Work expands to fill the available time.

It's important to distinguish between procrastination and delaying working on something because it's not urgent yet. Sometimes the latter is just a reasonable thing to do. From that perspective, deadlines tell people how urgent it is to do something. It's not surprising that they won't do it if it's not urgent, and it's unclear whether this is actually a bad thing.

When I first announced the tournament, people came up with many suggestions for modifications to the rules, most of which I did not take for the sake of simplicity. Maybe we should try to figure out what rules will make it easier to write more effective bots, even if that would disqualify many of the bots already submitted to this tournament.

I think the problem is just equivalent to dividing the gains from trade. We'll look at the second example first, since it is a canonical example of a trade.

I have the MacGuffin which I value at £9. You value it at £1000. Suppose that I give you the MacGuffin, you give me £9 and you put £991 on the table between us. Then we both have the utility we had when we started and we have £991 (the gains from the trade) to divide between us. Yay!

Now look at the first example. This is a canonical blackmail, which I'm going to re-write to make it look as much like the above example as possible.

I have some letters which incriminate us both. I value the letters not getting out at £M, and you value the letters not getting out at £N. Suppose I destroy the letters (rather than releasing them) and put £M on the table between us, while you put £N on the table between us. Then we both have the utility we would have had if the letters had been released but along with this we have £M+N (the "gains from the trade") to divide between us. Yay?

I think the reason why this example seems more blackmailesque is because there is a natural Schelling point for the division of the gains, namely (£M, £N), which corresponds to me destroying the letters without asking for anything. So asking you for money is rude, because I'm greedily going past the Schelling point.

The whole point of the exercise was to create a decision theory that doesn't comply with blackmail. Well, in a division of gains problem a sensible heuristic is to always demand a fair share (where "fair share" vaugely refers to some sort of Schelling point or something, depending on the problem). In the blackmail example the Schelling point is (£M, £N) so the heuristic tells us to demand at least £M, which is exactly refusing the blackmail!

Somewhat OT:

Does it really help the exposition to have all the elaborate packaging (the such-and-such vase, the jester and description of the punishment, etc)? For me it just makes it harder to read: is the vase just a perspicuous example of a valuable, or is it important that it's subject to random catastrophe (from errant jesters)? Does the presence of the makeup sex have any relevance that should affect my intuition on this?

But then, a lot of people seem to like that kind of thing, even in non-fiction and when they no longer need explanations via fairy tale metaphors, so perhaps I'm alone on this.

EDIT: Sorry, I missed that you linked a fluff-free version. Much appreciated!

You would have missed out on doubling or tripling your money if you hadn't bought gold when those same people had made the predictions.

The S&P 500 has outperformed gold since quantitative easing began. I don't believe there has been a time past four years where a $100 gold purchase would be worth more today than a $100 S&P 500 purchase.

I have always heard that gold isn't meant to be a return-on-investment kind of deal, more like a safe store for your money that is going to maintain value over time.

P/S/A: The people telling you to expect above-trend inflation when the Federal Reserve started printing money a few years back, disagreed with the market forecasts, disagreed with standard economics, turned out to be actually wrong in reality, and were wrong for reasonably fundamental reasons so don't buy gold when they tell you to.

You would have missed out on doubling or tripling your money if you hadn't bought gold when those same people had made the predictions.

Why are "observers" ontologically fundamental in these anthropic arguments? Is there somewhere an analysis of this assumption? I know that there is SSA and SIA, but I don't really understand them.

How do you assign probability over worlds with different numbers of observers?

"Causality is based on entropy increase, so it can only make sense to draw causal arrows “backwards in time,” in those rare situations where entropy is not increasing with time. [...] where physical systems are allowed to evolve reversibly, free from contact with their external environments." E.g. the normal causal arrows break down for, say, CMB photons. -- Not sure how Scott jumps from reversible evolution to backward causality.

It's a few paragraphs up, where he says:

Now, the creation of reliable memories and records is essentially always associated with an increase in entropy (some would argue by definition). And in order for us, as observers, to speak sensibly about “A causing B,” we must be able to create records of A happening and then B happening. But by the above, this will essentially never be possible unless A is closer in time than B to the Big Bang.

That is, we are only capable of remembering (by any means) things closer to the Big Bang, because memories require entropy increase; and furthermore, memories are necessary for drawing a causal arrow that orders past vs future. But if there is a system that stays isentropic, it needn't have such a ordering.

Note: this is actually very close to Drescher's resolution of Loschmidt's paradox ("why is physics time-symmetric but entropy isn't?") in Good and Real: since entropy determines what we (or any observers) regard as pastward, we will necessarily observe only those time histories of increasing entropy.