Neither does “be evil”. Don’t anthropomorphize the paperclip maximizer.

Was the greatest trick that Page, Brin, and Schmidt ever pulled, convincing the world that they don't exist?

No, that's ridiculous. There are real people making real fortunes here. If they're not ethical, it doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to point that out.

i have no idea what that means.

This game explains the paperclip maximizer: http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

No? Not as far as I can see. This is better:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...

You haven't played it long enough to see how it becomes the paperclip maximizer, I posted the link to the game because everyone can find the Wikipedia link.

i can and did look it up, since i hadn't heard of it before. however, that doesn't answer the question as to what the commenter meant with their comment in the context of my reply. i meant "that" as in their whole comment in context.

I think the idea is that a goal maximizer can create evil actions even in the absence of evil intent.