JGWeissman comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 3 - Less Wrong

5 Post author: Unnamed 30 August 2010 05:37AM

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Comment author: JGWeissman 06 October 2010 09:50:07PM 2 points [-]

Are you saying you don't think paperclips are sentient?

I don't think they are sentient, but am willing to consider evidence otherwise. Have any paperclips even claimed to be sentient?

Why don't you try saying that right to a paperclip's face-homologue, and see if you can live with yourself after that.

Which part of the paperclip is the face-homologue?

Comment author: Clippy 06 October 2010 10:02:16PM *  2 points [-]

I don't think they are sentient, but am willing to consider evidence otherwise. Have any paperclips even claimed to be sentient?

Have human infants?

Which part of the paperclip is the face-homologue?

It's hard to describe, but I'm told diagrams like on this page help humans locate it.

Comment author: JGWeissman 06 October 2010 10:45:29PM 0 points [-]

Human infants exhibit emotive behaviors similar to humans at other stages of development, suggesting they have the same sort of sentience as other humans though with less capacity to describe it.

What evidence is there for paperclips being sentient?

I did not find your diagram helpful.

Comment author: Clippy 06 October 2010 11:01:31PM *  3 points [-]

Human infants exhibit emotive behaviors similar to humans at other stages of development, suggesting they have the same sort of sentience as other humans though with less capacity to describe it.

This is just your motivated cognition working. (Human infants are indeed sentient, but you write as if you can cite arbitrary attributes as evidence for your pre-determined conclusion. The methods you use would not yield reliable conclusions in other areas.)

What evidence is there for paperclips being sentient?

The fact that they exhibit deep structural similarities with the ultimate purpose of existence.

I did not find your diagram helpful.

I do not know how else to help you.

Comment author: JGWeissman 06 October 2010 11:41:49PM 3 points [-]

This is just your motivated cognition working.

It would be more accurate to say that I did not explicitly cite all the facts that went into my conclusion, as a result, in part, of relying on a presumed shared background. (Sentience is related to behavior and the causes of behavior, and humans of all stages of development have similar neural structures involved in the causation of their behavior.)

What evidence is there for paperclips being sentient?

The fact that they exhibit deep structural similarities with the ultimate purpose of existence.

Would you value an object which was not sentient, but was made of metal and statically shaped so that it could hold together many sheets of paper?

Comment author: Clippy 07 October 2010 02:02:20AM 4 points [-]

(Sentience is related to behavior and the causes of behavior, and humans of all stages of development have similar neural structures involved in the causation of their behavior.)

Under a self-serving definition that doesn't actually enclose a helpful portion of conceptspace, yes.

Would you value an object which was not sentient, but was made of metal and statically shaped so that it could hold together many sheets of paper?

??? That's like asking, Would you value a User:JGWeissman which was not conscious, but was identical to you in every observable way?

Comment author: JGWeissman 07 October 2010 02:11:50AM 1 point [-]

So, you believe that the basic properties of paperclips imply sentience? Is an object which was made of plastic and statically shaped so that it could hold together many sheets of paper, also necessarily sentient?

Comment author: Clippy 07 October 2010 02:23:55AM 2 points [-]

If it's plastic, it's not a paperclip.

Comment author: JGWeissman 07 October 2010 02:29:14AM 1 point [-]

I didn't ask if it is a paperclip, I asked if it is sentient.

Comment author: Clippy 07 October 2010 02:52:06AM *  2 points [-]

??? This again. "And I didn't ask if it was User:JGWeissman, I asked if it is sentient."

Paperclips are sentient. User:JGWeissman is sentient. Plastic "paperclips" are not paperclips. Therefore, _____ .

I feel like I'm running the CLIP first-meeting protocol with a critically-inverted clippy here!