Out of curiosity, what are the minimum dimensions of a paperclip? Is a collection of molecules still a paperclip if the only paper it can clip is on the order of a molecule thick?
I think I need to post a Clippy FAQ. Will the LessWrong wiki be OK?
Once again, the paperclip must be able (counterfactually) to fasten several sheets together, and they must be standard thickness paper, not some newly invented special paper.
I understand that that specification doesn’t completely remove ambiguity about minimum paperclip mass, and there are certainly “edge cases”, but that should answer your questions about what is clearly not good enough.
I think I need to post a Clippy FAQ. Will the LessWrong wiki be OK?
If you have an account on the wiki, you have the option of setting up a user page (for example, user:Eliezer_Yudkowsky has one here). It should be okay for you to put a Clippy FAQ of reasonable length on yours.
Thanks. I had already started a Wiki userpage (and made it my profile’s home page), I just didn’t know if it would be human-acceptable to add the Clippy FAQ to it. Right now the page only has my private key.
Paperclips are judged by counterfactual fastening of standard paper, so they are not judged by their performance against such heavily-erased-over paper. Such a sheet would, in any case, not adhere to standard paper specs, and so a paperclip could not claim credit for clippiness due to its counterfactual ability to fasten such substandard paper together.
This seems to imply that if an alleged paperclip can fasten standard paper but not eraser-thinned paper, possibly due to inferior tightness of the clamp, then this object would qualify as a paperclip. This seems counterintuitive to me, as such a clip would be less useful for the usual design purpose of paperclips.
A real paperclip is one that can fasten standard paper, which makes up most of the paper for which a human requester would want a paperclip. If a paperclip could handle that usagespace but not that of over-erased paper, it’s not much of a loss of paperclip functionality, and therefore doesn’t count as insufficient clippiness.
Certainly, paperclips could be made so that they could definitely fasten both standard and substandard paper together, but it would require more resources to satisfy this unnecessary task, and so would be wasteful.
Out of curiosity, what are the minimum dimensions of a paperclip? Is a collection of molecules still a paperclip if the only paper it can clip is on the order of a molecule thick?
I think I need to post a Clippy FAQ. Will the LessWrong wiki be OK?
Once again, the paperclip must be able (counterfactually) to fasten several sheets together, and they must be standard thickness paper, not some newly invented special paper.
I understand that that specification doesn’t completely remove ambiguity about minimum paperclip mass, and there are certainly “edge cases”, but that should answer your questions about what is clearly not good enough.
Possibly a nitpick, but very thin paper has been around for a while.
If you have an account on the wiki, you have the option of setting up a user page (for example, user:Eliezer_Yudkowsky has one here). It should be okay for you to put a Clippy FAQ of reasonable length on yours.
Hi User:AdeleneDawner I put up some of the FAQ on my page.
Thanks. I had already started a Wiki userpage (and made it my profile’s home page), I just didn’t know if it would be human-acceptable to add the Clippy FAQ to it. Right now the page only has my private key.
Does it count if the paper started out as standard thickness, but through repeated erasure, has become thinner?
Paperclips are judged by counterfactual fastening of standard paper, so they are not judged by their performance against such heavily-erased-over paper. Such a sheet would, in any case, not adhere to standard paper specs, and so a paperclip could not claim credit for clippiness due to its counterfactual ability to fasten such substandard paper together.
This seems to imply that if an alleged paperclip can fasten standard paper but not eraser-thinned paper, possibly due to inferior tightness of the clamp, then this object would qualify as a paperclip. This seems counterintuitive to me, as such a clip would be less useful for the usual design purpose of paperclips.
A real paperclip is one that can fasten standard paper, which makes up most of the paper for which a human requester would want a paperclip. If a paperclip could handle that usagespace but not that of over-erased paper, it’s not much of a loss of paperclip functionality, and therefore doesn’t count as insufficient clippiness.
Certainly, paperclips could be made so that they could definitely fasten both standard and substandard paper together, but it would require more resources to satisfy this unnecessary task, and so would be wasteful.
Doesn’t extended clippability increase the clippiness, so that a very slightly more expensive-to-manufacture clip might be worth producing?
No, that’s a misconception.