Paperclips aren’t usually sold one at a time. If you habitually keep paperclips around, even with the intention of unbending them as you need them, then you will increase net expected demand for intact paperclips.
But it nevertheless is a non-paperclip, even if only temporarily. It’s no different from a bit of newly-manufactured wire that could be bent into a paperclip but hasn’t been yet, or a bit of liquid metal ready to be loaded into a paperclip-shaped mold.
We don’t have a fully-specified printout of Clippy’s utility function. It could be that unbent paperclips are just a little annoying, or that extruded unbent wire is much better than kittens.
Paperclips aren’t usually sold one at a time. If you habitually keep paperclips around, even with the intention of unbending them as you need them, then you will increase net expected demand for intact paperclips.
Also an unbent paperclip can be easily rebent to paperclip-ness. So it hasn’t undergone information theoretic destruction.
But it nevertheless is a non-paperclip, even if only temporarily. It’s no different from a bit of newly-manufactured wire that could be bent into a paperclip but hasn’t been yet, or a bit of liquid metal ready to be loaded into a paperclip-shaped mold.
We don’t have a fully-specified printout of Clippy’s utility function. It could be that unbent paperclips are just a little annoying, or that extruded unbent wire is much better than kittens.