After all, if there’s a demon who pays a billion dollars to everyone who follows CDT or EDT then FDTists will lose out.
How does demon determine what DT a person follows?
If it’s determined by simulating person’s behavior in Newcomb-like problem, then once FDTist gets to know about that, he should two-box (since billion dollars from demon is more than million dollars from Omega).
If it’s determined by mind introspection, then FDTist will likely self-modify to believe to be CDTist, and checking actual DT becomes a problem like detecting AI deceptive alignment.
I have read that post, and here are my thoughts:
The essence of the post is only in one section of seven: “Exploring Nuances: Case Studies of Evolving Portrayals”.
Related work descriptions could be fit into one sentence for each work, to make reading the report easier.
Sentences about relevance of work, being pivotal step in something, etc don’t carry much meaning.
The report doesn’t state what to anticipate; what [social] observations can one predict better after reading it.
Overall, the post doesn’t look like it tries to communicate anything, and it’s adapted to formal vague style.