Honestly, he'd be hard pressed to find a field that has better tested beliefs and greater convergence of evidence. The established beliefs you mention are a problem everywhere, and pretty much no field is backed with as much data as particle physics.

Well, in the case of answers to questions like that in the humanities what does the word 'right' actually mean? If we say a particular author is 'post utopian' what does it actually mean for the answer to that question to be 'yes' or 'no'? It's just a classification that we invented. And like all classification groups there is a set of rules characteristics that mean that the author is either post utopian or not. I imagine it as a checklist of features which gets ticked off as a person reads the book. If all the items in the checklist are ticked then the author is post utopian. If not then the author is not.

The problem with this is that different people have different items in their checklist and differ in their opinion on how many items in the list need to be checked for the author to be classified as post utopian. You can pick any literary classification and this will be the case. There will never be a consensus on all the items in the checklist. There will always be a few points that everybody does not agree on. This makes me think that objectively speaking there is not 'absolutely right' or 'absolutely wrong' answer to a question like that.

In hard science on the other hand. There is always an absolutely right answer. If we say: "Protons and neutrons are oppositely charged." There is an answer that is right because no matter what my beliefs, experiment is the final arbiter. Nobody who follows through the logical steps can deny that they are oppositely charged without making an illogical leap.

In the literary classification, you or your neural network can go through logical steps and still arrive at an answer that is not the same for everybody.

EDIT: I meant "protons and electrons are oppositely charged" not "protons and neutrons". Sorry!

I really wanted to fake the experiment in order to convince people about the dangers of failing gatekeepers, wouldn't it be better for me to say I had won? After all, I lost this experiment.

If you really had faked this experiment, you might have settled on a lie which is not maximally beneficial to you, and then you might use exactly this argument to convince people that you're not lying. I don't know if this tactic has a name, but it should. I've used it when playing Mafia, for example; as Mafia, I once attempted to lie about being the Detective (who I believe was dead at the time), and to do so convincingly I sold out one of the other members of the Mafia.

A consequentialist would ask, with an open mind, whether burning the libraries lead to good or bad consequences. A virtue ethicist would express disgust at the profanity of burning books. Your comment closely resembles the latter, whereas most discussion here on other topics tries to approximate the former.

I think it is no coincidence that this switch occurs in this context. Oh no, some dusty old tomes got destroyed! Compared to other events of the time, piddling for human "utility." But burning books lowers the status of academics, which is why it is considered (in Haidt-ian terms) a taboo by some - including, I would suggest, most on this site.

Someone who is doing research that is published and doesn't lead to direct patents is socializing gains whether or not they want to.

If C and E - and I'd say all 4 of them really, at least regarding a 98 0 1 0 1 solution - were inclined to be outraged as I suggest, and A knew this, they would walk away with more money. For me, that trumps any possible math and logic you could put forward.

And just in case A is stupid:

"But look, C and E, this is the optimal solution, if you don't listen to me you'll get less gold!"

"Nice try, smartass. Overboard you go."

B watched on, starting to sweat...

EDIT: Ooops, I notice that I missed the fact that B doesn't need to sweat since he just needs D. Still, my main point isn't about B, but A.

Also I wanna make it 100% clear: I don't claim that the proof is incorrect, given all the assumptions of the problem, including the ones about how the agents work. I'm just not impressed with the agents, with their ability to achieve their goals. Leave A unchanged and toss in 4 reasonably bright real humans as B C D E, at least some of them will leave with more money.