Counterpoint: A paperclip maximizer is a good thing. Paperclips are very useful. In conjunction with most surfaces, they can be used as musical instruments, ak

Counterpoint: A paperclip maximizer is a good thing. Paperclips are very useful. In conjunction with most surfaces, they can be used as musical instruments, akin to drumsticks or fingerpicks. Being much cheaper than recorders, they would serve as an excellent way to instill a sense of rhythm into children. If you bend them in a certain way, they make quite satisfying and very stable hangers. Who among us has not needed to hang something in place before? If you put one in the back of a TV, you can pick up plenty of ASTV channels, most likely including your local news. This is deeply good for public education and awareness. If you put one in a radio, you can pick up radio channels. Without too much effort, they could also be used to replace the tuners and volume knobs on one. They work very well as stands for all sorts of things if slightly deformed, which can be deeply useful. You can use sufficiently large ones (known in most markets by the affectionate moniker of "jumbo" paper clips) to teach people how to tie knots, in a manner that requires less mechanical dexterity than most rope. If you peel the end of one out, it makes a delightful pinhole puncher, which is very useful for certain styles of photography. This isn't even getting into all of the remarkable ways you can use them with paper! And if you're paperless, it would be hard to think of a more efficient way of making the perfect-sized USB stick keychain for precisely your amount of USB sticks. Please do not slander paperclips; we need a paperclip maximizer for the good of society, and little would be a better short-term goal for AI research.