Prescience


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Phaedrus
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Post by Phaedrus »

HoosierDaddy wrote:1. Paul chose the "disengage" path (amongst others he saw) in DM. That is prescient control IMO.
Not what I said. I said he didn't choose his visions, not that he didn't choose among them. He never saw the Golden Path, presumably among other things he didn't see. He just saw a certain number of visions that just "fell into" his head, to steal a Zensunni description.
2. Extrapolating to infinity was the basis for Einstein's E=MC2. Fourier infinite series IIRC.

I think the subject of past/present/future is important when discussing FH's prescience, because how would the oracle know when the vision is, what was the "true" past, and when is the present?
Extrapolation isn't using a figure in exact mathematics. It's a form of approximation, which is what I said, isn't it?

As for the quantum stuff, I intentionally didn't address that, because it's stupid. I don't think Frank Herbert was going for a 'consciousness causes collapse' theory to explain prescience. At least, I hope not. It always does amaze me, though, to see just how far people will stretch science for the hope that something like telekinesis is real.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpreta ... _.28PAP.29
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Post by HoosierDaddy »

Phaedrus wrote: Extrapolation isn't using a figure in exact mathematics. It's a form of approximation, which is what I said, isn't it?
I won't debate the other stuff since it is conjecture, but extrapolation isn't approximation.

Reminds me of a funny story of my Philosophy Logic 101 mid-term exam.

:P
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Post by HoosierDaddy »

OK since you asked. :lol:

The prof was a 1970's stoner. Long hair, red glasses, frequently referring to weed in his lectures. The subject matter was logic, not philosophy, which pissed me off. Logic aka high school geometry. Proofs, drawing boxes, modus ponens, modus tollens, etc.

Half score of the mid-term was a single, very complex, logic problem. Open book test. In desperation at test time, I thumbed quickly through the text, and found the exact problem and solution.

When he reviewed the mid-term test, he asked the class to turn to page 165 of the text. 2/3 of the class groaned, and 1/3 of the class leaned back and smiled.

Sweet memories!
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Post by Phaedrus »

HoosierDaddy wrote:I won't debate the other stuff since it is conjecture, but extrapolation isn't approximation.
If you took logic, you should know that extrapolation is inductive logic, and if used in math, it IS approximation. Extrapolation would be taking a few points, drawing a general curve, and then assuming that said curve is correct. In reality, it's just an approximation, because the actual points won't lie exactly on the curve(and sometimes, your induction will be incorrect, and your curve won't be accurate at all). All scientific equations are approximating, so any extrapolation in science has to be approximation. :?

Besides, I don't see how any of this contradicts my original statement that infinity is nonexistent in the real world. Extrapolation to infinity isn't the same as actual infinity. We use "infinity" in science and math because it's convenient, but it isn't accurate.
HoosierDaddy wrote:OK since you asked. :lol:

The prof was a 1970's stoner. Long hair, red glasses, frequently referring to weed in his lectures. The subject matter was logic, not philosophy, which pissed me off. Logic aka high school geometry. Proofs, drawing boxes, modus ponens, modus tollens, etc.
Most philosophers would have you think the two are connected. :wink:
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Post by HoosierDaddy »

Phaedrus wrote:
HoosierDaddy wrote:I won't debate the other stuff since it is conjecture, but extrapolation isn't approximation.
If you took logic, you should know that extrapolation is inductive logic, and if used in math, it IS approximation. Extrapolation would be taking a few points, drawing a general curve, and then assuming that said curve is correct. In reality, it's just an approximation, because the actual points won't lie exactly on the curve(and sometimes, your induction will be incorrect, and your curve won't be accurate at all). All scientific equations are approximating, so any extrapolation in science has to be approximation. :?

Besides, I don't see how any of this contradicts my original statement that infinity is nonexistent in the real world. Extrapolation to infinity isn't the same as actual infinity. We use "infinity" in science and math because it's convenient, but it isn't accurate.
HoosierDaddy wrote:OK since you asked. :lol:

The prof was a 1970's stoner. Long hair, red glasses, frequently referring to weed in his lectures. The subject matter was logic, not philosophy, which pissed me off. Logic aka high school geometry. Proofs, drawing boxes, modus ponens, modus tollens, etc.
Most philosophers would have you think the two are connected. :wink:
Saying that extrapolation is an approximation means that Newton's calculus is an approximation.

We must be arguing semantics here.
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Post by SandChigger »

HoosierDaddy wrote:We must be arguing semantics here.
Oh, goody! Does that mean I get to play, too?! :D
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Post by Phaedrus »

HoosierDaddy wrote:Saying that extrapolation is an approximation means that Newton's calculus is an approximation.

We must be arguing semantics here.
Uh, calculus by nature IS an approximation. All integrals and derivatives yield approximate values.
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Post by SandChigger »

Yes, but empiricism is historicism...or histrionics. Positivism is hermeneutics...or maybe hismeneutics.

Anyway, black is white, today is tomorrow, and in the final analysis, Kirk is Spock.

:?
"Let the dead give water to the dead. As for me, it's NO MORE FUCKING TEARS!"
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Post by HoosierDaddy »

Phaedrus wrote:
HoosierDaddy wrote:Saying that extrapolation is an approximation means that Newton's calculus is an approximation.

We must be arguing semantics here.
Uh, calculus by nature IS an approximation. All integrals and derivatives yield approximate values.
If you are serious, we have entered religious theory, not mathematics.

Be warned, I am a born again Pastafarian. I have truly been touched by his noodly appendages.

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Post by HoosierDaddy »

Further proof:

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Post by Phaedrus »

SandChigger wrote:Yes, but empiricism is historicism...or histrionics. Positivism is hermeneutics...or maybe hismeneutics.

Anyway, black is white, today is tomorrow, and in the final analysis, Kirk is Spock.

:?
If you are serious, we have entered religious theory, not mathematics.
What...?

Are you guys talking about a different calculus than me? :|
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Post by SandChigger »

I was talking about the stuff on my teeth...so, yeah. :P
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Post by HoosierDaddy »

Phaedrus wrote: What...?

Are you guys talking about a different calculus than me? :|
Just remember, don't offend The Spaghetti Monster. His divine powers promise stripper factories and beer volcanoes in your afterlife.

(I.E. not a supreme deity to be messed with)

:wink:
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Post by Freakzilla »

HoosierDaddy wrote:
Phaedrus wrote: What...?

Are you guys talking about a different calculus than me? :|
Just remember, don't offend The Spaghetti Monster. His divine powers promise stripper factories and beer volcanoes in your afterlife.

(I.E. not a supreme deity to be messed with)

:wink:
RAmen!
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Post by Fantômas »

Phaedrus wrote:(If anyone can remember a place where a prescient sees a past event happening differently, please tell me. It seems that this happens at one point, but I don't remember where. That would be conclusive evidence that a prescient can not only see what MAY happen, but what MAY HAVE happened, if things had been different.)
I do not know about the MAY part; Paul saw the Past by looking at records in the future.
Doesn't Paul have OM? why does Paul needs to look at the future to find about his and his mother's anscentry?

page 194 Ace hardcover edition: October 1999

I've walked the future, I've looked at a record, I've seen a place, I have all the data. We're Harkonnens.
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Post by Freakzilla »

fantomas wrote:
Phaedrus wrote:(If anyone can remember a place where a prescient sees a past event happening differently, please tell me. It seems that this happens at one point, but I don't remember where. That would be conclusive evidence that a prescient can not only see what MAY happen, but what MAY HAVE happened, if things had been different.)
I do not know about the MAY part; Paul saw the Past by looking at records in the future.
Doesn't Paul have OM? why does Paul needs to look at the future to find about his and his mother's anscentry?

page 194 Ace hardcover edition: October 1999

I've walked the future, I've looked at a record, I've seen a place, I have all the data. We're Harkonnens.
Paul had not yet taken the Water of Life at that point, so no, he did not have Other Memory yet.
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Post by orald »

And besides, even with full OM he can't see anything in the past that wasn't seen/learned about by his direct ancestors. That's pretty limited.
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Post by Freakzilla »

orald wrote:And besides, even with full OM he can't see anything in the past that wasn't seen/learned about by his direct ancestors. That's pretty limited.
True, but Jessica, her mother and Baron Harkonnen are direct ancestors.
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Post by orald »

Freakzilla wrote:
orald wrote:And besides, even with full OM he can't see anything in the past that wasn't seen/learned about by his direct ancestors. That's pretty limited.
True, but Jessica, her mother and Baron Harkonnen are direct ancestors.
I know, I was refering to seeing the past in general.
In memory of Perach, who suffered and died needlessly.

I wish I could have been with you that one last time.
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the nature of prescience

Post by Tycho »

i was going to start my own post about 'the nature of prescience' but then i found this and it seems like a rich discussion to add to
this is somewhat related to the 'pearls of consciousness' discussion, but i'll get to that later

When you talk about Dune, the major plot device is prescience - characters who can 'see' into the future. But is prescience itself the main theme, considering Herbert leaves its mechanics intentionally vague with clues scattered over thousands of pages, or is it merely a lens through which to view the real theme? IMO the main theme is the patterns of humanity/society on a historical or even evolutionary timescale. Hence the evoking of old feudalistic power structures and guilds and religions and more immediate motifs like sword-fighting, all of which seem initially jarring in a sci-fi setting. You don't need to hunt for clues with this theme, it's not indirect, it's actually tackled head-on both through plot development and explicit conversation and even the chapter epigraphs. Prescience, though, is more of a mystery.

I am going to employ a Dune-inspired model/analogy to describe prescience which may even be a metaphor Herbert intended. Remember the passage at the start of GEoD where Leto II describes his Worm-like sensitivity to physical phenomena, ending with the assertion that he is the greatest predator that ever existed (or ever will). Let's take that a step further:

When Leto II uses his prescience his mind becomes aware of a higher dimension (the books use this terminology), which consists of agency/will itself (... bear with me here). Just as the sandworm becomes aware of the slightest movement on the desert surface, the oracle becomes aware of the slightest CHANGE to the universe, or the slightest DECISION. Oracles have an ear to 'the Desert of Time' (to coin a new phrase).

Now, Guild Navigators have 'linear prescience' - they can only sense what follows on an inevitable path, which is ok when you're just trying to avoid comets and black holes. The whole universe is essentially linear, for while there is variation on the quantum level, on a grand scale, nothing changes the course of events, not even animals (which are unpredictable but only on a very local level)... EXCEPT that HUMAN BEINGS with consciousness and free will can change things and override the inevitability. Guild Navigators cannot project how human-driven events might pan out, but the kwisatz-haderach has the ability/knowledge (probably through OM and life experience and/or mentat projection) to envision these futures.

BUT there is noise. The worm in the desert can hear the masses moving about the cities, but it's all just random, conflicting noise. But say people in the city organized a mass rally/march, that would form a strong enough pattern/signature for the worm to distinguish; or if someone set out onto the desert floor, away from the noise, the worm can hone in on their signal. Similarly, the Desert of Time vibrates with the signal of countless decisions, but the oracle can only hear broader patterns of many inter-connected signals. (somewhat like how an individual neuron firing means nothing, but a whole set firing can indicate a specific thought/action)

What a kwisatz-haderach does is detect the signatures of all the social structures, all the economic systems, all the key players with minions, all the 'invisible parts of society.' Every decision no matter where in the universe is instantly reflected in the higher dimension, the Desert of Time, and fed back to the oracle. The more important the decision, and the more people involved, the clearer an oracle can discern it. This is how Leto II, Paul and Alia can be 'many places at once,' and use their OM and knowledge to interpret the signatures. They see the currents of time, the convection building up and the patterns that will follow. That puts them at a crucial advantage, because the members of any system might not even be aware of its workings; Leto II could stop whatever plans they have in their tracks simply by disrupting enough inputs into their system.

The Fremen knew how to walk on the desert without the worm hearing them. Siona was a human who could change the course of history without creating a discernible pattern (beforehand) on the Desert of Time. She possessed a degree of unpredictability and independence that kept her exempt from typical social patterns and prescient monitoring. Think about it - she practically alone has the will power to take down a God and an empire. She's not a BG or BT pawn. This is the independence and unpredictability that Leto II wanted to breed into the race, in contrast to the patterns and predictability of history.

(sidenote: The Dune tarot muddies the future for oracles because a large number of people leave their decisions to pure chance, taking them outside any systems whose patterns the oracle may be familiar with.)

So on one hand prescience seems more like deep understanding of human behaviour, but on the other hand it does require some sort of super-natural sensitivity to decision making based on some higher dimension. We turn now to the question of whether an oracle affects the future through vision alone, or whether vision-inspired actions are the only thing that can 'lock-in' a particular path/destiny. I have not searched every novel for quotes, but I have found plenty and they are somewhat inconclusive.

Paul talked of being a chip on the wave of destiny, he could see where the current of time was taking him but couldn't do anything about it. How could this be? What would be the point of prescience in that case? Well let's suppose Paul initially sensed the various signatures, the various currents of time that flowed into the future, and found uncertainty as to how they would interact and CREATE the future. He wants certainty, he wants to know what WILL happen not what might happen, so he continually manipulates events with his political power until his visions become clearer. Unfortunately this proves his undoing as a) he has set forces in motion that are impossible for him to stop/change, and b) knowing exactly what is going to happen and not being able to do anything about it is lethally boring. So that's one interpretation.

However, Leto II set humanity along his Golden Path, a vision of how events should unfold after his death, and the BG believed that his posthumous 'unending dream' in the remaining pearls of his divided consciousness constituted a prescient vision that actively BOUND humans to a particular destiny. ie. the vision alone had influence. How could this be? How could a vision alone effect events without physical action? Well in forming a vision of the future, the oracle has to change variables (if the BG do THIS instead of THAT then... etc), or at least follow some possibilities over others. In order to generate a clear path the oracle must make many choices along the tree of possible paths, and I think the suggestion is that since the oracle is interacting with this higher dimension, those vision-choices feedback into the system and increase the probability of them being realized 'when the time comes.' So that's another interpretation. I think it's supported by the foregrounding Herbert gives it at the end of HoD. If it was supposed to be a misinterpretation on the part of the BG, I doubt FH would have made it the centre of attention.

IMO the point to take about prescience is that it's not just some dumb 'this is what's going to happen, dude' schtick, it relates to Herbert's ruminations about the patterns of history and the truth of human motivations. One thing I'd like to note here is how Herbert's original moment of inspiration for Dune came when he flew over roadside sand-dunes while writing a report on a government terraforming project, and he observed:

"...A sand dune is just a kind of fluid, only it takes longer for it to move. It creates waves that, when you see them from the air, are analogous to waves in a sea."

So there you have the idea of an unnoticed dynamic only apparent with the longterm passage of time. That goes to the heart of things.



... or, you know, something like that
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Re: Prescience

Post by Enno »

Continued from chapter 3 in Reading Group<Dune page 2
SandChigger wrote:
Alpha Carinae wrote:
Freakzilla wrote:
Alpha Carinae wrote:
Enno wrote:Moot or not its still cool to think about.
The only issue I have with that description of prescience is that it sounds like what you desribe is a mentat projection.
Absolutely it's cool to think about...

Then again that discussion is riddled with spoilers! :|

Mentat projection is a way of 'seeing' possible futures, but the oracles in Dune go a little bit further thanks to umm... things they have which mentats don't. :wink:

But hey this is all just my interpretation. :)
...add to that intimate knowledge of the past through other memory...
This is kind of the main thing I was trying to avoid saying. heheh. I guess in the context of Mohiam, this isn't a spoiler.

But yeah, while mentats get ridiculous amounts of training to compute data and make predictions, RMs get crazy training in obtaining data, the massive wealth of OM, and the added bonus of breeding and lots of drugs. Whether you call that prescience or educated guessing... *shrug*.

For me at least, I like the more down-to-earth scientific approach rather than a more mystical interpretation: Prescience is just making predictions about possible futures; some people are better at it than others, some people are lots better at it than others.
We really can't go into it here without spoiling, but I will again voice my objection to Prescient = Mentat + OM
I hope I havent made this leap in error but this did seem a better place to go. Looks like ive got some more reading to do before making any bold statements.
So the two theories we are looking at are The Educated Guess and the Little Something Extra?
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Re: Prescience

Post by Alpha Carinae »

I think everyone in that thread was being intentionally vague to avoid spoiling the story for you and other people who might read that thread in the future. The mechanics of prescience in Dune is really fascinating and in my experience (outside of this board at least, since I'm a newb too :wink: ) people seem to approach it from different angles when they're essentially speaking about the same thing.

I'm not sure about any formal theories but I think the issue here is that since there are various levels of prescient ability described in the books, where do you draw the line and say "This character is prescient and this character is not"?

Is Mohiam's insight that is hinted at in Chapter 3 of Dune (and other places) essentially the same process as a "prescient" but diminished, or is it something else entirely?

Personally, I'm inclined to think that, whatever you want to call it, it's the same basic process but with less umm... power than a guild prescient. But I'm sure other interpretations are equally, if not more, valid.

Also by the way, it's something which is developed and hinted at later than chapter 3, which is another reason for the vaguery. :)
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Re: Prescience

Post by Enno »

I gotta go with the Something Extra way of looking at prescience. Prescient = Mentat + OM couldnt possibly work for guild navigators and the whole thing about not seeing other prescient people doesnt work with an educated guess even if they do know what theyre talking about. With that in mind I do think that Mohiam made an educated guess when she said for the father nothing shes the truthsayer to the emperor and would surely know about the Arrakis trap. The words she uses are like a horoscope in that shes vague enough to be able to claim meaning afterwards no matter what happens. Cmon,"Your son will pay with you... Everymans hand turned against you." The attack is coming and these statements are true even if Paul and Jessica die at the hands of the Harkonnens.
Different levels of prescient ability? Sure. Different methods of employing that ability? Ok. Different basic kinds of prescience? Doubtfull.
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Re: Prescience

Post by Freakzilla »

I see prescience and OM as opposite sides of the same coin, probably repeatedly, in this topic.

Both RMs and Navigators are missing different parts of the equation but both result in a limited form of prescience. Much more so for the BG than the SG.

It is my theory that this is a male/female issue more than an OM/Math issue.
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Re: Prescience

Post by Enno »

Im taking the view that prescience is seeing the future. Anyone can make predicitions and smarter people can do better but that doesnt compare with actually seeing possibilities and I think that prescient people not being able to see each other is proof of a Something Extra type of ability. Other memory added to mentat projection will produce prediction but its only an educated guess and wouldnt have the problem of leaving out other prescients.
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