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[Reelya]

I think the most important message from it is that powerful AIs don't necessarily have to evolve towards anything remotely resembling human values or emotions. e.g. Skynet and all that, they're way too anthropomorphized. This is both good and bad: AIs aren't going to turn into Hitler, but they're also not going to give a fuck about helping us (or even themselves) either, unless we explicitly program them to gain that parameter. In the paperclip example, the machine only cares about self-preservation because it can calculate that the destruction of the machine that maximizes paperclips will reduce the projected rate of paperclip production.

We sort of have this assumption that as machines become "smarter" they're going to start resembling us somehow. But that's not the case. They can have entirely arbitrary thought processes and value systems completely unrelated to those of any living animal, because living animals have been shaped by survival, competition, cooperation, the cycle of life, reproduction. What we think of as "universals" of intelligent life are probably mostly contingent adaptive features for the type of lives we live.

[Tack]

Gaming addiction

I can, have, and will; taken time off work so I could play games.
Usually specifically first release days.

[Reelya]

I know it can be a real thing, the thing I was questioning was the assumption that an entire generation of men's lack of work is because they're playing games. Because ... the numbers just don't add up, since the loss of work (10% of total hours per year over the last decade) is far more than the increase in gaming (9 minutes per week per year).

Basically, there are at least half a dozen things wrong with the article: (1) it's a victim blaming narrative. (2) demonizing new media (3) confusing percentages and raw numbers (4) correlation not causation (5) cherry picking/confirmation bias/ignoring other causes, etc.

It's actually pretty terrible that when something bad is happening to men the first instinct of the media is to find something that the victims are doing wrong. They're only losing work because they do dumb "men stuff", which excuses the media from even considering the ramifications of an entire generation of under/unemployed men for society as a whole. It's not a zero-sum game, unlike how the mainstream media makes it out to be. Men doing badly doesn't mean women are "winning", either gender doing badly hurts both genders, but it doesn't feel like most the media even gets that basic idea.

It's also extremely stereotyped, especially when you consider that it's women who have massively increased their amount of gaming over the last decade, not men. So, not only is it offensive to men by stereotyping an entire gender as lazy gamers to hand-wave away an increase in entrenched under/unemployment in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, it's also offensive to female gamers by "gendering" gaming in a manner that's contrary to the real-world facts.

Hell, women have increased their amount of gaming far more than 9 minutes per year over the last decade. Imagine if someone wrote an article suggesting that women playing so many games is holding them back from working more hours. It's actually more plausible given the numbers, but imagine the outcry.

[PTTG??]

A paperclip maximizer wouldn't modify its goals, because that conflicts with its current goals.

[Starver]

If I went the rest of my life never having to discuss "paperclip maximizers" ever again, I would die a happy man.

Well, from a paperclip maximiser's POV, and yours, it seems that your immediate death would aid both causes.

[wierd]

Dont be silly. From the maximizer's POV, his purpose is to supply it with iron to make paperclips with, and to then buy said paperclips.

[scourge728]

Who says the paperclips have to be iron?

[Egan_BW]

Who says the paperclips have to be paperclips?
Who says the universe is not already made of paperclips?

[syvarris]

We could discuss an Ispil maximizer instead, Ispy~

[Sergarr]

A paperclip maximizer wouldn't modify its goals, because that conflicts with its current goals.

That depends on whenever its model of the environment correctly predicts its own change in goals. Which ain't all that trivial, considering that they can't get experimental data on the actions that change their goals without, well, changing their goals in the process of obtaining said experimental data.

[Tack]

Value drift?

[Max™]

Who says the paperclips have to be iron?

Now you've got me wanting to carve out a wooden paperclip, but not with a sensible shape for wood, no, I've got the urge now to see how thin and "classic metal paperclip" like I could get it... why would you do this to me? DO YOU KNOW THE INSANITY INVOLVED THERE?

Going back to the dentistry article I wonder how fine a stone gouge could get without losing the abillity to spin it around it's circle and bore holes? I mean, you could do it with scraping and such, probably simpler with a little flint chip drill/scraper instead of trying to use a gouge cause hey know what's better than having an infected tooth? SHARDS OF STONE BLADES CHIPPED OFF IN YOUR TOOTH!

[wierd]

Wooden paperclip:

Use knife to cut off a wood shaving.
Use knife on wood shaving against hard surface, to cut an oblate groove.
Profit.

See this example:

[Max™]

Wooden paperclip:

Use knife to cut off a wood shaving.
Use knife on wood shaving against hard surface, to cut an oblate groove.
Profit.

See this example:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Well, I'd make it prettier than that, do something like a slight spiral on a really narrow wishbone type shape, but I'd probably need to get a set of higher quality diamond files to get the bent-wire effect without access to better woods.

[smjjames]

Don't know whether this would go into the space thread or here. Maybe I'll post it in both places.

SpaceX may have failed to get an expensive government sat into orbit. Ouch, this is gonna hurt their reputation for a while. At least until they can find out what went wrong.

It's light on details due to it being a classified mission and the main source being WSJ.