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Butlerian jihad

noun

Etymology

From Butlerian + jihad (“holy war, crusade”), from the science fiction epic Dune (1965). Butlerian refers to English novelist Samuel Butler, whose 1872 work Erewhon describes a society that destroys all complex machines preemptively out of fear of their replacement by those very machines.

  1. borrowed from جِهَاد
  2. formed as butlerian jihad — “Butlerian + jihad”

Definitions

  1. A war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”)…

    A war waged in the Duneverse by the last free humans against autonomous (“thinking”) machines; the Great Revolt.

    • At the time of the Butlerian Jihad, Omnius and his thinking machines had held all of the “Synchronized Worlds” in an iron grip for a thousand years.

  2. A notional large-scale and vehement opposition to and suppression of artificial…

    A notional large-scale and vehement opposition to and suppression of artificial intelligence.

    • Well, Daniel Kokotajlo, thank you so much. And I will see you on the front lines of the Butlerian Jihad soon enough.

  3. Alternative letter-case form of Butlerian jihad

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for Butlerian jihad. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA