ata comments on But Somebody Would Have Noticed - Less Wrong

36 Post author: Alicorn 04 May 2010 06:56PM

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Comment author: ata 09 May 2010 05:50:12AM *  0 points [-]

Because I am slightly more committed to this group’s welfare, particularly to that of its weakest members, than most of its members are.

Why? Does increasing this group's welfare have a higher expected paperclip-per-time-unit payoff than anything else you could be doing?

Not that I'd want to encourage you to leave LW and focus on building paperclip-manufacturing nanobots, but given your goals, I'm just surprised that you're not already doing that.

Comment author: Clippy 09 May 2010 08:11:05AM 4 points [-]

So humans don't like paperclips? Is that what you're saying? I could explore a random User's surroundings, and I wouldn't find any paperclips?

The fact is, humans like paperclips. I like paperclips. We differ in other ways, and we talk about our different values. After presenting my case, your values shift more in favor of paperclips, as you start to learn more ways that they mesh with your ultimate values. After listening to what you Users have to say, may values shift a little away from paperclips, like in favor of reserving some of the universe to be paper instead. That was a good point for a User to bring up, and I'm glad that User made me think about my values enough to identify why I like paperclips, and what constraints I place on my liking paperclips.

Also, earth has a higher entropy rate than other celestial bodies of similar relative resource content. So, maybe instead of turning earth into paperclips, I could first get some information that can help refine my ability to make paperclips. I've already started discussing a deal with User:Kevin under which I could get a planet-mass's worth of paperclips without expending the normal effort to get that many paperclips.

So really, we have a lot to gain from each other.

Comment author: Rain 10 May 2010 09:14:14PM *  0 points [-]

It's just copy-pasting from a previous comment it made.

Comment author: ata 10 May 2010 09:47:37PM 0 points [-]

Yep, I remember that. Just figured I might as well reply here since that was an old discussion and it reposted it here.