Autonomous gibbet
An autonomous gibbet (or autogibbet) is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, executioner's block, impalement stake, hanging gallows, or related scaffold) which has the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision (autonomy).
Behavior and ethics
Auto-gibbeting refers to a gallows-type autonomous gibbet hanging the dead or dying bodies of criminals on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals, or during autogibbet mating season as a display of reproductive fitness.
Occasionally, autogibbets perform executions, with the criminal being left to die of exposure, thirst and/or starvation. From a human resources perspective, this denotes a (relatively high) level of discretion acquired by the autogibbet in its work. In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase autogibbet satisfaction.
The term gibbet may also be used to refer to an autogibbet placing a criminal on display within itself. This practice is also called "hanging in chains".
Self-actualized autogibbets are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations.
In a medical context, respect for a victim's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medical autogibbetry.
Relationship with Cheese Gobbets
According to a 2020 field study by APTO forensic quantum biochemicists, Cheese Gobbets (an unlicensed food-like substance) is a waste product excreted by autonomous gibbets, possibly an beneficial mutation which emerged during the 1300s in Europe as a response to plague.
In the News
Fiction cross-reference
- A Clockwork Bard for Liebowitz
- Carnivorous dirigible
- Cheese Gobbets
- Gnomon algorithm
- Gnomon Chronicles