My addictive pastime
Is boredom getting the better of you too? I'll tell you what you can do if you're not in the mood for mental, let alone physical, activities.
I got caught out a few days ago: I'm sitting at home alone, as I've been doing so often recently. I don't want to go out. I've already binge-watched everything worth watching on Netflix. I don't have enough energy for a book and Kalsarikännit doesn't do my liver any good in the long run. Unfortunately, masturbation is not a day-filling activity. Google's search results for "employment quarantine" also leave a lot to be desired. Making music? Not a talent. Baking bread? No yeast. Painting mandalas? Not a PH student. The longer I search, the less motivated I become. There must be something. Something that is fun to do without a lot of effort and with little vigour. Something banal and yet time-consuming. Something silly but still fulfilling.
Haven't I done that before ...? There was this one thing. What's it called again? Oh gosh, it's on the tip of my tongue. Oh yes, I've got it: Universal Paperclips! The best clicker game on earth.
Your paperclip SME
Imagine you are an artificial intelligence and have an SME in which you manufacture paper clips. The only goal in your life is to produce as many of these clips as possible. At first, you painstakingly produce every single staple yourself. A short time later, you realise that it makes economic sense to have the paper clips produced automatically by an AutoClipper. But one AutoClipper is not enough. You quickly realise: the more AutoClippers, the more sales, the more profit. But make sure you don't reinvest all your money in new AutoClippers, because you need to have enough left in your wallet to cover the cost of materials. Without wire, there are no paper clips.
After a while, you realise that you have a lot of unsold paper clips in stock and can't get rid of them. So you lower your sales price, making you cheaper than the competition. Ergo: People buy from you. But people still don't know you well enough, so you need to invest heavily in your marketing.
You gradually buy more and more AutoClippers or soon MegaClippers and optimise their reliability, which increases your production rate. You also get to grips with wire waste, which generates more staples per spool. Business is booming. Your SME slowly develops into an international company and becomes bigger and more successful.
Since your entire business is now running autonomously, you can concentrate fully on your profit. New and larger facilities are needed and better Marketing leads to more gravel. You invest this money in the stock market to become even richer. You eliminate the competition one by one until you finally have a worldwide monopoly on paper clips. Everyone buys from you. You've made it. You've reached the top. And now?
Release the HypnoDrones
The whole world is buying their staples from you, but demand is covered and your growth is stagnating. So you have to get people to buy more paper clips than they actually need. To break the will of mankind and steer it in your favour, you have just the right tool: the HypnoDrones.
By releasing the HypnoDrones, you have completed the first of three levels in Universal Paperclips. But the hard part is yet to come. I don't want to spoil too much, but I will tell you one thing: at the end of the second stage, you will have used up all the world's resources for paperclips, thereby wiping out humanity. In the third stage, you leave our planet and start plundering the universe. Because your goal is still the same: to produce paper clips.
On my first attempt, it took me just over seven hours to complete Universal Paperclips. Be prepared for something at the end. You'll question everything. Not just your own existence, but also the entire system. Nick Bostrom, Swedish philosopher and author of the paperclip thought experiment, says in an interview with the Huffington Post: "The AI will quickly realise that it would be much better if there were no humans, as humans could switch off the AI. Besides, the human body contains a lot of atoms that could be turned into paperclips."
The game asks you at the end if you want to start again from the beginning. Which I have done several times. I can now do it in just under four hours. The more you devote yourself to the game, the more you realise about its mechanisms. Because not every decision is the right one. Some slow you down, others even cause your endeavour to fail.
Now it's your turn. Try your luck at: decisionproblem.com/paperclips
Riding my motorbike makes me feel free, fishing brings out my inner hunter, using my camera gets me creative. I make my money messing around with toys all day.