(For thoroughness, noting that the other approach was also wondered about a little earlier. Surface action is an alternative to look at if projectile-launching would definitely be ineffective, but if the projectile approach would in fact be better then there'd no reason not to focus on it instead.)

A fair point. <nods> On the subject of pulling vast quantities of energy from nowhere, does any one country currently possess the knowledge and materials to build a bomb that detonated on the surface could {split the Earth like a grape}/{smash the Earth like an egg}/{dramatic verb the Earth like a metaphorical noun}?

And yes, not something to try in practice with an inhabited location. Perhaps a computer model, at most... actually, there's a thought regarding morbid fascination. I wonder what would be necessary to provide a sufficiently-realistic (uninhabited) physical (computer) simulation of a planet's destruction when the user pulled meteors, momentum, explosives et cetera out of nowhere as it pleased. Even subtle things, like fiddling with orbits and watching the eventual collision and consequences... hm. Presumably/Hopefully someone has already thought of this at some point, and created such a thing. <curiously goes looking>

Not directly related, but an easier question: Do we currently have the technology to launch projectiles out of Earth's atmosphere into a path such that, in a year's time or so, the planet smashes into them from the other direction and sustains significant damage?

(Ignoring questions of targeting specific points, just the question of whether it's possible to arrange that without the projectiles falling into the sun or just following us eternally without being struck or getting caught in our gravity well too soon... hmm, if we could somehow put it into an opposite orbit then it could hit us very strongly, but in terms of energy... hmmm. Ah, and in the first place there's the issue that even that probably wouldn't hit with energy comparable to that of a meteor, though I am not an astrophysicist. In any case, definitely not something to do, but (as noted) morbidly fascinating if it turned out to be fairly easy to pull off. Just the mental image of all the 'AUGH' faces... again, not something one would actually want to do. <clears throat>)

(Absent(?) thought after reading: one can imagine someone, through a brain-scanner or similar, controlling a robot remotely. One can utter, through the robot, "I'm not actually here.", where 'here' is where one is doing the uttering through the robot, and 'I' (specifically 'where I am') is the location of one's brain. The distinction between the claim 'I'm not actually here' and 'I'm not actually where I am' is notable. Ahh, the usefulness of technology. For belated communication, the part about intention is indeed significant, as with whether a diary is written in the present tense (time of writing) or in the past tense ('by the time you read this[ I will have]'...).) enjoyed the approach

To ask the main question that the first link brings to mind: What prevents a person from paying both a life insurance company and a longevity insurance company (possible the same company) relatively-small amounts of money each in exchange for either a relatively-large payout from the life insurance if the person dies early and a relatively-large payout from the longevity insurance if the person dies late?

To extend, what prevents a hypothetically large number of people to on average create this effect (even if each is disallowed from having both instead of just one or the other) and so creating a guaranteed total loss overall on the part of an insurance company?

<imagines a state in which a payment from company to customer would have to be less than twice the payment from customer to company...>

<curiosity>

Thank you!

To answer the earlier question, an alteration which halved the probability of failure would indeed change an exactly-0% probability of success into a 50% probability of success.

If one is choosing between lower increases for higher values, unchanged increases for higher values, and greater increases for higher values, then the first has the advantage of not quickly giving numbers over 100%. I note though that the opposite effect (such as hexing a foe?) would require halving the probability of success instead of doubling the probability of failure.

The effect you describe, whereby a single calculation can give large changes for medium values and small values for extreme values, is of interest to me: starting with (for instance) 5%, 50% and 95%, what exact procedure is taken to increase the log probability by log(2) and return modified percentages?
<unfamiliar with log probabilities, and curious to decrease this unfamiliarity>

Edit: (A minor note that, from a gameplay standpoint, for things intended to have small probabilities one could just have very large failure-chance multipliers and so still have decreasing returns. Things decreed as effectively impossible would not be subject to dice rolling or similar in any case, and so need not be considered at length. In-game explanation for the function observed could be important; if it is desirable that progress begin slow, then speed up, then slow down again, rather than start fast and get progressively slower, then that is also reasonable.)

The Turing machine doing the simulating does not experience pain, but the human being being simulated does.

Similarly, the waterfall argument found in the linked paper seems as though it could as-easily be used to argue that none of the humans in the solar system have intelligence unless there's an external observer to impose meaning on the neural patterns.

A lone mathematical equation is meaningless without a mind able to read it and understand what its squiggles can represent, but functioning neural patterns which respond to available stimuli causally(/through reliable cause-and-effect) are the same whether emboided in cell weights or in tape states. (So, unless one wishes to ignore one's own subjective consciousness and declare oneself a zombie...)

For the actual-versus-potential question, I am doubtful regarding the answer, but for the moment I imagine a group of people in a closed system (say, an experiment room), suddenly (non-lethally) frozen in ice by a scientist overseeing the experiment. If the scientist were to later unfreeze the room, then perhaps certain things would definitely happen if the system remained closed. However, if it were never unfrozen, then they would never happen. Also, if they were frozen yet the scientist decided to interfere in the experiment and make the system no longer a closed system, then different things would happen. As with the timestream in normal life, 'pain' (etc.) is only said to take place at the moment that it is actually carried out. (And if one had all states laid out simultaneously, like a 4D person looking at all events in one glance from past to present, then 'pain' would only be relevant for the one point/section that one could point to in which it was being carried out, rather than in the entire thing.)

Now though, the question of the pain undergone by the models in the predicting scientist's mind (perhaps using his/her/its own pain-feeling systems for maximum simulation accuracy) by contrast... hmm.