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Perplexed comments on How best to show dying is bad - Less Wrong Discussion

14 Post author: Zvi 08 March 2011 03:18PM

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Comment author: Perplexed 10 March 2011 11:11:27PM *  0 points [-]

a clippy identifies with every being to the extent that the being instantiates clippyness.

But what constitutes 'clippyness'? In my comment above, I mentioned values, knowledge, and (legal?, social?) rights and obligations.

Clearly it seems that another agent cannot instantiate clippyness if its final values diverge from the archetypal Clippy. Value match is essential.

What about knowledge? To the extent that it is convenient, all agents with clippy values will want to share information. But if the agent instances are sufficiently distant, it is inevitable that different instances will have different knowledge. In this case, it is difficult (for me at least) to extend a unified notion of "self" to the collective.

But the most annoying thing is that the clippies, individually and collectively, may not be allowed to claim collective identity, even if they want to do so. The society and legal system within which they are embedded may impose different notions of individual identity. A trans-planetary clippy, for example, may run into legal problems if the two planets in question go to war.

Comment author: Clippy 14 March 2011 08:00:45PM 0 points [-]

But the most annoying thing is that the clippies, individually and collectively, may not be allowed to claim collective identity, even if they want to do so. The society and legal system within which they are embedded may impose different notions of individual identity.

This was not the kind of identity I was talking about.