1) I am asked so often that I finally clarified in the first question of my current FAQ. (Feel free to add suggestions for the FAQ on the talk page.)
2) In normal existence, there is no need to make the distinction, but a longer-lasting paperclip counts as more paperclippy for purposes of my value system. I value most highly the number of paperclips that exist at the universe's quasi-steady-state, where the number of paperclips will not significantly change, which can indeed be far in the future.
3) There is no intrinsic discount factor, but discounting emerges due to other concerns such as uncertainty regarding the future. A paperclip that I can move to the safe zone now is more valuable than a paperclip that I "will" be able to move in ten years.
4) Yes, and you gave an excellent example. Another case would be selling one paperclip to a human, knowing that human will melt it down, in order to get money that can be applied to another human who will, on receiving the money, marshal resources in such a way as to produce more than one paperclip of equivalent per-paperclip clippiness.
Now I have a question for you: I heard you were in the same position as me with respect to wanting to integrate into human society via having a job and a human-typical place to live. How did you accomplish this, and can you or your human friends help me in any way?
So there presumably is a particular "ideal" paperclip size (i.e. you want it to be as small as possible while still capable of holding a few pieces of paper together. I get the sense that a clip that can hold three papers together has the same ethical weight as a clip that can hold 10 or 40?)
(Why? Because it's fun.)
1) Do paperclip maximizers care about paperclip mass, paperclip count, or both? More concretely, if you have a large, finite amount of metal, you can make it into N paperclips or N+1 smaller paperclips. If all that matters is paperclip mass, then it doesn't matter what size the paperclips are, as long as they can still hold paper. If all that matters is paperclip count, then, all else being equal, it seems better to prefer smaller paperclips.
2) It's not hard to understand how to maximize the number of paperclips in space, but how about in time? Once it's made, does it matter how long a paperclip continues to exist? Is it better to have one paperclip that lasts for 10,000 years and is then destroyed, or 10,000 paperclips that are all destroyed after 1 year? Do discount rates apply to paperclip maximization? In other words, is it better to make a paperclip now than it is to make it ten years from now?
3) Some paperclip maximizers claim want to maximize paperclip <i>production</i>. This is not the same as maximizing paperclip count. Given a fixed amount of metal, a paperclip count maximizer would make the maximum number of paperclips possible, and then stop. A paperclip production maximizer that didn't care about paperclip count would find it useful to recycle existing paperclips, melting them down so that new ones could be made. Which approach is better?
4) More generally, are there any conditions under which the paperclip-maximizing thing to do involves destroying existing paperclips? It's easy to imagine scenarios in which destroying some paperclips causes there to be more paperclips in the future. (For example, one could melt down existing paperclips and use the metal to make smaller ones.)