Well, yeah, but one doesn’t necessarily value those. I mean, there’s no difference between a paperclipper and a super-bacteria that will never change and perpetually creates copies of itself out of the entire universe. Life is usually considered worthwhile because of the diversity and the possibility of evolving to something resembling "persons", not just because it reproduces.
True. What I said was in reference to
There's a small but finite chance of the paperclipper slipping enough bits to produce something worthwhile, like life.
Within a system of self-replicating information...maybe, just maybe, you'll start getting little selfish bits that are more concerned with replicating themselves than they are with making paperclips. It all starts from there.
Assuming, of course, that the greater part of the paperclipper doesn't just find a way to crush these lesser selfish pieces. They're basically cancer.
Thought experiment:
Through whatever accident of history underlies these philosophical dilemmas, you are faced with a choice between two, and only two, mutually exclusive options:
* Choose A, and all life and sapience in the solar system (and presumably the universe), save for a sapient paperclipping AI, dies.
* Choose B, and all life and sapience in the solar system, including the paperclipping AI, dies.
Phrased another way: does the existence of any intelligence at all, even a paperclipper, have even the smallest amount of utility above no intelligence at all?
If anyone responds positively, subsequent questions would be which would be preferred, a paperclipper or a single bacteria; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of trilobites and their supporting ecology; a paperclipper or a self-sustaining population of australopithecines; and so forth, until the equivalent value is determined.