I don't know if this is a little too afar field for even a Discussion post, but people seemed to enjoy my previous articles (Girl Scouts financial filings, video game console insurance, philosophy of identity/abortion, & prediction market fees), so...
I recently wrote up an idea that has been bouncing around my head ever since I watched Death Note years ago - can we quantify Light Yagami's mistakes? Which mistake was the greatest? How could one do better? We can shed some light on the matter by examining DN with... basic information theory.
Presented for LessWrong's consideration: Death Note & Anonymity.
Eliezer's Timless Decision Theory is interesting, but I don't yet understand what real problem it is solving. He worked it into his Harry Potter fanfic when Harry was dealing with Azkaban (sp?), and given that he wrote the paper I can see why he made use of it, but here's someone else saying it's useful.
Does timeless reasoning have any application in situations where your opponents can't read your mind?
(I haven't watched Death Note, so my apologies if the answer to this question is obvious to people who have.)
We all read each other's minds to some extent, and to the extent this happens, TDT will give better advice than CDT. See section 7 of the TDT paper: