there's no reason for this to be rot13'd.

It's part of the joke, you see. It helps to suggest that there's some sinister secret waiting at the other end of this quest for "optimal employment".

And allow me to assure everyone that it is a joke. There is no ruthless covert Australian program designed to win the race to singularity. There is no secret deal with SI, whereby a self-selected population of "rationalists" is encouraged to head for central Australia, only to have their brains harvested upon arrival, for use in ghastly yet noble projects in which FAI design riddles are solved via something resembling quantum suicide. And whatever it was that Greg Egan did during his long hiatus from writing, it certainly didn't involve designing these experiments - which, as I have already mentioned, aren't occurring.