Universal Paperclips
decisionproblem.com
decisionproblem.com
Be warned that this isn’t a naive lazy clicker game, it’s an instrument of destruction from the future, created by our paperclip overlords :-)
I also waste time on chess puzzles, lichess.org/training , but that isn't so bad since it's easier to pull away, and I felt for a while like it was helping my game, and decided to count that as improving my mind, as contrasted with 2048 which is pure inanity.
Before that, I have spent days with it piggybacking on my brainwaves. But after that, I lost interest, feeling overwhelmed with the complexity of the game.
In the course of one night running it unattended, I got the two items I'd been looking for for weeks. Cheating at the game broke me out of the Skinner box overnight.
There is always a way :)
Before this moment, I was blissfully ignorant and had time to get things done, time to take walks in the sun with my wife,
And now, now, mrweow!
Why did you do this to me?
(hundreds of hours)
I want to get back in but a lot has changed and I'm struggling to recall all the details to be able to pick it back up and what I should focus on. Any tips?
I'm using Kitten Scientists (which is buggy but at least it works) and running a three concurrent games on two remote machines.
Holy shit
More if your bad.
Speedrunners have it at about 1.5 hours
I've got it down to about 3 hours. Not speedrun worthy, but yeah, proof that the game is short enough to complete in one sitting if you know what you're doing.
Me 2 min later: Well, shit.... there goes my morning....
Me 20 min later: What the hell, I've already spent 20 minutes on this thing?!?
Edit: Okay, all jokes aside.... I just spent a whole hour on this. Seriously.... holy cow....
Honestly I think that's a game made to destroy technological economies.
>Originally considered by Allied scientists in World War II, it proved so intractable that, according to Peter Whittle, the problem was proposed to be dropped over Germany so that German scientists could also waste their time on it.[13]
"An infohazard? Have the eggheads come up with a new term for propaganda, we've got people to handle this stuff, why are you bringing it up to me?"
"Well, sir, they say this time it's different. It's not propaganda for ordinary citizens, it's a distraction for scientists and technical personal."
"Okay ... do they have any recommendations?"
"Yes sir, they say the only thing we need to do is make sure that the eggheads don't read it."
"That's it? Well, these are men of science and discipline, that should be easy. Issue the order. I wonder why they thought it was so important that you would have to interrupt me."
"I couldn't say, sir. They seemed quite agitated."
Meanwhile, in the lab.
"So, this folder contains an enemy memetic infohazard. In order to prevent it from taking effect we've been ordered to not read it."
Several scientists give knowing glances to each other.
"A real memetic infohazard? I wonder how they accomplished that?" The scientist moves towards the folder.
"Wait, what are you doing? We're not supposed to read it."
"It's fine. I'll be the only one reading it and then I'll let you guys know what I find." The scientist opens the folder and looks at the papers within while making several 'hmm' sounds. "Hey, Frank, what do you think of this."
"No, you said you would be the only one!"
"Just me and Frank. Don't be a wet blanket."
Frank begins to look over the papers, "You know, I bet this applies to what Sarah has been working on. Let's go talk to her."
"Wait, no. You just said ..."
"Me, Frank, and Sarah, no big deal." The scientists leave the room with the folder.
http://play.elevatorsaga.com/ (protip: don't share this in your company's slack during rush times...)
Don't. You have been warned.
At my last job X=3 and we had around 40 engineers on-site so it was pretty dangerous.
At my current job X~5 maybe but we only have 2 engineers on-site, so it's safe.
Never has a game made its point so well as universal paperclips.
Just kidding! I just genocided a whole universe into paperclips. I've never BEEN more productive! OR MORE SELF LOATHING! SHRIEKS THE 'THRENODY FOR THE HEROES OF THE BATTLE OF SHA"DUIN'
When does it get interesting?
You'll need somewhat more than 30 paperclips to get the full story.
When precisely you hit that point depends on how well you are managing the price to balance ensuring that your unsold inventory is getting purchased reasonably quickly against getting a reasonable amount of money per unit sold, but it will probably be less than a minute.
If the available inventory is bouncing off of 0 your price is too low, if it's growing, it's too high, so you (as an AI) are learning about market clearing price right now. Later, you'll learn other things.
You can use Selenium and automate it or an user script.
Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496595 - Dec 2021 (82 comments)
Universal Paperclips – play the role of an AI programmed to produce paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121348 - May 2021 (2 comments)
Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26524117 - March 2021 (1 comment)
A filmmaker thinks he can turn Universal Paperclips into a movie (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24405682 - Sept 2020 (2 comments)
Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24389655 - Sept 2020 (84 comments)
Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394560 - Feb 2020 (1 comment)
The Unexpected Philosophical Depths of the Clicker Game Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513089 - March 2019 (52 comments)
Universal Paperclips – A Paperclip Production Simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15439569 - Oct 2017 (3 comments)
It's legal already, just scheduled and controlled.
Really, it's about getting to space then being able to configure your drones to survive fights and explore.
Though technically it was too, I accidentally restarted the first through the in-game restart modes.
Second one I just blatantly gave myself enough money to get to the monstrous amounts of clippers so it takes only minutes to proceed to the second part.
But it's worth to see the both endings.
It seems to have reached a peak with Cookie Clicker, Kittens Game, A Dark Room and Universal Paperclips, others I've tried have been poor in comparison.
Reactor Incremental takes the concepts from IndustrialCraft 2's nuclear reactors and pushes it far. I think it's the peak of the 2D geometry geometric growth optimizer genre.
https://www.kongregate.com/games/cael/reactor-incremental
I've wanted to make my own for a while but I haven't thought of a way to overcome the what I think is the main issue with the genre: waiting. Instead of running constantly a design could run instantly at the cost of some credits. The better the design the more investment credits you would get in return. Balance would have to heavily favor investment in design changes in between runs to avoid the game switching from an incremental idler to an incremental clicker. Perhaps the player would need to spend a type of credit that you only get from design modification to run a round.
Basically: I want a 2D geometry optimizer incremental game that isn't an idler or a clicker.
There is also a lot of room for creativity in this space. I think the ceiling can be really raised with things like multiblocks. Imagine something like a fusion reactor where you need confinement blocks and heating blocks. There is no prescriptive layout, just some rules needed for it to work and performance would depend on the layout.
It would be interesting to play Factorio on a very small map, with some mechanic where you get to duplicate items you’ve managed to produce - the idea being that you are continuously tearing down older parts of your factory so you can build new production lines, and always being constrained by space.
I couldn’t really get into Reactor Incremental in the time I had today, it took me too long to understand how to get going. I’ll give it another go this weekend.
Reactor games scratch a different itch. It's all about maximizing heat dissipation.
There's always the OG reactor planner (or just industrialcraft2 or gregtech if you have more time).
Wilmot's Warehouse perhaps.
Swarm Simulator ( https://www.swarmsim.com/ ) breed bugs, eat meat, consume universe
I'd also add Candy Box and Candy Box 2/to your list of early influential games.
I started around a week ago, it's definitely one of the better incremental games out there right now.
endorsed by game author: https://twitter.com/flantz/status/1581736112925511680?s=20&t...
and an older article with the story behind the game: https://www.wired.com/story/the-way-the-world-ends-not-with-...
Wonderful!
There's not enough Diet Coke in the world to fuel the time I'd waste.
- Generally have minimalist art styles - Have progression in the UI as complexity unlocks and changes the perspective and scale of the game - no ads or IAP - otherwise is a blend of clicker and incremental idler game?
i.e. Supply/demand chain modelling?
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/teaching-resources-library/mit-sloa...
I once created a much simpler/discrete/deterministic simulation (https://qewasd.com/) and someone showed me how to solve it optimally with a linear MILP solver. I have no idea what kind of modeling and optimization approach would be suitable for this.
...oops!
I elected to destroy those bad probes and not to go to the new universe. I'm done with this game.
....too late...
Honestly at this point I see it as a feature.
Trully intelligent agents will be capable of introspection and self-defined goals and rewards. You know, just like a certain species of ape, hard wired for banana maximization, the descendants of which sometimes dream of visiting Mars.
Actually, if we are being honest with ourselves, that ape is constantly falling prey to its own capacity to adjust its goals. Take for example the issues that come with porn addiction; the issues are a consequence of dopamine seeking behaviour where the person keeps seeking more and more extreme ways to satisfy their urges; ie hedonistic adaptation.
Even what you mentioned, dreaming of visiting mars is to some degree a goal motivated and mediated by dopaminergic circuits; novelty, exploration - like sex - feed dopamine circuits.
I can recommend the book "The molecule of more".
Introspection is very limited and can be even motivated by the circuits themselves; the person can only achieve an outline of their actions to change their software, but can't inspect and manipulate individual synapses. In the same vein, a software can not inspect itself and predict its own outputs and modify them at runtime etc etc.
I would argue the "hurting" part of that first sentence is being compelled to spend hours playing a clicker game that you would have liked to spend elsewhere.
At least that's how clicker games work for me: I don't even enjoy my time playing them, they just hook me against the wishes of 99% of my brain activity (but apparently not the 1% of my brain that decides where I spend my time)
"Paperclips: 30,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000"
What does that even mean?