I'm always fascinated by these tricks of game theory.
e.g. in business school, the dean of the undergraduate school had this story:
"When I was a practicing lawyer working on wills and estates, people would often ask me to cut someone completely out of their will.
I would always say that a better option was to write something like 'To my daughter Susan, I leave $1,000. She always said that she wanted to be financially independent from me so this is an amount to show her I lover her.'
Clients would always think this would send the wrong message and I would replay:
'No, no. If Susan fights the will and says she should have gotten more, the judge will say: but she clearly left you something and pointed out that she loved you AND took your wishes into account' "
I wish there was a book or collection of these types of tricks to study.
Wait I thought standard practice was to leave $1 to show that they were considered and purposefully removed from the will? Does that fail in court?
Multiple times in my life, a potential romantic interest asked how big my dick was, and I told them it was tiny. This led them to believe that it was large, because what guy who is tiny would say it was tiny?
Suffice to say they were a bit disappointed when expectations met reality
There’s A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend Them Back by Bruce Schneier
https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393866667