XOR Demand seems much less memetic fit than XOR Blackmail. Might be fine for your purposes, but I feel like if I had “XOR Demand” as a conceptual handle first, it’d make it like 25% harder to remember than XOR Blackmail.
That said, XOR Blackmail isn’t exactly correct as a term either, so maybe there’s a secret third thing that’s better (I don’t know what it is)
XOR Blackmail isn’t exactly correct as a term either
It’s a correct description of the meaning of the salient incorrect understanding of the problem that it’s meant to elicit, and that a better understanding of the problem is meant to address. The meaning of “blackmail” could be said to be the whole reason for the problem’s existence. “Pay me, or else I’m using magical ontological powers to infest your house with termites!” is the blackmail framing. The interesting thing is figuring out what’s wrong with this framing, the framing correctly described with the word “blackmail”.
(There’s a narrower sense of “blackmail” that doesn’t include extortion where the threat is not about exposing a secret, but that is a separate issue from the correctness/incorrectness interplay I’m talking about here. So “XOR Extortion” might be more accurate to the meaning of words, while maintaining the correctness/incorrectness divide. I’m less sure about “XOR Demand”, as it’s not as specific. I’d rule in favor of status quo, it’s easier to find old discussion if you just keep the traditional name.)
Blackmail is making a demand against the threat of revealing secrets, and there are no secrets being revealed in the XOR puzzle.
There are some subtleties about “Demand”. Does it here imply “with menaces”, i.e. Extortion? Under FDT, the line between extortion and mere demand without menaces is rather fine.
Extortion: “Nice house you have there. It would be a shame if it were to suddenly get infested with termites.”
Demand: “Nice house you have there. It would be a shame to discover it got infested with termites a year ago.”
Omicron (an ordinary mortal disguised as Omega) says the latter only to people who they observe to be FDT-followers with no termite infestation, or to people they observe to be FDT-sceptics (whose houses Omicron started a termite infestation in a year ago). Hence Omicron’s perfect record.
This looks like a money pump against FDT-ers. I therefore guess that FDT has a counter. Possibly to do with considering the possibility that one is facing Omicron and not Omega. If they are a prominent follower of FDT, and they know they are facing an Omicron, they have no reason to pay, except perhaps a gratuity for having being assured that they have no termite infestation.
I’m renaming “XOR Blackmail” to “XOR Demand”. Does anyone want to object to that?
XOR Demand seems much less memetic fit than XOR Blackmail. Might be fine for your purposes, but I feel like if I had “XOR Demand” as a conceptual handle first, it’d make it like 25% harder to remember than XOR Blackmail.
That said, XOR Blackmail isn’t exactly correct as a term either, so maybe there’s a secret third thing that’s better (I don’t know what it is)
It’s a correct description of the meaning of the salient incorrect understanding of the problem that it’s meant to elicit, and that a better understanding of the problem is meant to address. The meaning of “blackmail” could be said to be the whole reason for the problem’s existence. “Pay me, or else I’m using magical ontological powers to infest your house with termites!” is the blackmail framing. The interesting thing is figuring out what’s wrong with this framing, the framing correctly described with the word “blackmail”.
(There’s a narrower sense of “blackmail” that doesn’t include extortion where the threat is not about exposing a secret, but that is a separate issue from the correctness/incorrectness interplay I’m talking about here. So “XOR Extortion” might be more accurate to the meaning of words, while maintaining the correctness/incorrectness divide. I’m less sure about “XOR Demand”, as it’s not as specific. I’d rule in favor of status quo, it’s easier to find old discussion if you just keep the traditional name.)
Blackmail is making a demand against the threat of revealing secrets, and there are no secrets being revealed in the XOR puzzle.
There are some subtleties about “Demand”. Does it here imply “with menaces”, i.e. Extortion? Under FDT, the line between extortion and mere demand without menaces is rather fine.
Extortion: “Nice house you have there. It would be a shame if it were to suddenly get infested with termites.”
Demand: “Nice house you have there. It would be a shame to discover it got infested with termites a year ago.”
Omicron (an ordinary mortal disguised as Omega) says the latter only to people who they observe to be FDT-followers with no termite infestation, or to people they observe to be FDT-sceptics (whose houses Omicron started a termite infestation in a year ago). Hence Omicron’s perfect record.
This looks like a money pump against FDT-ers. I therefore guess that FDT has a counter. Possibly to do with considering the possibility that one is facing Omicron and not Omega. If they are a prominent follower of FDT, and they know they are facing an Omicron, they have no reason to pay, except perhaps a gratuity for having being assured that they have no termite infestation.
XtORtion?