Eh, maybe. Back during feudalism, emancipation of serfs was also considered theft from the nobles who owned the land (and thus the serfs who worked it).

Sometimes governments implemented programs to reimburse the nobles for losing “their” serfs, and sometimes not. Now that we’re a couple centuries removed from that drama, we generally accept that the destruction of feudalism was a good thing, regardless of whether it was theft.

Not that I was ever interested in being military, but I was at a lunch with two older lifelong army retirees. They kept talking about how military service broke their bodies and politicians won’t cover their medical costs. These injuries were independent of any combat: It’s just expected that you sell every part of yourself when you sign up.

Who wants to be 45 years old with a limp, be unable to hear a quiet conversation, and have horrible back problems?

is it dishonorable to find loopholes in the rules of the honor culture

Dueling culture in 18th and 19th century Europe was commonly organized around concepts of “gentlemanly honor”. Even back then, people recognized the need for loopholes.

Consider the case of two friends who got drunk at a tavern, each one declaring how much they loved the other. Eventually, one friend goes overboard “I love you more than you know!” to which the response is “But that cannot be, for my love of you is infinite!”. Soon this becomes an argument over who loves the other more, and eventually they have to settle their friendship like gentlemen: With swords at dawn. If they’re smart and sober up in time, their seconds will work out a solution before the fight, but there are cases recorded where the friends kill each other because honor trumps love.

There were also loopholes which worked to favor the person that society already deemed more “honorable” (wealthy, connected, liked, etc). It was generally accepted that a gentleman of certain standing could honorably refuse another’s challenge to duel if their social stations were different. Think a “new money” banker’s son challenging a minor nobleman over a loan that’s due. It simply wouldn’t look good to have some commoner slaying an aristocrat, even if said aristocrat was an asshole.

In the future, I highly recommend using Kimwipes to clean off your lenses day-to-day. They’re little papers designed to wipe off lab equipment without leaving any scratches or residue, and you don’t need to spray them with any cleaner either. Just a dry wipe until the lenses are clean. If I’m careful about how I use them, a wipe can be reused 2-3 more times before disposal.

Since I started using them, I’ve never had problems with the antiglare coating coming off.

Hmm, I can’t grow peppermint in the recess, but maybe around the dome would work?

Good point about the escape route possibly making things worse. There’s plenty of evidence that previous owners have dealt with rodent issues, so I wouldn’t want to reintroduce that possibility.

Oh, judicial duels have always been bad, tending to favor the wealthy who can afford training. The pistol duel was once considered egalitarian because you were just as likely to miss your opponent regardless of how much you trained. For most of the 20th century (until the 90s) Uruguay had legalized dueling. It was mostly used by politicians and the powerful to muder journalists and lawyers who “defamed” them.

But if we are already living in a period where the rich act with impunity anyway, I want a world where there’s a nonzero chance that we get to watch Elon Musk take an estoc to the face because of a twitter argument.

Grand journeys to far off lands. The kind of journey where someone who is “exotic” and personable can make a life for themselves by being the court foreigner.

Also: Judicial duels. They are unjust, unethical, and unproductive, but damn if I don’t want to see white collar criminals have to fight the selected champion of all the folks they ripped off. Of course, being a billionaire would probably buy you a pretty good champion yourself, so we’d also have to bring back old concepts of honor to compel them to represent themselves.

Barony is fun as hell. Engine is FOSS, but the default game assets require purchase.

You’ve laid out one potential development cycle: FOSS from the get-go, and open collaboration welcome.

However, that’s not the only way that a FOSS game might be developed. The code could be freely licensed, but the upstream developers refuse to accept outside patches. In that case, there’s one “original” and then if you don’t like it, build your fork.

Alternatively, a game could be developed entirely in-house under proprietary licenses, and then only made FOSS upon commercial release. Contributor patches could improve the project, but conception of the game would be entirely the domain of its original developers.

“What’s up dog turds?”

“How’s it hanging, dingleberry?”

“Nice job, Captain Hazelwood!”

I do actually know someone who speaks like this.

The stop button problem is not yet solved. An AGI would need a the right level of “corrigability”: a willingness allow humans to stop it when undertaking incorrect behavior.

An AGI that’s incorrigible might take steps to prevent itself being shut off, which might include lying to its owners about its own goals/internal state, or taking physical action against an attempt to disable it (assuming it can).

An AGI that’s overly corrigible might end up making an association “It’s good when humans stop me from doing something wrong. I want to maximize goodness. Therefore, the simplest way to achieve a lot of good quickly is to do the wrong thing, tricking humans into turning me off all the time”. Not necessarily harmful, but certainly useless.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TYT1QfdfsM

I think there are real concerns to be addressed in the realm of AGI alignment. I’ve found Robert Miles’ talks on the subject to be quite fascinating, and as such I’m hesitant to label all of Elizier Yudkowsky’s concerns as crank (Although Roko’s Basilisk is BS of the highest degree, and effective altruism is a reimagined Pascal’s mugging for an atheist/agnostic crowd).

Even while today’s LLMs are toys compared to what a hypothetical AGI could achieve, we already have demonstrable cases where we know that the “AI” does not “desire” the same end goal that we desire the “AI” to achieve. Without more advancement in how to approach AI alignment, the danger of misaligned goals will only grow as (if) we give AI-like systems more control over daily life.

“There’s a thing I’m unfamiliar with”

I only go with SI units: Gigabucks

Anyone in possession of a billion dollars is a Gigabuckaroo

I got to know the old guy who ran the electronics section at a local thrift store. Eventually, he took me to the back room where he inspected all the equipment before putting it on sale.

On a workbench, there was a complete Apple II+ with peripherals, software, manuals, and expansion boards. $250 and it was mine.