Nebu comments on To what degree do we have goals? - Less Wrong
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The post cites being upset or angry as evidence of certain apparent preferences being closer to genuine preferences, but a paperclip maximizer wouldn't get upset or angry if a supernova destroyed some of its factories, for example. I think being upset or angry when one's consciously held goals have been frustrated is probably just a signaling mechanism, and not evidence of anything beyond the fact that those goals are consciously held (or "approved" or "endorsed").
If a staple maximizer came in with a ship and stole some of the paperclip factories for remaking into staple factories, the paperclipper would probably expend resources to take revenge for game theoretical reasons, even if this cost paperclips.
I think this argument is misleading.
Re "for game theoretical reasons", the paperclipper might take revenge if it predicted that doing so would be a signalling-disincentive for other office-supply-maximizers from stealing paperclips. In other words, the paperclip-maximizer is spending paperclips to take revenge solely because in its calculation, this actually leads to the expected total number of paperclips going up.
That assumes the scenario is iterated, I'm talking it'd precomit to do so even in a one-of scenario. The resxzt of you argument was my point, that the same reasoning goes for anger.