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Universal Paperclips

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71–80 of 174 posts

Re: Universal Paperclips

#71
post #7

For the impatient: the game stores much of its state in global variables which may easily be manipulated in the console.

Download a copy of the Kitten game code, reduce all the scaling factors to 1.0, enjoy a 2-3 hour run to beat the game instead of spending years.

Re: Universal Paperclips

#72

what're some other interesting "incremental games" out there these days? for me at least, just seeing numbers go up and get huge (Swarm Simulator) doesn't really do it for me. part of what makes Universal Paperclips so good is that, like Candy Box, a huge part of the joy is uncovering entirely new gameplay systems as you progress. A Dark Room was neat in that it brought the idea of a coherent narrative that you (some…

I've been enjoying Evolve ( https://pmotschmann.github.io/Evolve/ ) a lot lately. There's lots of new gameplay progression, and I've found it to be very well balanced in terms of entertainment/timesink ratio.

Then you probably haven't seen the biggest grinds yet... There is a huge amount of progression, yes, but some of it takes literally years

Re: Universal Paperclips

#74
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has basically no replay value, compared to games like Kittens or Evolve. Every playthrough is basically the same. There are no substantially different strategies, and only at the very end is there a single decision that determines which of two endings (and fairly simple boosts) you get. After one playthrough you have seen 99.9% of the content, after two you have seen 100% The writing and the story is pretty damn g…

The new version has a multiverse map you have to traverse through to collect some really sick upgrades It's an absolute grind, but once you pick up some 500% productivity multipliers it gets much easier

Oh shit. Gotta nope out of that as long as I'm still playing Evolve.

Re: Universal Paperclips

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PKD keeps surprising me.

I like how the sci-fi authors have spent time thinking about what an advanced AI could do, yet those building the AI have not taken a moment's pause to consider what they are doing

The people building it know it isn't AI, the people selling it call it that.

Re: Universal Paperclips

#76
post #60

I don't know if people realize this, but the game now allows you to continue past the "you've converted all matter in the universe" point. You get to convert matter in other universes! (There is still a finite endpoint; I think there's only ~19 other universes you get to do this to.)

  > Welcome to Universal Paperclips|
  
   Universe: 49 / Sim Level: 5
  Paperclips: 183,735,416
  Make Paperclip
When it first came out I ran through it exactly 100 times before I accidentally clicked out of it with the "reject" option. About 6 months ago, that cookie had expired and I ran through it a few more(54) times

Re: Universal Paperclips

#77
post #14

The paperclip maximizer is a thought experiment described by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. It illustrates the existential risk that an artificial general intelligence may pose to human beings when it is programmed to pursue even seemingly harmless goals and the necessity of incorporating machine ethics into artificial intelligence design. The scenario describes an advanced artificial intelligence tasked w…

More and more of our global economy is centered around compute. While it seems like oil and fossil fuel use will decline with the advent of other forms of energy production in the near future, computer chips are becoming prominent in global strategic thinking and military planning.

How is this different from maximizing paperclips? It's the same thing, just with a much more direct basis for instrumental convergence!

Re: Universal Paperclips

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you accept the implied premise that there are irresponsible deployments of AI out there, the alternative explanation is that they did consider the ramifications and simply don't care. That's even worse. Calling them ignorant is actually giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Or the researchers don't think existential threats are realistic, and paper maximizing thought experiments are silly. Maybe they're wrong, but maybe not. It's easy to imagine AI takeover scenarios by giving them unlimited powers, it's hard to show the actual path to such abilities. It's also hard to understand why an AI smart enough to paperclip the world wouldn't also be smart enough to realize the futility in doing…

That would be not accepting the premise that deployments are irresponsible. I guess there could be a situation where every researcher thinks everyone else's deployment is irresponsible and theirs is fine, but I don't think that's what you're saying.

Re: Universal Paperclips

#80
post #14

The paperclip maximizer is a thought experiment described by Swedish philosopher Nick Bostrom in 2003. It illustrates the existential risk that an artificial general intelligence may pose to human beings when it is programmed to pursue even seemingly harmless goals and the necessity of incorporating machine ethics into artificial intelligence design. The scenario describes an advanced artificial intelligence tasked w…

I wonder if he got the idea from Philip K. Dick's 1955 story "Autofac"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autofac https://www.vulture.com/2018/01/electric-dreams-recap-season...

He got it from Eliezer Yudkowsky's somewhat different paperclip maximizer in a mailing-list post. (My memory of a Twitter thread a while back which included Yudkowsky, saying he'd told Bostrom not to worry about attributing ideas like that to him.)
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