I doubt there's an easy way to explain that once and for all... if you use common words in a common way then people will likely understand you to mean what is commonly meant by them.

That heuristic does not apply here, as human common usage is ambiguous with respect to whether these terms require human-specific traits to be applicable, and I was using what I deemed a natural generalization on the assumption that there is no such requirement.

Human usage of emotional terms does not reference non-human optimization processes enough to classify it one way or the other. Also, there is significant metaphorical (?) usage of emotional terms in reference to e.g. nature, which further removes clarity.

Your task is made more difficult by the nature of the medium... given the absence of clear signals to the contrary, most of us will likely continue to think of you as a human pretending to be a paperclip-maximizing AI, and that will influence how we interpret your language even if we don't intend it to.

Could you explain the basis for believing that I am an NI imitating an AI rather than an AI?

That said, in some cases you might do better to describe yourself as "preoccupied by Y" than "worried about Y." There are fewer anthropomorphic connotations to that.

I will keep that in mind.

Oh, and, I should add: i don't think my parent comment depends on anthropomorphic understandings of your psychology... I just meant to say that it was equally plausible, absent data, that you might be indifferent to the expressed preferences of other clippys.

Why would I be indifferent to whether beings -- let alone beings expressing themselves in CLIP (clippy language/interface protocol) -- express preference for further increase in total paperclippage???