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

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?"

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.)

"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."

"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.

"Showing up to Detect Law is one way of being the kind of person whose commitments are real but it's not the only one? Most people in Cheliax are Lawful, so I'm starting from a high expectation that you're Lawful, it's not like you're trying to convince someone who doesn't know anything about you."

"So you... just need to talk to me for a while, because also I'm younger than you and your Sense Motive probably beats my Bluff, and when you're sure enough I'm Lawful, we both commit in the name of Law?"

...Peranza is being very pliant here, and if Carissa can talk her into mutual Cooperation this way, she could probably also talk Peranza into Cooperating while Carissa Defected; which, as he understands it, Carissa should not really end up doing if she promises in the name of Law.

Well, everybody Cooperates the first time, and the older kids usually have to nag them for a while to get anyone to Defect ever, even for purposes of understanding the counterfactuals that real Civilization is meant to rule out.  Maybe Golarion isn't so different that way?  Still, Keltham would've thought the instruction to 'earn as much copper as possible' to maybe be a bit more effectively understood, here.

"I think so? Or I think this isn't the whole true solution but it's the bit of it we're likeliest to actually get working. So, are you actually Lawful? If you make a commitment do you mean it even if later you think of a way to make more money doing something else?"

"Yes," says alterPeranza, because what's she going to say, no?

" - I don't actually feel like that answers the question! Or - I feel like a Peranza whose plan was 'play very dumb, nod along, then defect every time' would also say that! Whereas there are some things she'd have a harder time saying. Just, 'yes' isn't one of them."

"I'm - an Asmodean living in Cheliax and a follower of Asmodeus in good standing with the Church who was slated to take the Worldwound oath?  I'd rather live in a Lawful country than a Chaotic one?"

Asmodia and Gregoria.

"I was kind of hoping you had some clever math since otherwise we're obviously both going to defect the whole time," Gregoria says.

(That does NOT SOUND like a conversation that was already going on before Keltham entered the room but Asmodia will speak to Gregoria about that LATER.)

"Apparently the clever math was going to be in today's session except for, you know, and now we're getting this session instead."

"It can't just be about knowing a piece of math, though.  Otherwise you could say that piece of math out loud, and then Defect anyways."

"I bet dath ilani kids don't Defect, even before they know the math.  I just don't know why.  There's a version where they're bad at following instructions but I bet that's not why either."

It kind of is the kids being bad at following instructions, if they've got no idea how to consider the logical-probabilistic correlation between their actions, or examine each other for evidence of being the sort of agent who runs internal logic corresponding to outward verbal representations.

Not that it isn't adorable to watch a bunch of eight-year-olds make up totally specious and implausible reasons for being nice to each other, but.

...maybe he should've had everyone run a version of this game where they pretend to be Abyss demons, first, so as to test actual comprehension of instructions / willingness to write Defect literally at all.

"I have been sort of thinking that a lot of dath ilan is powered by - mutual knowledge of everyone else's Lawful Goodness, and so the kids all have mutual knowledge of each others' Lawful Goodness, and probably there are ways to cooperate if you have mutual knowledge of Lawful Goodness. Which doesn't help the farmers any, obviously, and I don't think it helps you and me either."

"I think you should just need Lawful or Goodness, not Lawful Goodness, and we do have mutual knowledge of that."

...possibly this problem is, in fact, easier, if you've got some weird version of Law called Lawfulness, that you can detect with spells, that whole regional factions polarize around, and which has gods related to it.

"Okay, we're both Lawful, what does that get us? There's Law against stealing someone's grain but there isn't Law against writing 'defect' on this piece of paper."

"That's kind of where I'm blocked as well.  We're probably supposed to do - some math thing that there'd obviously be Law against breaking?"

" - swear to it? But I'm not doing that for a game and dath ilan wouldn't have its children do that either."

(You're not QUALIFIED yet to take oaths, in alter-Cheliax, and AGAIN Asmodia will be having a talk with Gregoria about this LATER.)

"No, they wouldn't.  They wouldn't tell their children what oaths were, until they were old enough... though they wouldn't have Abaddon..."

"No, I feel like in a really Lawful civilization, you don't tell your children what oaths are, even if there's no Abaddon, because you just don't want kids breaking oaths.  Keltham, are we allowed to ask you dath ilan questions so long as you're here?"

"Let's say no."

If she literally gets to the concept of the Algorithm on her own, Keltham will, will, he doesn't even know.