Talk:Subliminal channel

Deleting of "solve the prisoner's dilemma"
User:132.216.18.138:: "you can ELIMINATE the prisoner's dilemma, but you can't SOLVE it this way; if the prisoners are communicating, it's not the "prisoner's dilemma" anymore."

There is no condition that the prisoners can not communicate. Especially see this sentence at the end of the introduction to Prisoner's dilemma.


 * "In casual usage, the label "prisoner's dilemma" may be applied to situations not strictly matching the formal criteria of the classic or iterative games, for instance, those in which two entities could gain important benefits from cooperating or suffer from the failure to do so, but find it merely difficult or expensive, not necessarily impossible, to coordinate their activities to achieve cooperation."

Therefore IMHO the subliminal channel CAN solve the prisoners dilemma.


 * User:IP:: "In fact lack of communication is intrinsic to the prisoner's dilemma, properly understood. You are referring to "casual usage", which is something else entirly. Introducing communication EXPLODES the dilemma, rather than solving it. Cheers.132.216.18.138 (talk) 17:58, 29 July 2009 (UTC)"

Communication would not explode the dilemma, since the police can read all communication and would not allow arrangements or suspicious messages. Normal/harmless communication would do nothing to the dilemma. If you where strict then the cited paragraph of prisoner's dilemma text must be deleted or rewritten, because it allows communication as form of coordination (as I understood it). I should write instead "the subliminal channels can solve the prisoner's dilemma with a softened condition (allowing communication)" to be more exact. --CB79 (talk) 19:00, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

understandable to non-experts
We were encouraged by this:-

This article may be too technical for most readers to understand. Please help improve this article to make it understandable to non-experts, without removing the technical details.

I have added my suggestion - it is the only example I know of that neatly demonstrates what they're talking about to non-experts (because the subliminal message is english-readable)

101.169.42.153 (talk) 06:09, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

empty silo
This article currently links to a section in the "mutual assured destruction" article, mutual assured destruction.

However, that entire section was deleted, apparently due to lack of sources.


 * Was the "Empty Silo Proposal" ever seriously proposed for real missile silos? Are there references to it that would be useful to include in the "mutual assured destruction" article?


 * Even if the "Empty Silo Proposal" was never seriously proposed for real missile silos, was it described in cryptographic papers as a "story problem" -- i.e., in the same way that the socialist millionaire problem, the Yao's Millionaires' Problem, the "paint mixing" explaination of Diffie–Hellman key exchange, the physical mail boxes used in many descriptions of public-key cryptography, etc.? Are there references to this story problem that would be useful to include in this "subliminal channel" article?

--DavidCary (talk) 17:25, 8 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Very complex silo schemes were considered for the MX Missile - LGM-118_Peacekeeper. Some involved decoy missiles and/or decoy silos; the objective was to make more silos than the enemy could destroy - most of the silos would not have active missiles, but the enemy would not be able to determine which did. I don't think any of these schemes were ever implemented. 173.219.75.66 (talk) 23:29, 8 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Gustavus Simmons wrote a number of papers on subliminal channels and a number on treaty verification. I'm having trouble determining if there was a paper on both --- it might be [] but I don't have access to it right now. Doctorhook (talk) 22:06, 27 December 2016 (UTC)