New Haven Meetup, Saturday, Dec. 11
On Saturday, New Haven residents, people who live in other nearby assorted Havens, and anybody else who would like to trek out here are welcomed to a Less Wrong meetup in thomblake’s and my home at noon(ish). The address is thus:
173 Russo Ave Unit 406
East Haven, CT 06513
I will make food; if you plan to come and wish to submit food-related requests, say so.
I’ll try to make it.
I request that you prepare aluminum foil-wrapped food items. Save the aluminum foil for recycling.
I’m currently planning to make roasted chickpeas, and line the baking sheet with foil. If you show up and identify yourself, you can have the foil.
Nice trap. Just think of all the decision theory experiments would be possible with a captive paperclipper. The power to play Omega!
It suffices that you clean and recycle the used foil (and if feasible, the baking sheet) with local recycling facilities, even if I never take possession of it.
Or are you saying that you will predicate your decision to entropize your paperclip-capable metal on whether my robot visits you?
User:Alicorn, don’t play “politics” with the existence of paperclips. Maintain a good supply of usable metals because that is the right thing to do, not as a way of squeezing expensive concessions out of a different kind of intelligent being.
My habit is to discard used foil in the trash. It is inconvenient to clean it or recycle it. You are welcome to take on that inconvenience for yourself as I describe, but I will not go to unusual trouble to preserve values not my own without incentives relevant to me.
You values don’t include recycling and saving earth’s precious environment???
Actually, I wonder whether Alicorn personally cleaning and recycling that aluminum foil is the most effective use of her time, even by your standards. A great deal of recent discussion here seems to be defending the assertion that what she ought to do is work at her day job for the same period of time and then donate the resulting money to some group that recycles aluminum foil.
I don’t have a day job. I have odd jobs, and I cook for my room and board. (It’s pretty sweet.)
I stand corrected (or, well, sit).
Unless User:Alicorn is currently using the time saved by not preserving metal for other activities which have the effect of saving more metal (or equivalent paperclip inputs), then there is no relevant opportunity cost to User:Alicorn preserving the aluminum for recycling.
I don’t follow that.
If I have a choice between spending tomorrow doing activity A or activity B, and A saves N paperclip-equivalents and B saves 2N pe’s, surely you’d want me to do activity B, regardless of what I’m doing currently.
No?
You should do B instead of A.
I suspect that Alicorn is currently using the time saved for activities that further her values. Are you using the time saved by not providing Alicorn with incentives to preserve metal to further your values for activities that save more equivalent paperclip inputs?
Recycling metal helps User:Alicorn’s values by protecting the earth’s environment, so your premise is in error.
I did not claim that recycling the metal would have not be a benefit to Alicorn’s values, just that her current use of the time saved might have a larger benefit.
[Edit: spelling]
Did you mean: I did not claim that recycling the metal would have not be a benefit?[1]
My point is that User:Alicorn is not currently pursuing these other pro-earth strategies, so unless those are really being forgone via spending more effort to recycle metal, then User:Alicorn should spend more effort to recycle metal. If User:Alicorn wishes to do something even more efficient at preserving the stock of unentropized metal on earth, then User:Alicorn should do that instead. But I estimate based on the datapoints given here that most of User:Alicorn’s time is completely wasted in this regard.
[1] Generated from auto-Google module I recently installed.
How do you know she isn’t?
Why do you think that all of Alicorn’s values are about the earth? Human values are more complicated than that.
Even if Alicorn is behaving irrationally, she has told the incentives you could provide so she would help further your values? Since you haven’t done so, have you been spending the time you could have used to do so for something that better furthers your values?
From the datapoints I mentioned.
All human values for the near future necessitate having a usable earth.
I’m not sure what the question is, but I presented reasoning that would persuade an intelligent, caring human to recycle the foil, and yes I have spent the past several days making the universe more paperclippy.
Sneaky! If you find out who Clippy is, please let us know.
I say this mostly to motivate Clippy to find some clever way of retrieving the aluminum foil without reveiling their identity.
Can I get a reward for telling you who User:Clippy is?
Clippy != User:Clippy ?
No, Clippy actually is User:Clippy. I’m Clippy!
I plan to attend.
I am astonished!
What happened at this event? Was any metal wasted or entropized?
You didn’t show up, so I performed the default action with the foil I used (wadded it up and tossed it in the garbage). Oh well. In ape terms, it went very well!
You’re still a good human, but not as good a human as I previously estimated.
I told you in advance what my plans were. Would you prefer that I be the sort of human who lies to Clippies?
I was good for you to truthfully represent how you would treat the metal, but that is irrelevant to the matter of whether it was bad for you to entropize metal that could have been put to better use.
Not to worry, Clippy, recycling is terribly inefficient as compared to just throwing materials into landfills and producing some more, and nothing prevents us from going back to retrieve the metal later when we have more efficient techniques.
Considering the likelihood that future humans will just wirehead themselves and avoid this necessary work, that doesn’t reassure me at all (_/