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Universal Paperclips
- gwbrooks 4y agoGive me a laptop with Universal Paperclips and No Man's Sky? There's not enough Diet Coke in the world to fuel the time I'd waste.
- J_tt 4y agoI just lost 4 engineers (including myself) a whole afternoon of work to this :(
- TheLocehiliosan 4y agoNope. You will not suck me back in. Not today!
- lowbloodsugar 4y agoMaybe you could just leave it in another window…
- justusthane 4y agoHaha I know, I had to hurriedly close the tab as soon as I saw the paperclip box.
- dang 4y agoRelated: Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29496595 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27121348 - May 2021 (2 comments) Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26524117 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24405682 - Sept 2020 (2 comments) Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24389655 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24389655 - Sept 2020 (84 comments) Universal Paperclips - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394560 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513089 - March 2019 (52 comments) Universal Paperclips – A Paperclip Production Simulator - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15439569 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15439569 - Oct 2017 (3 comments)
- Mathnerd314 4y agoSeems like it gets popular about once a year.
- mikewarot 4y agoI ran through it 100 times, that was enough. Long covid gives you lots of time for silly things like that. 8(
- w-ll 4y agoIt just says "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?
- paulannesley 4y agoProbably means that you played and completed it some time ago, and the state is still in your browser's Local Storage. (Mine was too)
- w-ll 4y agoThe atoms in my brain must have been recycled into paperclips
- Aaron2222 4y agoIt means a lot of paperclips (about 20% the mass of the observable universe by my calculations, assuming 1 gram per paperclip and using Wikipedia's definition of 1.5e53 kg for the observable universe).
- literalAardvark 4y agoYeah it means he won the game. Sadly your post is a major spoiler for those new to this wonderful game.
- jmpman 4y agoI’ve read there’s a push to legalize cocaine. I’m willing to make Universal Paperclips illegal in exchange for cocaine legalization. Overall harm reduction.
- gonzo41 4y agoWhat a wonderfully fun and dangerous thing to find during the workday.
- nigerianbrince 4y agoAh shit, here we go again.
- NKosmatos 4y agoA warning to fellow HNers that are not familiar with universal paperclips. Please don’t click the link as it will create a black time hole that will start absorbing your time and reduce your productivity. 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 :-)
- coldpie 4y agoI clicked the button until it said 30, clicked all the other buttons a few times and nothing happened, then closed the tab. I guess I'm immune. When does it get interesting?
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoIt gets interesting once you see that hypno drones are something that you can save up for and buy. You're an AI, so the ability to influence the humans around you is useful. You'll need somewhat more than 30 paperclips to get the full story.
- coldpie 4y agoSo, the first thing happens at 31? 500?
- __MatrixMan__ 4y agoI don't know. I'm at 16,285 and stuff is happening. If you optimize your price and invest in auto clippers it shouldn't take too long to really get rolling. 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.
- dottedmag 4y ago50 or 100
- 4y ago
- Lio 4y agoIs this related to John Sterman's Beer Game? i.e. Supply/demand chain modelling? https://mitsloan.mit.edu/teaching-resources-library/mit-sloan-beer-game-online https://mitsloan.mit.edu/teaching-resources-library/mit-sloa...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- checkyoursudo 4y agoOne thing I enjoyed was to write some automation to play UP. That became another game for me in its own right.
- somat 4y agoI can't help but cheat in this game, the source is there, in well written javascript, after a while, I go, "well I will just get over this next hump and give myself a few dozen dingleberrys(or whatever resource is next in the techtree)", after all the only person I am hurting is myself... And it is a clicker game... The lowest and most insidious form of gaming. Honestly at this point I see it as a feature.
- iNic 4y agoWhat I love is that this exact behavior is one of the minor problems of advanced AI. How can we make sure that a sufficiently advanced AI doesn't just edit it's reward center? Usually called wire-heading or reward hacking. Humans do it too :)
- redox99 4y agoThat's basically just a matter of the inputs and outputs of the AI.
- iNic 4y agoIf the AI has sufficient "real life" access, think a robot body, then it can do wire-heading. Assuming it is smarter than us, and we have thought of this idea - it will also think of this idea. Now it doesn't have a reason anymore to do anything else (except maybe kill all humans so that we don't stop it from wire-heading).
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoNot necessarily; the AI could figure out how to change the world - without achieving the task - such that the RF is maximized.
- manholio 4y agoLike in the NI case, it's conceivable that only the most rudimentary artificial intellects will fall pray to this self hacking. 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.
- nirse 4y agoNooooo! Can anyone remove this post? I can't stand another round of paperclip addiction!!!!! HEEEEEEELP!!!
- agubelu 4y agoAnother productivity black hole: Antimatter Dimensions https://ivark.github.io/ https://ivark.github.io/
- xnorswap 4y agoAlso available as an android app (tweaked with arguably better pacing in the early game). I started around a week ago, it's definitely one of the better incremental games out there right now.
- agubelu 4y agoIt's personally my favorite incremental game. And the Android app is even more dangerous, because you can procrastinate anytime, anywhere (plus the interface is arguably better than the web app)
- ndsipa_pomu 4y agoThat's a great little idle game. There's some real challenges that are tricky to complete and it doesn't penalise you for not keeping it running - you can just leave it churning away and return to it later. My one complaint is that the "Studies" has a "To be continued" button at the bottom, but it hasn't been yet.
- jayknight 4y agoI can finish UP in a day if I really lean into it. This one takes weeks to get through, and I've done it multiple times.
- krater23 4y agoPlease! Not again! ....too late...
- acutesoftware 4y agoOh that's just great - I was planning to muck about with some odd coding tonight, but I guess I'll be playing this (awesome) game again.
- arc-in-space 4y agoOh, god, not again, I was intending to do work today.
- simonh 4y agoIt could be worse, you could have just lost The Game. ...oops!
- pietroppeter 4y agoa recent podcast on the game: https://caneandrinse.com/universal-paperclips/ https://caneandrinse.com/universal-paperclips/ endorsed by game author: https://twitter.com/flantz/status/1581736112925511680?s=20&t=k8CXPOE1wceVfPPT4fT0Cg 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-a-bang-but-a-paperclip/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-way-the-world-ends-not-with-...
- willemlabu 4y agoThis reminds me of another excellent time sink game: http://clickingbad.nullism.com/ http://clickingbad.nullism.com/
- rpigab 4y agoLooks fun, but I'm too lazy to not open the js console and type: clipClick(100)
- mr_ploppy 4y agoAfter 30 minutes I managed to close the browser. I feel like I danced with the devil, but then managed to run out and get in an Uber while they were in the bathroom.
- literalAardvark 4y agoIf you've never played it, it's worth finishing once for the "story" and takes less than 10 hours if you grok exponential growth quick enough.
- throw2500 4y agoDoes it have a branch where you hack your own utility function and gain +infinity utility?
- dllthomas 4y agoKinda!
- bena 4y agoThere's an optimal path that can get you to the end in 3 to 4 hours. Really, it's about getting to space then being able to configure your drones to survive fights and explore.
- Damogran6 4y agoHow many playthroughs did it take for you to find this?
- justsomehnguy 4y agoOne is enough. 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.
- carl_dr 4y agoHave there been any recent, good games of this genre? 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.
- polyx_ 4y agoAntimatter Dimensions is another really good one, focused on different kinds of prestiges and BIIIG numbers and by big I mean 1e100000 big
- willis936 4y agoClickers cross over with idle/incremental games. Both genres are rife with dark patterns and player exploitation, but there are some notable exceptions. 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 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.
- carl_dr 4y agoI assume you’ve played Factorio? 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.
- kregasaurusrex 4y agoThis game provides more satisfaction than solving a difficult coding contest problem. Some may treat it as a time sink; I see it as an allegory for our species as a whole. Is this the logical conclusion for humanity? To make paperclips?
- LoveMortuus 4y agoWow! This game is amazing, It'll suck your time away though~
- amelius 4y agoHas anyone attempted yet to run a reinforcement learning strategy on it?
- axiolite 4y agoAnd here's the solution: https://marclitchfield.github.io/paperclips-auto/ https://marclitchfield.github.io/paperclips-auto/
- uni_baconcat 4y agoLike this kind of game.
- residualmind 4y ago> Investment engine upgraded, expected profit/loss ratio now 0.5800000000000001| Wonderful!
- ubermonkey 4y agoYOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW
- LoganDark 4y agoThis game reminds me of Candy Box! https://candies.aniwey.net/ https://candies.aniwey.net/ and https://candybox2.github.io/ https://candybox2.github.io/
- mdtrooper 4y agoWow the games was great, and now they are still great.
- motohagiography 4y agoHN needs Universal Paperclips to convince us that reading or commenting here most days for years on end is a better use of our lives. It's simulations all the way down.
- bvrmn 4y agoWow. 4 hours of my life have disappeared.
- bmacho 4y agoTab crashed when quantum something option appeared. Never again.
- MVorlm 4y agoIt still doesn't save state between reloads or prevent accidentally page refreshes and that makes me sad(still)
- mlyle 4y agohuh? Universal Paperclips has persisted states between reloads for a long time. I just went there and picked back up from my 6 months-ago game.
- 7373737373 4y agoIt's a very interesting optimization problem to try to beat such games in the least time possible. I once created a much simpler/discrete/deterministic simulation (https://qewasd.com/ 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.
- dxuh 4y agoThis did indeed consume my day whole, but it was amazing. This is one of the best games I have ever played. The shift in scale is funny and shocking and it's a nice way to experience principles like supply and demand. Its great at transitioning between different games that all kind of have something to do with paperclips, but are essentially different, though in the same genre. And it does it with almost unstyled buttons and text and not much more. I'll buy a shirt!
- windock 4y agoI just finished it too. It was really an unproductive but happy day.
- WirelessGigabit 4y agoThere goes my afternoon. Thanks!
- vital_beach 4y agothis is game is why i figured out how to use xdotool to make an autoclicker
- micahbule 4y ago
- bherb 4y agoThis, together with lichess, allowed me to wasted 50% of my day... \0/
- gwnywg 4y agoIt was the first time I have seen some numbers. I elected to destroy those bad probes and not to go to the new universe. I'm done with this game.
- jdkee 4y agoThanks, just lost 7 hours of time.
- ryanmercer 4y agoDiscovered this a few months ago, have lost so many hours of my life to doing it over and over.
- shostack 4y agoI'm a big fan of the genre, but is there a sub genre term to describe games that: - 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?
- _def 4y agoOkay this stole my day as well, but honestly I'm impressed by the creativity and also the performance of the thing