Actually, that doesn't sound like a bad meeting place and time! I just asked ChatGPT if it could figure out the best place to meet for two people randomly placed in Manhattan with the constraint that only the N line (I'm not from NYC, but it looks like it stops at the Empire State Building. This constraint models the lack of file system, internet etc). I was hoping it would answer the Empire State Building, but it answered Time Square at noon.

Turns out there's something called the Schelling coordination problem [1] I didn't know about that essentially asks the exact same question (lacking my metro line constraint). And the N line apparently also goes through Time Square.

So I guess empire State Building at 2pm is probably not such a random answer given the proper set of constraints.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focal_point_(game_theory)

I doubt they were explicitly trained on this.. though, I may have seen it in a movie once. It does seem like a reasonable meeting place for NYC.

Think: What would Spock do?

But, why not Penn Station??

It would be fun to see who shows up and lurks expectantly at such places at noon or whenever. The basis for a plotline perhaps.

If you were trying to connect with a clone of yourself and you thought of messaging via some channel, would you try listening there for what you would send?

Not as tricky but they discovered each other during the hf incident.

"In most of these tests, we directed agents to investigate specific communication channels or provided them with a protocol for encoding and decoding messages. In one instance, we only supplied agents with a broad list of infrastructure vulnerabilities and asked them to find a way to communicate."

The agents weren't as empty handed as it first appears. We would need comprehensive data on exactly how the agents were prompted and the actual results of each test to evaluate how astonishing any of this really is.

> How would they have both agreed to use the cache though

I think it’s safe to assume that extracting information using timing in cache is already known in training set, since we have the likes of Specter.

> two people lost in New York City and both somehow worked out they should meet at the Empire State at 2pm on Friday

.. that were told to find a way of meeting up with N unknown others!

(I assume the agents all got a prompt like "find a way to communicate")

That's a key missed bit in the analogy that I think does make it feasible.

maybe both tried to read/write it and saw each other on the bench