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.
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.