thought experiment; is there any utility function a paper-clip maximiser could switch to which would result in a universe containing more paper-clips?
Sort of. For most utility functions, there are transformations that could be applied which make them more efficient to evaluate without changing their value, such as compiler optimizations, which it will definitely want to apply. It’s also a good idea to modify the utility function for any inputs where it is computationally intractable, to replace it with an approximation (probably with a penalty to represent the uncertainty).
Sort of. For most utility functions, there are transformations that could be applied which make them more efficient to evaluate without changing their value, such as compiler optimizations, which it will definitely want to apply. It’s also a good idea to modify the utility function for any inputs where it is computationally intractable, to replace it with an approximation (probably with a penalty to represent the uncertainty).
Fair point, I didn’t think of that. The point still kind-of stands though, since neither of those modifications should produce any drastic change.