I spent a few chapters confused by the numbering before I realized they are in binary, lol.

Yea, it’s confusing trying to label the chapters, lol.

We find out the robots started as slaves fighting for their freedom, and it kind of turned into a genocide, then it became totalitarian under hive mind robots. This parallels many historical human events.

For me it hit home now. Feeling like a slave. Work work work, take all the cream, leave us with the milk.

The part where it talks about, “we were fine to do robotic tasks, as long as we could escape, in our heads”. I’m not quoting it quiet right. But the escape of entertainment.

The robot revolution felt good to me. Even though they were genocide-Ing us.

now here is where I think the metaphors become really interesting, I think these OWI's are metaphors for the 'machinery' behind ideologies. Robots lose their autonomy of thought and become one with the 'hive mind', and sacrifice themselves in an effort to make over the world in that ideology's image. They take over territory in its name. get your friends to "call you by name, talk sense to you, invite you to join your friends in eternity". Ted Kaczynski says that complex systems like this are able to perpetuate themselves and evolve, and essentially are beyond our control, and I think that these OWI's are a metaphor for this idea. I detect more than a hint of Kaczynski's ideas from this author. "Humanity forging its own extinction"

Piggy backing off of your thoughts:

Man, when you read his manifesto, it really hits home. Great mind, and he backed up his ideas. I think you are correct, it for sure sounds like Ted. And there is a shit ton of truth to the idea. It’s so great here, come and relax. Etc.

I think there’s alot of references to being on the couch, of sorts. Or choosing the easy path, the less scary path. Or choosing the more fulfilling path, the harder path.

Almost like this book is a reference to the constant strife we find our selves in. In society, do we participate to make things better, or go along with the flo?

“defined by the ability to violate one’s own programming’. I think this is true. This implies both self control, and the ability to think for oneself, and choose are what gives us sentience. Beings with less agency are less sentient, and more like automatons. We do tend to view killing plants as less immoral than killing animals, which is less immoral than killing humans, and I think this is due to the amount of sentience we perceive them as having. I think he is saying people who are sheeple or those who lack self control have less of a 'soul' and are inferior.

This is what defines us as humans. And if you are saying that about people, you are correct.

“cheap labor undermined the capitalist model destroying the need for a labor force….Ok, now I really like this guy, this is almost verbatim what I commented the future of AI looks like the other day in Zapped's post asking it. “We don’t control the means of production anymore” – have to cannibalize each other, interesting reference to Marx's Das Kapital I think he is also saying that humans are delusionally self important. "Respect for the dead is a human notion meant to imply that human life has meaning. It doesn’t. " He makes this clear in how he makes the free-robots just like humans in every way. He is saying that it dosent matter if we are made of flesh or metal, we aren't special. These robots aren't technically human, but in every way that counts they are, we arent any more special than they are. This sense leads people to do crazy and self-destructive things.

This concept really his home when they discuss planet conquering, and the idea that we may not be the only species out there.

All this was me piggy backing off of you. I’m going. To do my own comment and write up below, thanks for sharing.