So if the climate is moving out of the optimal temperature for the species, it might make sense for you to produce more females, because they are a lower risk strategy?

This seems confused to me. In general, males are more risk-seeking than females because (inclusive) fitness is not a linear function of successfulness at endeavors, with the function being closer to linear for males and more like linear-with-a-cutoff for females. But males and females are still both perfectly risk-neutral when measured in the unit of fitness, since that follows from the definition of expected fitness which is what needs to be greater than average in order for a mutation to propagate throughout a population.

I would expect that if a species has more females than males in some circumstances, then either it is because females are cheaper to raise for some reason, or else that it is due to a fact of biology that the DNA can't really control directly.

There are some repeated paragraphs:

Elaine nodded. “Tell me, suppose that instead you had a hundred times as many wolves captured, and brought to those forests for release—what would happen then?”

Elaine looked a little surprised, before her face went expressionless again. “Yes, that’s so. Like you said, there’s no Magic powerful enough to directly oppress the farmers and shopkeepers of a whole country. So we’re not looking for a straightforward curse, but some new factor that has changed Santal’s balancing point.”

Let's talk about a specific example: the Ultimatum Game. According to EY the rational strategy for the responder in the Ultimatum Game is to accept if the split is "fair" and otherwise reject in proportion to how unfair he thinks the split is. But the only reason to reject is to penalize the proposer for proposing an unfair split -- which certainly seems to be "doing something conditional on the other actor’s utility function disvaluing it". So why is the Ultimatum Game considered an "offer" and not a "threat"?

Yeah, but what does "purposefully minimize someone else’s utility function" mean? The source code just does stuff. What does it mean for it to be "on purpose"?

It all depends on what you mean by "sufficiently intelligent / coherent actors". For example, in this comment Eliezer says that it should mean actors that “respond to offers, not to threats”, but in 15 years no one has been able to cash out what this actually means, AFAIK.

Here's Joe Carlsmith making the second argument: https://joecarlsmith.com/2022/01/17/the-ignorance-of-normative-realism-bot

It is often said that: “The conclusions of deductive reasoning are certain, whereas those of inductive reasoning are probable”. I think this contrast is somewhat misleading and imprecise, as the certainty of deductive conclusions just means that they necessarily follow from the premises (they are implied by the premises), but the conclusion itself might still be probabilistic.

Example: “If I have a fever, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu. I have a fever. Therefore, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu.”

There's something off about this example. In deductive reasoning, if A implies B, then A and C together also imply B. But if A is "I have a fever" and C is "I have the flu" then A and C do not imply "there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu" (since actually there is a 100% chance).

I think what is going on here is that the initial statement "If I have a fever, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu" is not actually an instance of material implication (in which case modus ponens would be applicable) but rather a ceteris paribus statement: "If I have a fever, then all else equal there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu." And then the "deductive reasoning" part would go "I have a fever. And I don't have any more information relevant to whether I have the flu than the fact that I have a fever. Therefore, there’s a 65% probability that I have the flu."

Depends on how dysfunctional the society is.

Basically both of these arguments will seem obvious if you fall into camp #2 here, and nonsensical if you fall into camp #1.