A clever tactic can be defeated when adversaries study and counter it.

Evidence

A strategic move is one that influences the other person’s choice, in a manner favorable to one’s self, by affecting the other person’s expectations on how one’s self will behave. One constrains the partner’s choice by constraining one’s own behavior. The object is to set up for one’s self and communicate persuasively to the other player a mode of behavior (including conditional responses to the other’s behavior) that leaves the other a simple maximization problem whose solution for him is the optimum for one’s self, and to destroy the other’s ability to do the same. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 361 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Another paradox of mixed-motive games is that genuine ignorance can be an advantage to a player if it is recognized and taken into account by an opponent. This paradox, which can arise either in the coordination problem or in the immunity from a threat, has no counterpart in zero-sum games. And, similarly, in a zero-sum game between rational players with full information it can never be an advantage to move first (to play the “minorant game” in the language of von Neumann and Morgenstern); in the mixed game it certainly can. — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 364 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A bluff made in haste proved irrevocable once the opponent called it — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 4389; A secret procedural maneuver can be turned against the party who relied on it. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 479; Trivial courtroom gestures become strategic moves competitors will race to intercept. — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action , 1888 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Strategic moves work by constraining one’s own behavior to shape an opponent’s expectations. #complicates (0.76) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 361
• Genuine ignorance can be strategically advantageous when an opponent recognizes it. #complicates (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 364