Author | Lightnews

tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 55m

🙌

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 1h

aha.

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 1h

hm, `bad request` when I run it locally

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 3h

"norvid, the trickster character from native american mythology?"

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 4h

a pit filled with burning coal, a new mountain and a new lake, and a forest of trees snapped as if by a great wind— this seems like a possible oral history of a volcanic eruption

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 19h

I noticed recently that norvid.net is taken... 👀

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 1d

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 1d

I, Robot [the Milton Friedman piece on the coordination and arbitrage of teleoperated labor across vast distances via the free market]

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

"delete your account" [derogatory] vs. "delete your account" [approbative]

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

I'm sympathetic to those who are squicked out by this, but my personal view is closer to "transactional markets + rule of law is unsurpassed for resource allocation and human flourishing"

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

having a captive human-shaped thing is psychologically slave-owning shaped, even if it isn't actually that, but (so the argument would go) your primitive emotions don't know that

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

this one
bsky.app/profile/tbab...

tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

yeah, I could buy that there is a kind of third-order effect where it's not actually causing any direct harm, but teaching people something bad psychologically. "it's okay to own sentient entities"

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

fuck. perfect post. 10/10

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Reposted by tbabb

norvid_studies @norvid-studies.bsky.social · 2d

chinese roomba

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

w.r.t. the "psychological effects on the robot owners" arguments, for those that are squicked, would it be less squicky if the teleoperated robot were not human-shaped?

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

I do think it would be good and ~cost-free for us as a society to be more aware and appreciative of the human costs we pay constantly

not sure what my point is here exactly, ig

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

do they have to be milked so thoroughly for their labor at minimum cost?

unclear, actually. it is the system of incentives that keeps this all working. if we could optimize effort using a method different from capitalism, maybe we should do that, but what is that, then?

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

it does reach down into things like the toil of a farm worker, who is in fact contributing to the holy duty of keeping famine at bay and food affordable for everyone

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

the american civil war, WWI and II; even ""mundane"" risky life-critical jobs like firefighter, we treat spending human life as a justified cost for keeping this all going

seems right in those cases. but also to be treated with extreme reverence and care (wrt "where is the line")

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

one vibey pattern match that I have here is past cases where people have willingly given their lives to protect the functioning of civilization

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

is it getting Asimov-y in here, or is it just me

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

(straying from the topic at hand into the abstract here)

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

not using this to justify any particular harm, the present one included, just that I rank "civilization functioning properly" as of very high importance

it is so easy to forget the horrors we've banished that drove us build it in the first place

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

in my morality, the enemy is the great uncaring void, and it is the purpose of Man to build a berm against it and carve out a livable area of warmth and comfort where things like "caring" can survive, and that this is a great and difficult task with costs, but the alternative is oblivion

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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 2d

I think this is more likely than a lot of people give credit for

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