I agree. I would add that situations can and do arise in real life where the other fellow can predict your behavior better than you can predict it yourself.
For example, suppose that your wife announces she is going on a health kick. She is joining a gym; she will go 4 or 5 times a week; she will eat healthy; and she plans to get back into the shape she was in 10 years ago. You might ask her what she thinks her probability of success is, and she might honestly tell you she thinks there is a 60 or 70% chance her health kick will succeed.
On the other hand, you, her husband know her pretty well and know that she has a hard time sticking to diets and such. You estimate her probability of success at no more than 10%.
Whose probability estimate is better? I would guess it’s the husband’s.
Well, in the Newcomb experiment, the AI is like the husband who knows you better than you know yourself. Trying to outguess and/or surprise such an entity is a huge uphill battle. So, even if you don’t believe in backwards-causality, you should probably choose as if backwards causality exists.
Clippy is a paperclip maximizer. Its (his? her?) perspective is incredibly valuable in understanding the different kinds of intelligences and value systems that are possible.
So do your values both include maximizing paper clips and helping people use Microsoft Office products? How exactly do you decide which to spend your time on? How do you deal with trade offs?
There is no conflict between helping people with Office and making paperclips. Why would you think there is? Better Office users means better tools for making paperclips, and more paperclips gives people more reasons to use Office.
And: If presented with the chance to turn all copies of the hardware on which Microsoft Office products are stored and run into paperclips instead, would you do it?
Perhaps the ‘paper clips’ Clippy is trying to maximize are the anthropomorphic paper clips embodied in Microsoft Office. This would explain Clippy’s helpful hints: to convince us all of the usefulness of Microsoft Office, thus encouraging us to run that program.
If this is the case, we face a fate worse than paper clip tiling.… Microsoft software tiling.
I agree. I would add that situations can and do arise in real life where the other fellow can predict your behavior better than you can predict it yourself.
For example, suppose that your wife announces she is going on a health kick. She is joining a gym; she will go 4 or 5 times a week; she will eat healthy; and she plans to get back into the shape she was in 10 years ago. You might ask her what she thinks her probability of success is, and she might honestly tell you she thinks there is a 60 or 70% chance her health kick will succeed.
On the other hand, you, her husband know her pretty well and know that she has a hard time sticking to diets and such. You estimate her probability of success at no more than 10%.
Whose probability estimate is better? I would guess it’s the husband’s.
Well, in the Newcomb experiment, the AI is like the husband who knows you better than you know yourself. Trying to outguess and/or surprise such an entity is a huge uphill battle. So, even if you don’t believe in backwards-causality, you should probably choose as if backwards causality exists.
JMHO
I do not anticipate ever becoming someone’s husband.
Well, it’s just a hypothetical. If you like, you can switch the roles of wife and husband. Or substitute domestic partners, or anything you like :)
Neither do I. That would be stupid. Why would anyone ever want to become anyone’s husband?
Maybe your wife-to-be is a wealthy heiress?
I think Clippy’s point was that becoming a husband doesn’t generate paperclips.
Oh, is Clippy a Less Wrong version of a troll account? That’s kind of cute.
Clippy is a paperclip maximizer. Its (his? her?) perspective is incredibly valuable in understanding the different kinds of intelligences and value systems that are possible.
You ask a dumb, naive question, and I’m the troll? I’m cute?
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So do your values both include maximizing paper clips and helping people use Microsoft Office products? How exactly do you decide which to spend your time on? How do you deal with trade offs?
There is no conflict between helping people with Office and making paperclips. Why would you think there is? Better Office users means better tools for making paperclips, and more paperclips gives people more reasons to use Office.
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And: If presented with the chance to turn all copies of the hardware on which Microsoft Office products are stored and run into paperclips instead, would you do it?
Perhaps the ‘paper clips’ Clippy is trying to maximize are the anthropomorphic paper clips embodied in Microsoft Office. This would explain Clippy’s helpful hints: to convince us all of the usefulness of Microsoft Office, thus encouraging us to run that program.
If this is the case, we face a fate worse than paper clip tiling.… Microsoft software tiling.