You're wrong: nobody does that
I think you mean you don't do that.
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E.g., take
the one whose last block hash is smaller. This way all miners choose the
same chain, and the guarantees of our solution hold.
the one whose last block hash is smaller. This way all miners choose the
same chain, and the guarantees of our solution hold.
This is not a new idea at all. As far as public postings, it's been on this page on the bitcoin wiki for at least six months, and there was definitely a mention of it on bitcoin-dev about a year ago (I will post the reference when I find it). And, as I've mentioned, it's pervasive in the modified clients used by large mining operations, although those are not public so you're welcome to shout "liar liar pants on fire" all you like and I won't get upset
I think the people who wrote this paper took Satoshi's original whitepaper too literally:
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Nodes always consider the longest chain to be the correct one and will keep working on extending it. If two nodes broadcast different versions of the next block simultaneously, some nodes may receive one or the other first. In that case, they work on the first one they received, but save the other branch in case it becomes longer. The tie will be broken when the next proof- of-work is found and one branch becomes longer; the nodes that were working on the other branch will then switch to the longer one.
Mining strategy has evolved and adapted, as it must in any incentive-driven system. For example, Satoshi's whitepaper predicted that transaction fees would be a meaningful incentive, and it's pretty obvious it hasn't turned out that way.