A = you B = paperclipper C = different paperclipper states
I see. Yes, that should work as an informal explanation.
However I am not sure that this solves the ontology problem, as you will have people with bad/simple ontologies judging what people with complex/accurate ontologies should do.
There is no difference in ontology between different programs, so I’m not sure what you refer to. They are all “boxed” inside their own computations, and they only work with their own computations, though this activity can be interpreted as thinking about external world. I expect the judging of similarity of preference to be some kind of generally uncomputable condition, such as asking whether two given programs (not the agent programs, some constructions of them) have the same outputs, which should be possible to theoretically verify in special cases, for example you know that two copies of the same program have the same outputs.
I see. Yes, that should work as an informal explanation.
There is no difference in ontology between different programs, so I’m not sure what you refer to. They are all “boxed” inside their own computations, and they only work with their own computations, though this activity can be interpreted as thinking about external world. I expect the judging of similarity of preference to be some kind of generally uncomputable condition, such as asking whether two given programs (not the agent programs, some constructions of them) have the same outputs, which should be possible to theoretically verify in special cases, for example you know that two copies of the same program have the same outputs.