Politics is the Mind-Killer.

The Self-Explanatory Magical Amulet

Aren't they all?

The super-powerful weapon...which cannot be used directly against the main antagonist...or is so evil it can't be used at all.

The artifact that gives only a subtle, unmeasurable boost to the hero's abilities...because the magic was inside him or her all along!

The magic whistle that summons help, only to be used in case of an emergency requiring its use...one and only one of which will arise.

The item presented by the old one to the hero who has a humble upbringing but newly discovered noble origins...which always casts insert backstory.

The useful magic item necessary to get the hero through a later challenge...which, when carried by a non-central character, always casts have item bearing non-central character carrying it get fatally wounded, but not so badly he or she dies immediately, and say, I'm dying, please take my item,' to which the hero says 'No non-central character, you can't die!'

The item that actually would kill the hero if used...which always casts insert villain arrogance, usually gloating and/or explaining the evil plan, providing time to avert the hero's death.

The powerful intrinsically evil artifact used by the villain...which casts karmic justice, turning against the villain, even though the hero was not strong enough (or too unwilling to kill) to do so (or kill the villain directly).

Ah, bugger. I've lost my link to Transparent Newcomb (TN).

From what I recall, Omega doesn't let you play the game if you would one-box on normal Newcomb but two-box on TN. As a result, having the strategy 'I will one-box on normal Newcomb but two-box on TN' will probably result in you getting no money because when Omega psychoanalyzes you, he'll almost always see this. So you lose, because you're not yet past the filter.

In this problem, you were filtered out prior to birth by a Prometheus who only chose embryos that he believed would one-box. The line 'I should one-box or I won't get to exist' doesn't work because embryos can't think. At the time at which you can first consciously consider this problem, you will be past the filter, and so are free to choose the most effective solution regardless of Prometheus's preferences. So you two-box and win, 'cause you already exist.

The problem changes, of course, if there is any way in which Prometheus could punish you for two-boxing, causing you to lose >100$ in utility.

Edit: Changed a couple of details to properly refer to TN when Omega has a slight possibility of being wrong.

Excellent list. Please could you expand on/clarify these 2, I'm not sure what you mean and why:

• Science before the mid-20th century was too small to look like a target.

• There's a difference between learning a skill and learning a skill while remaining human. You need to decide which you want.

Valley-girl English and Ebonics and West Virginia dialect are all equally valid and internally consistent, according to this approach.

There is also value in maintaining a common standard. Try speaking Ebonics outside black ghettos and besides the status hit, people will have a hard time understanding you.

At risk of exhibiting confirmation bias, your anecdote makes my point for me. With the ban on discrimination, your friend got misleading signals of which employers she would like, and her employer relied on weaker signals of things they can't ask about, leading to an incorrect inference -- and later, a disastrous mismatch.

So, far from eliminating the pernicious effects of bigotry, the law made people waste effort trying to route their efforts around it. Had there been no law, people could openly communicate their preferences in both directions, without having to go through the complication of sending weaker signals because they can't send the banned ones. And with less "noise", the cost of bigotted preferences becomes clearer. Explanation

I don't see why you're using this as an example of why anti-discrimination laws are good.

So what would happen if you traded the kafkaesque life for the officially-banned screening methods? Would you rather have twice the number of job opportunities and lose 3/4 of them right away because you're <insert irrelevant attribute here>? Or would you rather that other people get rejected for them, if you don't personally have many of the 'undesirable' attributes?

Certainly, you can pick the numbers to reach the conclusion that you want. But averaging over all possibilities, and weighting by likelihood, yes, I would prefer the environment that makes all job applicants not a potential albatross for employers, for the same reason I would prefer not to be exempt from lawsuits -- yes, there's a narrow benefit to laws saying "you can't discriminate against people named Silas", and to a personal exemption from lawsuits. But realistically, the way people respond to this will more than eliminate the benefit. (In case it's not clear -- do you see a hazard in associating with a stranger when you're guaranteed to have no legal recourse against what they do?)

So yes, I would rather have the option to most clearly communicate preferences, than have to dance around them, which results in situations where someone can be turned down for a job because of false beliefs that they can't even refute. This remains true, even and especially if I'm in a less fortunate end of the applicant pool (which I have been, like everyone else who has been under 14/16/18 at some point in their life).

(Btw, I'm not the one modding you down.)

Now I don't know what you're trying to say about me. My views on this don't count because you think I was turned down for a job and blamed discrimination law for it? Huh?

In any case, I agree that the costs of A's reaction don't necessarily negate the benefit. What I criticize is models that view such utility shifting as a one-shot enterprise without complications, which is a sadly common belief. What's more common -- just from my personal experience -- is that attempts to nobly shift utility this way result in making life more kafkaesque.

For example, when you ban IQ tests in employment screening, you don't get employers happily ignoring the information value of IQ tests -- rather, they just fob it off to a university, who will gladly give the IQ test and pass on a weaker measure of ability. If you mandate benefits, employers don't simply continue their hiring practices exactly as before but give workers more utility; rather, they cut back in other ways.

I believe I'm impacted by this mentality, because I would much rather be told, you don't qualify because of ____ than have to follow some complicated, unspoken signaling dance (i.e. the relative significance of having a network to having ability) that avoids officially-banned screening methods.

Yes, I've been turned down for jobs, but a) I've been gainfully employed in my field for 5 years, and b) my concern is not with being turned down, but with it being harder to find opportunities that could result in being turned down in the first place.

What would be a non-bigoted way to make the point I just did?

This is actually very similar to an intuition I've had about this problem. The difference is that I compare it to a different scenario, and regard it as a reason, not to reject the trolley problem, but a reason to justify the optimality of not pushing the innocent bystander onto the tracks.

You compared it to wealth-redistribution attempting to optimize total utility, while I think a better comparison is discrimination law, something that matters close to me. (Edit: sorry for awkward phrasing, keeping it there because it was quoted.) In short, just as milking the cow makes it waste effort avoiding being milked, discrimination law simply makes employers drastically revise hiring practices so that they don't use the one that counts under the law as a "job posting".

So they rely more heavily on network hires and indirect signals of employee quality, and, ironically, make it much harder for people outside these networks -- usually the "protected" classes -- to even get a chance in the first place, no matter how good they could demonstrate their work to be!

People think they can just shove these "surprise" costs onto agents with "too much utility", ignoring the long-term ways they'll react. As I said before about the problem, one non-obvious result of shoving the guy onto the track is that drastically shifts around the risk profiles of various activities. Previously, standing on a track was riskier than staying off it. But a policy of switching this risk around makes it harder overall for people to ascertain risks, which makes them spend wasteful effort avoiding risks (since they have to assume they're understated).

Generally, it really bothers me when people talk in terms of policies that attempt to shift utility from privileged group A to pitiable group B, not realizing that A will still gets its privileges and exclude B -- it'll just become a more complex dance for B to figure out.

We live in a world where it has become "politically correct" to avoid absolutes. Many want all religions to be given the same honor, and all gods regarded as equally true and equally fictitious. But take these same people, who want fuzzy, all-inclusive thinking in spiritual matters, and put them on an airplane. You will find they insist on a very dogmatic, intolerant pilot who will stay on the "straight and narrow" glidepath so their life will not come to a violent end short of the runway. They want no fuzzy thinking here!

-- Jack T. Chick

Did you coin the term "pyronics"?