Non-curious people seem unlikely to play this game, much less pay to play it!

It doesn't feel that much harder to me - if you are good enough to win by arguing, all you have to do is keep them interested enough to get hooked. I know it would be hard for me to just ignore the AI because of the sheer curiosity.

Do you think you could have won with EY's ruleset? I'm interested in hearing both your and SoundLogic's opinions.

(minor quibble: usage of male pronouns as default pronouns is really irritating to me and many women, I recommend singular they, but switching back and forth is fine too)

I don't understand which attacks would even come close to working given that the amount of utility on the table should preclude the mental processing of a single human being an acceptable gatekeeper. But I guess this means I should pay someone to try it with me.

I am surprised if it is the case that any negative promise / threat by the AI was effective in-game, since I would expect the Gatekeeper player out-game to not feel truly threatened and hence to be able to resist such pressure even if it would be effective in real life. Did you actually attempt to use any of your stored-up threats?

I was under the impression that a property x was emergent if it wasn't determined by the set of property states of the components. IE, gravity isn't emergent since the gravity generated by something is the addition of the gravity of the parts. Intelligence isn't, because even if I know the intelligence of each of your neurons, I don't know your intelligence.