Yes, as long as we're using the definition E.Y. shared/mentioned in his 2008 paper.

By charitable reading, it's not what ze's saying.

From the standpoint of a person making discoveries, it is known from many observations that Bob the Particle will always Wag. Thus, "Bob Wags" is stated as a Natural Law, and assumed true in all calculations, and said with force of conviction, and if some math implies that Bob didn't Wag, the first thing to look for is errors in the math.

However, still from the same standpoint, if some day we discover in some experiment that Bob didn't Wag, and despite looking and looking they can't find any errors in the math (or the experiment, etc.), then they have to conclude that maybe "Bob Wags" is not fully true. Maybe then they'll discover that in this experiment, it just so happens that Julie the Particle was Hopping. Thus, our hypothetical discoverer rewrites the "law" as: "Bob Wags unless Julie Hops"

Maybe, in some "ultimate" computation of the universe, the "True" rule is that "Bob Wags unless someone else Leers, and no one Leers when Julie Hops". How do we know? How will we know when we've discovered the "true" rules? Right now, we don't know. As far as we know, we'll never know any "true" rules.

But it all boils down to: The universe has been following one set of (unknown) rules since the end of time and forever 'till the end of time (ha! there's probably no such thing as "time" in those rules, mind you!), and maybe those rules are such that Bob will Wink when we make John Laugh, and then we'll invent turbines and build computers and discuss the nature of natural laws on internet forums. And maybe in our "natural laws" it's impossible for Bob to Wink, and we think turbines work because we make Julie Hop and have Cody Scribble when Bob doesn't Wag to stop him. And some day, we'll stumble on some case where Cody Scribbles, Bob doesn't Wag, but Bob doesn't Wink either, and we'll figure out that, oh no!, the natural laws changed and now turbines function on Bob Winks instead of Cody Scribbles, and we have to rethink everything!

The universe doesn't care. Bob was Winking all along, and we just assumed it was the Cody Scribbles because we didn't know about Annie. And never there was a case where Bob Wagged and Winked at the same time, or where Bob failed to Wag when Julie Hopped. We just thought the wrong things.

And if in the future we'll discover other such cases, it's only because the universe has been doing those things all along, but we just don't see them yet.

And it's even possible that in the future Bob will marry Julie and then never again Wink... but all that means is that the rules were in fact "Bob Winks when Annie Nods unless Bob is Married to Julie", rather than "Bob Winks when Annie Nods", and yet our scientists will cry "The laws of physics have changed!" while everyone else panics about our precious turbines no longer working all of a sudden.

I don't see this contradiction. In a timeless decision theory, the diagram and parameters are not the same when X is in control of resource A (at "time" T) and when X is not in control of resource A (at time T+1).

The "timeless" of the decision theory doesn't mean that the decision theory ignores the effects of time and past decisions. Rather, it refers to a more technical (and definitely more confusing) abstraction about predictions and kind of subtly hints at a reference to the (also technical) concept of symmetry in physics.

Mainly, the point is to deflect naive reasoning in problems involving predictions or similar "time-defying" situations. The classic example is newcomblike problems, specifically Newcomb's Problem. In these situations, acting as if your current decision were a partial cause of the past prediction, and thus of whether or not Omega/The Predictor put a reward in a box, leads to better subjective chances of finding a reward in said box. The "timeless" aspect here is that a phenomenon (the decision you make) is almost looks like it's a cause of another (the prediction of your decision) that happened "in the past".

In fact, however, they have a common prior cause: the state of the universe and, particularly, of the brain / processor / information of the entity making the decision, prior to the prediction. Treating it as, and calling it, "timeless" helps avoid issues where this will turn into a debate about free will and determinism.

In newcomblike problems, an event B happenes where Omega predicts whether A1 or A2 will happen, based on whether C1 or C2 is true (two possible states of the brain of the player, or outcomes of a simulation). Then, either A1 or A2 happens, based on whether C1 or C2 is true, as predicted by Omega. Since the player doesn't have the same means as Omega to know C or B, he must decide as if A caused C which caused B, which could be roughly described as a decision causing the result of a prediction of this decision in the past.

So, back to the timeless VS sunk costs "contradiction": In a sunk costs situation, there is no Omega, there is no C, there is no prediction (B). At the moment of decision, the state of the game in abstract is something more like: "Decision A caused Resource B to go from 5 to 3, 1B can be paid to obtain 2 utilons by making decision C1, 2B can be paid to obtain 5 utilons by making decision C2". There's no predictions or fancy delusions of affecting events that caused the current state. A caused B(5->3) caused (NOW) caused C. C has no causal effect on (NOW), which has no causal effect on B, which has no causal effect on A. No amount of removing the timestamps and pretending that your future decision will change how it was predicted is going to change the (NOW) state.

I could go on at length and depth, but let's see how much of this makes sense first (i.e. that you understand and/or that I mis-explained).

First, the most reliable solution is to save the page manually, yourself, to a local hard drive of your preference, provided you keep good file hygiene and backups and so on. If there are multiple-page articles, you have to save each page of the article, though. You also can run into some issues with the more "interactive" websites and articles, particularly if they use flash or java apps (which means the html you save will only contain a link to some flash or java file elsewhere on their server, which means you're back to square one). You can also get all kinds of gibberish from broken links anyway if the pictures suffer link rot or the page refers to an external style sheet or any other of some large number of possible other problems.

I think the only way to avoid this in an efficient, one-click manner is to use a pre-processor that detects the relevant content and saves only that for you. I use Readability to do this for slightly different goals and purposes.

Pocket is a more popular choice usually, but I've had many negative experiences with it not syncing to the android app, not working well with certain browsers, not processing articles properly, not processing the whole article, or sometimes not processing articles at all and keeping only the link (which helps you diddly-squat since that's the whole problem you're having).

Fair warning: Readability does a complete pre-processing of the article for, well, readability. It will remove ads, sidebars, top-bars, often comments to articles, and once in a while it'll remove too much. It usually successfully detects multiple-page articles, but not always.

(available on Hulu if you're into two minutes of ads every ten minutes)

Should read:

(available on Hulu for US residents with a local ISP contract if you're into two minutes of ads every ten minutes, and for devious tricksters with access to a reliable US proxy who are too impatient to just torrent things - since both would be considered just as illegal by a completely impartial US court of law)

It'll be Valve Soon™ before everyone understands that one...

I've retracted my (epistemically unhealthy) previous responses about great physics discoveries. I'd say "oops" as per the LW tradition, but when I look back on what I wrote all I see is a rather shameful display of cognitive dissonance. There's no mere "oops" there, but plain old full-blown contrarian, academic-hipster biases. Sorry.

An extra note:

Crossing an inferential gap is harder in a short post, unless you are an amazing writer.

In the quote, the qualification is unnecessary. Ceteris paribus, it's usually harder in a short post, regardless of general writing skill.

Meanwhile, I'd also pounce on the "Ontological Alternatives" chapter there to ask a slightly unrelated question: Regarding the "fourth option" there, has anyone ever tried to analyze a world ontology where, unlike here, particles can belong to multiple different worlds according to some kind of rule or per-particle basis? e.g. Instead of having a particle belong to World # 872 as an elementary property, which lets it only interact with other W-872 particles, it would have a set of "keys" where any other particle that also has at least one of those keys can be interacted with, while that other particle might have a slightly different keyset and thus be able to interact with a third particle "located" right next to the first one (insofar as position of two non-interacting particles is relevant to the second one in question)?

I realize I'm throwing ideas around while having no idea at all what I'm talking about, but at the same time from where I'm sitting it feels like all the "sides" of the QM interpretation debates always share a humongous bag of uncontested assumptions. Namely, assumptions about pesky details like "position" being a necessary, elemental and fundamental property of particles.