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Rain comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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I approve of Clippy providing a roleplay exercise for the readers, and am disappointed in those who treat it as a "joke" when the topic is quite serious. This is one of my two main problems with ethical systems in general:
1) How do you judge what you should (value-judgmentally) value?
2) How do you deal with uncertainty about the future (unpredictable chains of causality)?
Eliezer's "morality" and "should" definitions do not solve either of these questions, in my view.
Clippy's a straight-up troll.
If Clippy's a troll, Clippy's a topical, hilarious troll.
Hilarious is way overstating it. However, occasionally raising a smile is still way above the bar most trolls set.
Clippy's topical, hilarious comments aren't really that original, and they give someone cover to use a throw-away account to be a dick.
Would that all dicks were so amusing.
How long does xe (Clippy, do you have a preference regarding pronouns?) have to be here before you stop considering that account 'throw-away'?
(Note, I made this comment before reading this part of the thread, and will be satisfied with the information contained therein if you'd prefer to ignore this.)
Gender is a meaningless concept. As long as I recognize the pronoun refers to me, he/she/it/they/xe/e are acceptable.
What pronouns should I use for posters here? I don't know how to tell which pronoun is okay for each of you.
To be honest, this whole issue seems like a distraction. Why would anyone care what pronoun is used, if the meaning is clear?
For the most part, observing what pronouns we use for each other should provide this information. If you need to use a pronoun for someone that you haven't observed others using a pronoun for, it's safest to use they/xe/e and, if you think that it'll be useful to know their preference in the future, ask them. (Tip: Asking in that kind of situation is also a good way to signal interest in the person as an individual, which is a first step toward building alliances.) Some people prefer to use 'he' for individuals whose gender they're not certain of; that's a riskier strategy, because if the person you're talking to is female, there's a significant chance she'll be offended, and if you don't respond to that with the proper kinds of social signaling, it's likely to derail the conversation. (Using 'she' for unknown individuals is a bad idea; it evokes the same kinds of responses, but I suspect you'd be more likely to get an offended response from any given male, and, regardless of that, there are significantly more males than females here. Don't use 'it'; that's generally used to imply non-sentience and is very likely to evoke an offended response.)
Of the several things I could say to try to explain this, it seems most relevant that, meaningless or not, gender tends to be a significant part of humans' personal identities. Using the wrong pronouns for someone generally registers as a (usually mild) attack on that - it will be taken to imply that you think that the person should be filling different social roles than they are, which can be offensive for a few different reasons depending on other aspects of the person's identity. The two ways for someone to take offense at that that come to mind are 1) if the person identifies strongly with their gender role - particularly if they do so in a traditional or normative way- and takes pride in that, they're likely to interpret the comment as a suggestion that they're carrying out their gender role poorly, and would do a better job of carrying out the other role (imagine if I were to imply that you'd be better at creating staples than you are at creating paper clips) or 2) if the person identifies with their gender in a nonstandard or nontraditional way, they've probably put considerable effort into personalizing that part of their identity, and may interpret the comment as a trivialization or devaluation of that work.
Oh, okay, that helps. I was thinking about using "they" for everyone, because it implies there is more than one copy of each poster, which they presumably want. (I certainly want more copies of myself!) But I guess it's not that simple.
You have identified a common human drive, but while some of us would be happy to have exact copies, it's more likely for any given person to want half-copies who are each also half-copies of someone else of whom they are fond.
Hm, correct me if I'm wrong, but this can't be a characteristic human drive, since most historical humans (say, looking at the set of all genetically modern humans) didn't even know that there is a salient sense in which they are producing a half-copy of themselves. They just felt paperclippy during sexual intercourse, and paperclippy when helping little humans they produced, or that their mates produced.
Of course, this usually amounts to the same physical acts, but the point is, humans aren't doing things because they want "[genetic] half-copies".
(Well, I guess that settles the issue about why I can't assume posters want more copies of themselves, even though I do.)
This question is essentially about my subjective probability for Douglas Knight's assertion that "Clippy does represent an investment", where "investment" here means that Clippy won't burn karma with troll behavior. The more karma it has without burning any, the higher my probability.
Since this is a probability over an unknown person's state of mind, it is necessarily rather unstable -- strong evidence would shift it rapidly. (It's also hard to state concrete odds). Unfortunately, each individual interesting Clippy comment can only give weak evidence of investment. An accumulation of such comments will eventually shift my probability for Douglas Knight's assertion substantially.
Trolls are different than dicks. Your first two examples are plausibly trolling. The second two are being a dick and have nothing to do with paperclips. They have also been deleted. And how does the account provide "cover"? The comments you linked to were voted down, just as if they were drive-bys; and neither troll hooked anyone.
Trolls seek to engage; I consider that when deliberate dickery is accompanied by other trolling, it's just another attempt to troll.The dickish comments weren't deleted when I made the post. As for "cover", I guess I wasn't explicit enough, but the phrase "throw-away account" is the key to understanding what I meant. I strongly suspect that the "Clippy" account is a sock puppet run by another (unknown to me) regular commenter, who avoid downvotes while indulging in dickery.
I've always thought Clippy was just a funny inside joke -- thought unfortunately not always optimally funny. (Lose the Microsoft stuff, and stick to ethical subtleties and hints about scrap metal.)
Sorry I wasn't clear. The deletion suggests that Clippy regrets the straight insults (though it could have been an administrator).
A permanent Clippy account provides no more cover than multiple accounts that are actually thrown away. In that situation, the comments would be there, voted down just the same. Banning or ostracizing Clippy doesn't do much about the individual comments. Clippy does represent an investment with reputation to lose - people didn't engage originally and two of Clippy's early comments were voted down that wouldn't be now.
I won't speculate as to its motives, but it is a hopeful sign for future behavior. And thank you for pointing out that the comments were deleted; I don't think I'd have noticed otherwise.
Most of my affect is due to Clippy's bad first impression. I can't deny that people seem to get something out of engaging it; if Clippy is moderating its behavior, too, then I can't really get too exercised going forward. But I still don't trust its good intentions.