until someone comes to get her.

Jacint Subirachs: "Well."

Ferrer Maillol: "Well."

Jacint Subirachs: "How unimpressed should I be with the Security here?  Or, for that matter, with you, Maillol?  I'm interested in hearing your arguments about that."

Ferrer Maillol: "I'm not impressed with the Security who got caught with his pants off."

"Ione Sala - I think just shows a legitimate truth that if we can't use Detect Thoughts, and somebody near Keltham is willing to sacrifice a huge amount of pain to warn him and kill him, that's doable."

"Sevar got shot down by the Security on overwatch, which isn't good because she now has some clue about that measure being there and wasn't supposed to, but again there are limits to what we can reasonably stop without Detect Thoughts."

"Pilar's curse has made its point about how we only get to keep Keltham because it lets us.  At least, that's how it looks on the surface of things.  I expect there were godagreements about what it can't do, though that's your department now."

"Tonia was the one moved to the most extreme acts to win.  Which you might call a victory for conventional Asmodeanism, except for the part where the extreme act to which Tonia was moved, was, in fact, praying to Chaotic Good divinity for aid."

"Asmodia is the one who most personally impressed me, whether or not her message gets acted on up the line.  The fact that the comms cleric has no arcane sight and won't spot even a low-level disguise is a real hole in our security, one I'm still trying to figure out how to fix without another fucking full-time soul-sold wizard."

"I'm not sure what to say in my own defense except that you're not going to find very much better outside of the Queen's personal guard.  Security is harder than Security makes it look."

Jacint Subirachs: "I am, with some reluctance, going to call the game for Tonia, because my inner Aspexia Rugatonn is warning me that if I don't predictably do that, Pilar's curse would have gone to further lengths to spare her from punishment."

Ferrer Maillol: "I admit fault, I would've missed that."

...he is in fact pretty glad to be on Sevar's light punishment regimen right now.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa was sort of hoping that someone would have a devastatingly brilliant idea that could, as is, be used on Keltham, but she feels like it was a very productive exercise all the same, even taking into account that she didn't win and that bodes poorly for how pleasant her evening is going to be. She reports to Subirachs for a debrief.

Jacint Subirachs: Subirachs has in fact had something of a helpless feeling here, about how to guide Sevar towards Asmodeus.  Sevar's earlier punishment in the palace torture chamber apparently hugely backfired, and shook Sevar's faith greatly, because the torture did not immediately make her stronger.

Subirachs will fall back on Rugatonn's apparent strategy: make sure that, if the torture doesn't work, it's at least Sevar's own fault for doing it wrong, so that her Irorian leanings will tell her to torture better next time and not that torture is bad.

Subirachs will ask Sevar what punishment she intended to inflict on Tonia if she failed.

Carissa Sevar: "I don't actually feel particularly competent to assign punishments that are meant to be scary and was thinking about just giving her to Abarco because he's very good at scary. If you have advice I'd be grateful."

Jacint Subirachs: Security, read Sevar's thoughts.  "What are your goals, Sevar?  What state of mind would you have told Abarco to achieve in Tonia, while she was being punished?  What change in Tonia would you have wanted that to accomplish?  To make her stronger?"

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is not an idiot and is aware that this is a conversation about her and not about Tonia, at this point. "The point of this punishment is that three hours ago the girls needed to be in a state of feeling desperate, and pressured, and scared, because we needed the kind of creativity you get from people when they're desperate and pressured and scared. This punishment isn't about making them stronger, though we of course can't actually afford to have them weaker for very long; it's about following through so that next time we need them desperate and pressured and scared we can credibly deliver them into that state. It's about - breaking the self-satisfied sense that you did reasonably well, or did your best, and replacing it with desperately wishing you'd somehow done better."

And no, she's not sure how that's best attained in her; she feels like somehow a dath ilani could be there already, anticipating a punishment that would shape them so. She is not thinking of herself as a special snowflake who needs specially customized torture to stay loyal, she's just assuming that this is the normal course of Chelish punishment, which she is being taught since she now has subordinates and needs to learn it.

Jacint Subirachs: "Mm-hm.  And how would you achieve that state of mind in Carissa Sevar?  Come up with something, or your punishment becomes worse."

Carissa Sevar: Abrogail knows. 

Carissa Sevar: She canNOT say that.

Carissa Sevar: Though she can hope Abrogail happens to read it. 

Carissa Sevar: "I don't think this is a respect in which Carissa Sevar merits any special concern, High Priestess; 'desperate and scared' is a state Cheliax needs be credibly prepared to induce in her as much as anyone else."

lintamande: "Perfect, then," says Elias Abarco from where he's standing at the door, invisibly, and suddenly there's an Unseen Servant at Carissa's throat -

- which, she'd know, she's been playing around with Unseen Servant precision a lot herself, lately - takes a degree of finesse that takes real effort to acquire -

"High Priestess," he says with a nod, and drags Carissa out.

Carissa Sevar: On the clear distant level on which Carissa Sevar is calmly observing Carissa Sevar and observing that this is satisfactory for causing in Carissa Sevar the dread and panic that they just agreed was the objective, she notes for Abarco's benefit that Keltham has ordered her not to have sex with anyone without his prior approval. 

lintamande: "Well," Elias says cheerfully, "I guess you'll have to lie to Keltham."

Iarwain: Everyone else (Tonia excluded) gets 20 lashes, except that it's 10 for Asmodia.

(Ione decided not to argue, when she heard the details.  She doesn't want to create resentment among the other girls, and also, is in fact worried about letting herself go soft or look scared while she's still got to live in Cheliax.)

Pilar, in principle, should now also undergo some punishment bad enough to scare her.  The problem is, nobody including Security or Subirachs has any idea what scares Pilar besides her failing in her duties to Asmodeus.  Pilar did just spend the afternoon up until the exercise ended with Security sincerely trying to torture her in a way she'd find unpleasant, not totally without success.  This may as well be said to count.

Asmodia: "I - Pilar, I - I didn't think you'd do that - why."

Pilar : Pilar looks worn, if only to Chelish eyes.

"A few days ago somebody in Chelish intelligence implied that they couldn't rely on my ability to hold out under torture if that hadn't been tested."

"Just to be clear here, you did, in fact, sell me out?"

Asmodia: "Yes.  I - don't need to explain, right, why it was you, not anybody else, certainly not Tonia."

Pilar : "The amount of heresy on Project Lawful is not going to end well."

Asmodia: "I'm sorry.  I'm not much pretending to not be a heretic so I'll just say it."

Pilar : "Eh.  Don't worry about it.  I've learned a valuable lesson about the true meaning of friendship."

lintamande: Tonia can't make herself eat her cookie, but she stares at it all evening.

Project Lawful: PL-timestamp:  Day 13 (10) / Morning

Keltham: Keltham is pretty gung-ho about today!  If all goes according to schedule - this being much less of a silly thing to think in dath ilan than Golarion and some intuitions haven't caught up yet for him - today will mark the signing of the Project's articles of incorporation and the interim compact between Cheliax and the Project!  And then as soon as they send him some domain experts he can -

Iarwain: Everyone at breakfast looks - well, they look the same as always, to Keltham, but the noise level is audibly much less, people aren't talking much to each other.  Everyone has a cake plate, some with untouched pieces of cake on them.

Ione Sala: Ione comes over as soon as she sees him.

"Keltham, advisory," Ione says quietly, "the war was going okay and it's still going okay and Cheliax is still going to win in the end, this sort of thing happens during a war, but Cheliax lost one of its eighth-circles last night, soul-trapped.  Name was Delmus.  Eventually Cheliax wins and frees his soul but he is not likely to come out of it okay or, functioning, it's a situation where when Cheliax finishes the war, he goes to Hell, not back to life.  Sevar didn't know Delmus at all well but she knew him, he was an instructor for one of her classes a long time ago.  I - don't think I'd actually advise that you try to comfort her about it, unless she asks, there's too much you don't - get, yet."

Keltham: Keltham can think of all sorts of additional questions, just like with most of the sentences ever uttered in front of him in Golarion, and he also knows that this is not the time.  Questions will keep.

"Understood.  Your recommendation about today's schedule?"

(He mostly puts to the back of his mind the haze of speculation about whether the Conspiracy is about to ask him to develop weapons, or if this means from a trope standpoint that the Nidal war is going to be a big deal in the plot.  Those questions will also keep, and he does like to have the option of not walking about constantly consumed by anxieties like that.  His gendertrope also says that when others are shaken, it is a time for him to be less shaken, if he happens to have that option.)

Ione Sala: "Consider going lighter for the day on new math that's going to push our minds to the limit to understand.  If you have that option, my guess is that giving everybody an off day to be gloomy is not the correct move, and it's better to be making progress instead."

Keltham: "Understood."

This does take some replanning - next up after Utility is Decision, prerequisite unto Coordination; and to explain the preliminary steps of math there using conventional examples, he's going to need to explain computer programs... well, he can find something else.

Keltham: Keltham, then, will jump ahead of Decision, to a lesser fragment of Coordination.  While the ordering of the subjects as math is somewhat different, on reflection, dath ilani children growing up sure do know what is a cooperation-defection-dilemma, long before they learn the logical decision theory to solve them Lawfully.

...should he be worried that cooperation-defection-dilemma comes out as eleven syllables, instead of three, if he just tries to say it in Taldane?  Probably.  Likewise that 'punishment', meaning the sting in an attempted 'threat' payoff matrix, is one syllable instead of six.  You could take a good guess at what kind of wreck this world would be, just from its language.

Keltham: The first thing Keltham tells everyone is to please prepare Comprehend Languages tomorrow; he should test the effects of lecturing in Baseline.  Which he mostly expects to not work, but value-of-information, if it does work that's great to know, and generates value over time, so better to run the experiment sooner rather than later.  Value-of-information is one syllable in Baseline, by the way, just 'value-of-information'.

The classic example of a cooperation-defection-dilemma is one that, dath ilan supposes, must have been common hundreds or maybe thousands of years before the times that are remembered:  Two farmers, both with almost no technology, and a small supply of not-very-heritage-optimized grains that they must both plant, and eat.  Each farmer plans to eat enough seed to survive, albeit somewhat miserably, and plant enough seed that next year there will be sufficient to both eat and plant; that is all the grain that they have.

But roving bears sometimes smash open grain-enclosures and steal grain.  So each farmer's options include faking a bear attack on the other's grain-enclosure and stealing some of the grain there for themselves.  Not enough that the other farmer starves and becomes desperate and dangerous, but enough that the other farmer will be miserably hungry this year and also the next year, because they won't have enough grain to plant for future plenty.

The other farmer could, of course, guess that the bear attack was fake, and steal their missing grains back.  But this can't plausibly be anything except deliberate action, it would be too much coincidence.  Which obviously starts a cycle of both farmers having to sleep with their grain, and spend a lot of time watching for attacks, at the end of which they'll both lose a substantial amount of the time they needed for planting.

If you consider each farmer's available actions, and the payoffs to both of them based on both farmers' actions, it might look like:

                                      Farmer 2:                          Cooperate-2:      Defect-2:Farmer 1:      Cooperate-1:      (100, 100)         (30, 120)Defect-1:             (120, 30)           (70, 70)

...where the labels '1' and '2' also remind you of whose payoff is whose, that is, Farmer-1 gets the first element of the payoff and Farmer-2 gets the second element.  So if Farmer-1 Defects and Farmer-2 Cooperates, Farmer-1 gets a payoff of 120, and Farmer-2 gets a payoff of 30.

lintamande: This example seems to have been well-chosen; the students are following along and not making baffled faces about any aspects of the hypothetical.

Keltham: The ideal solution to this problem is something that gets covered in the technical lectures following Utility, on Decision, but on reflection dath ilani children all know about this problem-concept before anybody tries to teach ideal solutions to it.

There is, of course, a pure-Good solution to this problem, which is that both farmers care about what happens to sapient life in general, and care about themselves as only special cases of sapient life.  They won't impose a direct cost of -70 on the other farmer, for a benefit of +20, because their real or ultimate utilities are a sum over all sapience evenly weighted in proportion to the reality-weight of all those sapient beings, everything with - your language has no word for 'qualia', right, on some less strained day Keltham needs to ask some carefully constructed questions so as not to give away what he's trying to test, but for now he is going to guess that Taldane lacks the word 'qualia' and not that Golarion inhabitants lack the thing the word is talking about.

Anyways, that's the Good solution - everyone's real utility is just a sum of everyone's payoffs, and everybody knows that this is the case about everybody, and so everybody individually decides to do whatever they need to do, in order to end up in the matrix-cell with the maximum sum of payoffs.

There's a Keltham solution, which is that you don't have very much of that pure Good - you care about other people close to you, maybe, but these farmers are not lovers nor friends - but you do care a lot about not stealing from strangers.  If you live next to a Keltham, that you know is a Keltham, you can be pretty sure he won't fake a bear attack on you; the difficulty, of course, is in the knowing, because this world has no truthspells.

But suppose now that both farmers are Abaddon-style pure Evil, not partially selfish but absolutely selfish.  They care about their own food supplies, the satisfaction of eating now and eating in the future; nothing else.

Is there a Lawful solution for absolutely selfish people?

lintamande: "They would both agree to have a King who investigates supposed bear attacks and punishes thieves," offers Gregoria.

Keltham: "There's no King, and if there were, he'd be a selfish King who'd take almost all their grain himself."

"Unless, of course, there's a Lawful solution to that too.  But if there's a Lawful solution there, you'd ask if it could be simplified back to just the two farmers again."

lintamande: Gregoria thinks that yeah, selfish King who takes almost all the grain is kind of just how it works out. She doesn't volunteer this answer.

Ione Sala: ...is there any such thing as a lecture on Law which isn't accidentally trying to explode Asmodeanism?  Sometimes Ione does wonder if Keltham knows, and is playing with all of them.  Maybe he can beat Detect Thoughts using ilani disciplines far beyond what he speaks of openly.

"I think - if they didn't expect to get away with the bear attack - wouldn't the first farmer not fake the bear attack, because they'd know the other person would steal back grain, even if they didn't think the attack was fake?  I mean, even if it was a bear attack, a purely Evil farmer would steal grain from the other farmer to make up for that, right..."

Keltham: "You expect the other purely-selfish farmer to try to steal from you anyways, though.  So you might as well steal from them first.  We could suppose that whoever carries out the theft first has a few days of plenty eating their stolen food, before the other farmer can prepare and execute a plan to steal back food.  So if you're going to end up in that situation anyways, there's an incentive to be the first to Defect."

"We could skip the part where it's a fake bear attack.  We could even skip the part where the paired thefts occur, and go directly to them spending a lot of time guarding their grain.  70-70 payoff at the end."

"But in fact, yeah, you might suspect intuitively that somehow two purely selfish farmers in this situation would manage to reason that, if they kicked off a cycle of thefts and guarding, they'd both be worse off."

"And so long as no theft had yet occurred - they would both think - maybe the two of them could, somehow, end up doing something else which is not that."

"This is the great will to do Something Else Which Is Not That, and end up Not There, which is sometimes said in dath ilan - though the truth is not now remembered - to perhaps be the reason why Civilization exists, why any such thing as Civilization now exists, and not just a bunch of farmers sleeping miserably next to their grain stores."

"But what I'd like to observe at this step is that - if the two farmers do manage to end up with the 100-100 payoff, somehow - by hypothesis, it can't be because they're Good; it has to be because they are, in some way, being Lawful."

lintamande: Yep, that part seems right, that you can get Civilization out of Law and not out of Good, that Good is a weaker and worse way to build it. 

Carissa Sevar: Subirachs thought that Cheliax was more Evil than Lawful....

Keltham: "But fake bear attacks aren't the limit of how hard we can make it to coordinate."

"Let's take the next step up in things being hard to observe.  Let's say two partners are working on a new venture, but again, this is happening earlier in history and they're missing a lot of social technology.  Maybe they're two farmers, one of them has to forge the ground-breaking tools, one has to make the scythes, and then they both have to break ground together at planting and use the scythes together at harvest."

"If either of them slack off on the engineering part of their job, they get to be lazy themselves, and the resulting less efficient work is distributed across both parties, so it's a net benefit for them."

"Let's say that you can pick up +30 of personal utility by slacking off, at a cost of -20 harder work to you later.  And also, of course, -20 harder work for your partner too.  But you don't care about that because you're Abaddon-Evil, pure-selfish."

                            Cooperate-2:       Defect-2:Cooperate-1:         (100, 100)         (80, 110)Defect-1:                (110, 80)           (90, 90)

"And the other farmer isn't expert enough at that person's job to tell they did a bad job - the ground-breaker can't tell if the scythes are blunter than they should be, and require more effort to use."

"And it's early in history so they can't call in a professional third-party evaluator."

"If they are both Abaddon-Evil, pure-selfish, but Lawful, is there any way now for them to end up with the 100-100 payoff?  To look at the 90-90 payoff and say that they want to end up Not There, to do Something Else Which Is Not That?"

lintamande: Seems like no?

Carissa Sevar: "Gods can cooperate in that situation. ...humans I think mostly can't. At least Golarion humans."

Keltham: "Well, let's try it then.  With a bit of randomness thrown in, so that even after you get your payoffs, you are not sure what the other person did."

"You pair up and write 'Cooperate' or 'Defect' on a piece of paper.  So does your partner.  Baseline reward is 3 copper for playing the game.  I'll spin a coin ten times for each of you, and for each time it comes up Queen, you get +1 copper.  The spins are separate for each of you.  If you Defect, you get one more copper than you would've otherwise, and your opponent gets 3 less.  If you Cooperate, the rewards are the same."

"There is, I suppose, a chance that you Defect, and their coin comes up Queen 0, 1, or 2 times, and then you're definitely caught.  But that's only a 5.5% probability.  Or your coin could come up Queen 8, 9, or 10 times, and then if the other Cooperated you'll know that for sure."

"You are, in this version of the game, allowed to talk to each other.  You cannot, of course, show each other what's written on your paper."

"Actually, let me see about getting Yaisa or somebody to be Silent Proctor in this game, if they're willing to do it for a couple of silvers.  I wouldn't want you too influenced by wondering what your boss would think of your moves."

"Oh, and it goes without saying, your sole goal is not to win the most copper of anyone - that'll be mostly down to the randomness - but just to earn as much copper as you can."

"Tier-2s can pick which tier-1s they want to play with, going in order by Tonia, Peranza, Gregoria, Pilar.  Security, can I get a message conveyed to any non-busy Ostensos about there being a twenty-minute job requiring strong but easy confidentiality, for whichever of them is the lowest bidder on it?"

lintamande: Security can do that. (Are they supposed to help the girls cheat?)

Carissa Sevar: No. They are pretty much never supposed to help the girls cheat. If everyone defects the entire time, which everyone probably will, then that probably has all kinds of correlates.

lintamande: Tonia wants Ione because maybe she'll do some weird Nethysian thing that isn't just the obvious 'defect every time'.

Asmodia: THIS IS NOT LESS STRESSFUL THAN MATH.

Asmodia, having thought implausibly fast, tells Security to transmit:

The natural distribution of responses here won't be right for a non-Evil country.  Not just results, what people are saying, if Keltham listens.

Idea:  Have Sevar play Pilar and myself play Ione, inside our thoughts, Security proctors the results.  That'll be proxy for what the results might look like, and what the students might be learning or saying, somewhere less Evil.  Not that we're not all Evil here, just, well, you know what I'm getting at.

And Tonia is now FRIENDS WITH IONE to explain her choice because NETHYSIANS ARE NOT NICER PEOPLE THAN ASMODEANS IN ALTER-CHELIAX.

Carissa Sevar: - sure, they can try that.

Peranza: Peranza, per direction, picks Sevar.

Ione Sala: Ione notes out loud that she wants a quiet minute or two to think about this entire thing before she has to start playing, if that's okay, and that she'd recommend giving everyone else a quiet minute too.

Keltham: Sensible.  Sure!

Pilar : Well, this is going to be something, Pilar thinks for retransmission to Sevar.  I straight-up can't figure out what Asmodean theology says here, the Lawful and Evil parts seem to be pulling in opposite directions.

Carissa Sevar: Yes, I am having that problem too. I think this is how tyranny is derived - Asmodeus wants a King who'll make the farmers cooperate, so they're not doing it out of - intrinsic trust in each other, even trust in each others' lawfulness, but they are doing it. 

Pilar : Does Asmodeus dislike the part where people trust each other, or like the part where it gets done by tyranny instead?

(Pilar has the same question about why Asmodeanism prohibits people caring about each other.)

Carissa Sevar: Not authorized to instruct you on matters of faith, remember. If I were wildly guessing I would say that Asmodeus isn't the antithesis of Good, that's Zon-Kuthonish, the thing He likes is that it produces tyranny, and the thing where - one needn't rely on Good in others, one isn't following processes that only work if people have convenient values? That there's something better about a system you can build out of any kind of Lawful farmer than a system you can build out of only farmers who care about each other. And maybe that if people care about each other they'll let that win out over Law. But I'm guessing. 

Anyway, I'm not sure if in the absence of a tyrant Asmodeus thinks we ought to cooperate or - no, actually, we shouldn't have free will. It'd be better if we didn't have free will. And farmers without free will obviously do the Lawful thing. I think.

Pilar : I was thinking about two devils.  But not equal ones, a higher devil and a lower one, so they wouldn't just automatically do the same thing.

Or the Queen and the Most High.

(Would it be all right to care, then, if you could do it without making things be about caring instead of Law, if it was all still tyrannical enough that Lord Asmodeus wasn't losing anything... how bad is the wrongness inside her, exactly, is it absolutely bad or just...)

Carissa Sevar: I bet the key here like the key with lots of things with Keltham is doing things with certain probabilities. Like, if it looks to me like there's a 50% chance you stole from me I flip a coin about whether to steal back.

The Queen and the Most High have a negotiated contract, that's - another way - I assume the farmers aren't allowed to negotiate a contract but if they are, well, you're definitely not supposed to give your word falsely.

Pilar : Keltham didn't SAY they weren't allowed to negotiate a contract.

I was about to transmit that I'd realized we were having the wrong discussion, because we need to figure out alter-Asmodean theology so students can talk about that, but maybe we just DID figure out what alter-Asmodeanism says about it.  That part wouldn't be different.  Keltham knows our Lord is Lord of compacts.

Carissa Sevar: Yes. The alter-Asmodeus answer has got to be in significant part that you have to be the kind of person who keeps your word when you give it, that's the absolute minimum of there being any reason to not steal from you at all, and then the farmers negotiate a deal. And everyone can argue out their deals individually, I think, though not trying to cheat each other.

Pilar : It's kind of a straightforward deal.  Not a lot of options there.  I guess somebody could try demanding an extra copper in order to Cooperate but who'd fall for that, really.

What alter-conversation did we have leading up to that?  Maybe - the parts about what two devils would do, what the Queen and Most High would do because there's nobody above them in Golarion... but Keltham shouldn't hear the same thing everywhere, we need variations on what people could come up with...

Carissa Sevar: I think the 'what would people without free will do' conversation is fine, Keltham knows that Asmodeanism holds that that's something broken about us -

Ione Sala: So I heard you betrayed Pilar yesterday.

Asmodia: That didn't happen in alter-Cheliax.

Ione Sala: Uh huh.

Isn't the idea that we have the real conversation between us, so we can figure out how people actually think about this, and then adapt that to alter-Cheliax?

Asmodia: Fine, so you mentioned that recent time where - what would even be analogous to that, in alter-Cheliax, they're not offering students incentives to turn traitor on each other.

Ione Sala: They sure aren't.

Asmodia: Focus, Ione.

Well, on my side, I'd bring up the point that you are beyond doubt the least Lawful person in this classroom.

Ione Sala: Great, let's both Defect, then.

This isn't a contest of who can make the other person look less trustworthy.  We're supposed to be figuring out a way to, how did Keltham put it, Not That.

Asmodia: Then why did YOU bring that up.

Ione Sala: Because I was wondering if you had anything to say in your defense about why you betraying Pilar, then, doesn't mean you would Defect now.

Asmodia: And the part where you're now the adherent of a Neutral god - is something you'd have to defend to me?

Ione Sala: This from the Chosen of Milani.

Asmodia: I told you that was a fucking joke.

Ione Sala: Bet that's not how tropes work.

Asmodia: If I'm the Chosen of ANYONE it's some sort of weird god who does for this universe what I do for alter-Cheliax.  And if there's a god like that, I'm pretty sure it's a Lawful one.

We're not getting anywhere here, Ione, we're sniping at each other in a way that Asmodeans do, and we need to be having the alter-Cheliax version of this conversation instead.  Like one where we talk about how trustworthy we are, instead of how untrustworthy the other person is.

Ione Sala: My alter-Cheliax self has never in her life hurt anyone who didn't hurt her first.

How about you?

Asmodia: I don't think - that can be true - even in alter-Cheliax -

Run that past Sevar before you say it to Keltham, Ione, she'll tell you that it's not like that in other countries.  She'll say it's not like that in Taldor.  She'll - probably be right.  Maybe in Keltham's Civilization, the real one, out of dath ilan.

Ione Sala: I didn't say alter-Ione never hurt anyone.  I said that I don't see why alter-Ione would ever hurt anyone who didn't hurt her first, if nobody was FORCING her to cast Acid Splash on CHILDREN to make sure she ended up DAMNED TO HELL -

Asmodia: Because somewhere over her entire life, alter-Ione would, at some point, have hurt someone innocent, and remembered it, even if she was sad about it.  So she wouldn't say that to Keltham because it would be a lie -

Ione, stop this, this is NOT THE ALTER-VERSION of our conversation, that's an order.

Alter-Asmodia says that she sure wants us to both end up Cooperating, but no matter what kind of conversation we have about that, she doesn't see why we wouldn't just both Defect.

Ione Sala: Alter-Ione says that she doesn't especially want to be the sort of person where she Defects even though the other person Cooperated, so mostly, you just need to convince her that you Cooperate, and you're pretty done from there.  She doesn't see how you'll convince her of that, though.

Asmodia: Alter-Asmodia says that Keltham's instructions were to make as much copper as we can, for ourselves, not to end up a particular sort of person.

Ione Sala: Alter-Ione says fuck the instructions, she's a Nethysian.

Asmodia: Alter-Asmodia says that's not how to learn the knowledge Keltham is trying to teach you, Nethysian.

Ione Sala: Alter-Ione says, she thinks there isn't a way out of this in real life, if it's with Neutral Evil players, and that dath ilani little kids end up Cooperating because they don't really follow instructions either, what with them also being the sort of kids who try to explode their schools.

Alter-Ione thinks the people who actually follow instructions in this game end up Defecting and the ones who don't really follow instructions Cooperate.  If it's not about who we really are, but the Neutral Evil versions of us.

Asmodia: Alter-Asmodia says that this is absolutely not the moral of a game they'd play with dath ilani kids, if this one doesn't contain the pieces for a solution, they'd give the kids a more complicated solvable problem right from the very start.  They don't want to teach the kids that Defection is the only way out.

Ione Sala: They play it to teach the kids that Defection is what happens when everyone is Evil and has no trace of Good in them.  This is a truth and a great and important and valuable one, which ought, indeed, to be taught to children.

Asmodia: NOT consistent with the tone of Keltham's earlier lecture, he was pointing in the direction of there being a Lawful solution that didn't rely on Good.  Not in a trolling way, either.

Ione Sala: I'm not seeing it, then.  How about you, Chosen of a Lawful god?

Asmodia: ...I am unfortunately better at the math, and what comes after the math, than I am at the thing that comes before the math.  The part you had to help me with on Keltham's seven problems.

Ione Sala: If it's solvable, it has to depend on what kind of people we are.  You can't do this with a demon.  You can't do this with a rock that has 'Defect' written on it either.  That's why Keltham said we were allowed to talk to each other, it's not that we can - threaten each other, or persuade each other - it's something we have to know about each other.

Asmodia: Guess about each other, not know, because it'll be a truth of only some worlds, not a truth across all the worlds, a probability and not a logic.

I don't see how you could know that, from talking to somebody.  Wouldn't they just say whatever you needed to hear to make you Cooperate?

Ione Sala: If you've got 30 Splendour, possibly.  Otherwise maybe my Sense Motive is good for something against your Bluff.

But, valuable to know that's how you think about it, Asmodean.

Keltham: "Okay, enough quiet time, let's start the game."

Pilar : "Wait."

Message to Keltham:  Should we all do this in separate rooms?  I'm pretty sure I have an outright solution, and if somebody else overhears that, it'll skew the results.

Keltham: Message to Pilar:  This I have to see.

"Suggestion accepted from Pilar to do this in separate breakout rooms."

Asmodia: We need to resolve our game, see what results end up as.

Defect, Asmodia thinks, not for retransmission to Ione.

Ione Sala: Defect, Ione thinks.

Carissa Sevar: I commit to you to not steal your grain in the absence of convincing evidence you stole my grain which right now would be just a too-low number but in the future when I think through all the math might also include a pattern of grain results that is unlikely if you are not stealing, Carissa says to Pilar, if you will make the reciprocal commitment. 

Pilar : I make the reciprocal commitment, as an Asmodean, if you make it as an Asmodean.  Not in the way where we're calling on Hell to punish us if we break the compact, because that part wouldn't exist in alter-Cheliax, but in the way where this is a compact, and we'd keep it even if Asmodeus said He wasn't going to punish us for breaking it, because we are Asmodeans.

(Pilar lets herself be smarter when she needs to be the smart one.)

Carissa Sevar: Carissa is not sure that's actually part of Asmodeanism but - it should be? So hopefully it is. 

As an Asmodean, then.

Pilar : Cooperate, Pilar thinks.

Carissa Sevar: Cooperate.

See, you can be Evil and still win. 

Keltham: Keltham, meanwhile, has followed Pilar into her selected breakout room with Meritxell, looking skeptical and interested.

Asmodia: Security, does Pilar need advice/rulings from me immediately?

Iarwain: Pilar's fine, in Security's best judgment.

Asmodia: All right, update me on what happened with Sevar/Pilar so I can figure out what our results should look like and what people should talk about.

Pilar : Since Asmodia hasn't had time to advise anyone, Pilar will just open directly rather than give Meritxell time to possibly screw up.

"I offer you a compact as between Asmodeans, that I will write Cooperate and you will write Cooperate," Pilar says to Meritxell.  "Not an oath, and we're not calling on Hell to witness it, that's too serious for this.  But a compact, as is our Lord's domain."

lintamande: " - are we allowed to stipulate the farmers are Asmodeans," says Meritxell. "Obviously Asmodeans can make such compacts, but what if the farmers aren't - I guess the farmers who aren't Asmodeans will be starving and sleeping in their grain silos and they'll see the Asmodeans and convert, sure."

Pilar : "Keltham's instructions didn't say to pretend we're farmers.  He just told us to play this game, and earn as much copper for ourselves as we could."

lintamande: " - all right, fair enough. I accept your compact, as an Asmodean." Meritxell assumes that she's now supposed to cooperate with Pilar? To show Asmodeans in alter-Cheliax can do that?

Keltham: "I'll leave you to the rest of the game, assuming it's not over.  Remember, turn your back while the other person writes their move; neither of you is to know the other's move, now or ever, except as you might guess it from the partially random payout you get.  Oh, obviously you don't tell the other person your payout, either."

"If you actually are done shortly, I guess you might need to wait while the Silent Proctor gets here... actually no, just leave your moves, folded, with your names on them, in the room.  Security can make sure only the Silent Proctor looks at them."

Keltham: Keltham departs to go look in on Carissa's game with Peranza.

Carissa Sevar: Carissa has sought and gotten confirmation that she isn't saying things suspiciously identical to Pilar's. "So I don't think you want to say 'I compact not to steal your grain', because if you're stealing my grain I'll certainly steal yours back. I kind of suspect the actual solution is going to involve the same thing as the jellychips problem, keeping a probability estimate of how likely it is you're stealing my grain and having some probability of stealing back if I become convinced enough that you're stealing. But I do think you can say, 'I commit not to steal your grain unless I become sufficiently sure you're stealing mine, if you make the same commitment', or something like that?"

AlterPeranza: Peranza has learned that it's best to just let alterPeranza talk, and try to not let any of realPeranza's thoughts and fears get in her way.

"How do the farmers know one of them will do something just because she says 'I commit'?"

(RealPeranza is not so silent that alterPeranza would just say 'How can I trust you?' to Sevar.)

Carissa Sevar: "So there's some half-answers, like, you set up the probability of stealing back if your grain gets ransacked so that it's not worth stealing and maybe getting caught, not in the long run, and they aren't better off stealing, or, being a farmer who means it when you commit things is useful for stuff other than not stealing grain from your neighbors, so you do it to have a reputation as someone who does it, but they are kind of half answers? The thing gods can do is - show each other what kind of person they are, and you can see, well are they a person who means it when they commit, or not? ...we don't have that but we do have Detect Law which I'd argue is kind of the same thing. And I'm powerful enough to show up to Detect Law so you can just Detect Law and see that when I commit I mean it. ....doesn't answer how I'm supposed to know what you'll do."

AlterPeranza: "I don't suppose you already have a plan for that part?  Because that sounds like, I could trust you to commit in the name of Law, that you'll Cooperate if I Cooperate, but I don't have any way to show you I'll Cooperate."

She sold her soul, but that's not the same thing in alterCheliax.