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twanvl comments on Luminosity (Twilight fanfic) discussion thread - Less Wrong
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What if the human-relevant use requires bending a paperclip in such a way that it can no longer be used to hold sheets of paper together? For example, using a paperclip to pick a lock. Would you support such a use of paperclips?
Paperclips aren't usually sold one at a time. If you habitually keep paperclips around, even with the intention of unbending them as you need them, then you will increase net expected demand for intact paperclips.
Also an unbent paperclip can be easily rebent to paperclip-ness. So it hasn't undergone information theoretic destruction.
But it nevertheless is a non-paperclip, even if only temporarily. It's no different from a bit of newly-manufactured wire that could be bent into a paperclip but hasn't been yet, or a bit of liquid metal ready to be loaded into a paperclip-shaped mold.
We don't have a fully-specified printout of Clippy's utility function. It could be that unbent paperclips are just a little annoying, or that extruded unbent wire is much better than kittens.
It's okay to do that to prevent other paperclips from becoming unbent, or if you can rebend it afterward. But obviously, don't keep bending and unbending a paperclip, or it will break!
If the paperclip can't be restored to its paperclippy state, be sure to recycle the scrap metal so that new ones can be formed.