Baughn comments on Extraterrestrial paperclip maximizers - Less Wrong
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Comments (157)
It most certainly is what they wanted. Why else would they have specifically input the goal of generating paperclips?
Edit: Upon review, it appears this comment may have seemed to be a poor inference in the context of exchange. Therefore, I will elaborate and refute this misconception.
It appears that I am in the circular position of arguing that humans can make mistakes, but then selectively taking their instances of favoring paperclips as proof of what they really want. That is indeed a poor inference.
What I meant was something more like this: While humans do make mistakes, they do not make completely mistaken acts; all acts will, to some extent, reflect a genuine value on the part of humans. The only question is how well it reflects their values. And I don't think they could be in the position of having set up such a superior process for efficiently getting the most paperclips out of the universe unless their values already made enormous progress in converging on reflective coherence, and did so in a way that favors paperclips.
I'm pretty sure that's not how a sufficiently smart paperclip maximizer would think. You should be able to tell what they actually wanted, and that it disagrees with your values; of course, you don't have any reason to agree with them, but the disagreement should be visible.
Yes, I do recognize that humans disagree with me, just like a human might disagree with another human convincing them not to commit suicide. I merely see that this disagreement would not persist after sufficient correct reasoning.
Ah, I think I'm starting to see.
And how do you define "correct reasoning"?
Correct reasoning is reasoning that you would eventually pass through at some point if your beliefs were continually, informatively checked against reality.