Brinkmanship
Deliberately raising a shared risk of disaster that neither side fully controls, so that a threat too costly to carry out on purpose becomes frightening anyway.
Often misread asReading it as bluffing, so the game is thought to be about pretending you would carry out a threat you would not.
How to see it
Hand some of the risk to chance so the threat need not be meant
A threat you would never deliberately carry out can still frighten, provided you can make the situation itself slightly dangerous and then give up part of your control over the danger. You do not promise to jump; you edge towards the edge, where a slip is possible and neither of you decides when.
The checkNothing is pretended. The risk is real and partly out of your hands, and that is exactly what makes it credible when a deliberate threat would not be.
Try itCompare if you do that I will press the button with if you do that I will put us both somewhere the button might go off by accident. Ask which you would believe from somebody who would also be destroyed by the button, and say why.
Know these first
Easily confused with
Sources
- Schelling, T. (1960). Harvard University Press.
- Schelling, T. (1966). Yale University Press.
- Dixit, A. & Nalebuff, B. (1991). W. W. Norton.