EDT doesn’t pay if it is given the choice to commit to not paying ex-ante (before receiving the letter). So the thought experiment might be an argument against ordinary EDT, but not against updateless EDT. If one takes the possibility of anthropic uncertainty into account, then even ordinary EDT might not pay the blackmailer. See also Abram Demski’s post about the Smoking Lesion. Ahmed and Price defend EDT along similar lines in a response to a related thought experiment by Frank Arntzenius.
Yes, this demonstrates that EDT is also unstable under self modification, just as CDT is. And trying to build an updateless EDT is exactly what UDT is doing.
EDT doesn’t pay if it is given the choice to commit to not paying ex-ante (before receiving the letter). So the thought experiment might be an argument against ordinary EDT, but not against updateless EDT. If one takes the possibility of anthropic uncertainty into account, then even ordinary EDT might not pay the blackmailer. See also Abram Demski’s post about the Smoking Lesion. Ahmed and Price defend EDT along similar lines in a response to a related thought experiment by Frank Arntzenius.
Yes, this demonstrates that EDT is also unstable under self modification, just as CDT is. And trying to build an updateless EDT is exactly what UDT is doing.