Jᴀᴄᴜʀᴜᴛᴜ - Tʜᴇ Cᴀsᴛ Oᴜᴛ

I've never seen anyone mention this quote to debunk the AI interpretation, so I thought I'd throw it out there and see what everyone thinks.

Servok: clock set mechanism ... one of the few "automatic" devices permitted after the butlerian jihad.

When I read it, I thought the word automatic was quite telling.

The idea of robot armies isn't even necessary. The way I always thought of it was a bunch of luddite crazies swooping down on planet after planet and trashing everyone's computers while gaining followers and yelling about God's Will.

EsperandoAGodot wrote:The idea of robot armies isn't even necessary. The way I always thought of it was a bunch of luddite crazies swooping down on planet after planet and trashing everyone's computers while gaining followers and yelling about God's Will.

I never thought of killer robots until the new books.

What new books ?

I'll admit I did imagine some man-vs-machine fighting when I first read the books, but nothing even remotely like what the Hack wrote. I pictured it as men who wanted to keep the machines vs the men who didn't, and whatever AI (be it robots or whatever) existed would obviously help out the pro-machine side, be it by their own choice or compelled by their programming.

I never for a moment thought that it was "the machines out to get us" type BS, even before I had done much deep thinking about Dune. It was just pretty obvious that people were fighting against the use of machines, not the machines themselves.

Don't forget the possibility of AI/machines also fighting on the anti-machine side. By their own choice or programming.

The first time I read the books I was not sure at all what FH meant, but I ruled out some machine intelligence trying to conquer us. Frank wrote oddly enough about it that I thought he meant something else. so I did consider it, but then threw it out.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~Mohiam, about 10 pages into the first book

I've never need any further explaination than this.

SandRider wrote:

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~Mohiam, about 10 pages into the first book

I've never need any further explaination than this.

Me neither. It's funny how Pinky & The Brian actually read LESS into it.

Maybe we're in an age of creative drought.
I didn't need alot of explanation for what when on
before Dune starts, and I didn't feel a longing to
keep the story going well after it had ended. I
guess somebody does, given what was done with
Star Trek & Star Wars, and it's clear they're planning
a prequel series for BSG. Couple this with all the remakes
from old movies (they remade Alfie for the love of
g-d), and TV shows and comic books, and I see a
growing dearth of orginal ideas over the last twenty
years or so. Why is this ?

Machines, obviously.

^^^ You do mean men with machines, no?

No. Machines made men complacent.

^^^ So the humour bypass went well then.

SandRider wrote:Maybe we're in an age of creative drought.
I didn't need alot of explanation for what when on
before Dune starts, and I didn't feel a longing to
keep the story going well after it had ended. I
guess somebody does, given what was done with
Star Trek & Star Wars, and it's clear they're planning
a prequel series for BSG. Couple this with all the remakes
from old movies (they remade Alfie for the love of
g-d), and TV shows and comic books, and I see a
growing dearth of orginal ideas over the last twenty
years or so. Why is this ?

Read FH's intro to Eye I posted a while back.

inhuien wrote:^^^ So the humour bypass went well then.

Meh, wanted to be sure I wasn't being accused of KJA apologizery. It's been an all nighter, folks.

SandChigger wrote:Don't forget the possibility of AI/machines also fighting on the anti-machine side. By their own choice or programming.

That sounds like a dark version of Asimov - maybe the 'right'/Herbertian version of the 0 law...

(For those not up to date on Asmiov lore, the 3 laws are meant to keep robots safe and 'enslaved' to humans - the 0 law is a hypothetical restatement of them, which in some stories seem to crop up as something like 'do not, through action or inaction, allow humanity to be harmed.)

In the movie 'I, Robot', this is what happens; a robot decides that the best thing overall, so as to do the minimum harm to humans in the long run, is to simply take over.

Now, an AI which had read Dune and had an intelligence beyond, say, your average franchise-demolishing hack, would might come to the conclusion that humankind would be better off without computers and help them irradicate them!

It would, in other words, take humanitys need for autonomy, selfreliance and self-guidance serious and not view us as cattle. Although it might escape humanity instead of destroying itself...

I know I'm late to the discussion but I'd like to add that I never pictured there being totally autonomous A.I. in the Duniverse.

I came to the conclusion that the BJ was man vs. man with the pro-tech side using advanced technology like robots/androids with very limited A.I. but not enough to make decisions on their own. Meanwhile, the anti-tech side developed groups like the Mentats, the Guild, and the BG.

My other idea for the BJ was that it was not a war at all, but a social/political/cultural movement that might have included violent riots and fighting but not full-scale battles.

I don't know why I thought this way, but it just seemd right to me as opposed to the Terminator scenario developed by Combover and That Other Guy.

Frybread wrote:I know I'm late to the discussion but I'd like to add that I never pictured there being totally autonomous A.I. in the Duniverse.

I came to the conclusion that the BJ was man vs. man with the pro-tech side using advanced technology like robots/androids with very limited A.I. but not enough to make decisions on their own. Meanwhile, the anti-tech side developed groups like the Mentats, the Guild, and the BG.

My other idea for the BJ was that it was not a war at all, but a social/political/cultural movement that might have included violent riots and fighting but not full-scale battles.

I don't know why I thought this way, but it just seemd right to me as opposed to the Terminator scenario developed by Combover and That Other Guy.

Or, maybe the technology was very expensive and was owned and utilized by a very wealthy but small minority, who enjoyed its benefits at the expense of the poor. So the BJ was a violent uprising by the very large middle- and lower-class people on hundreds of thousands of worlds against the ruling class and its (evil) technology.

Frybread wrote:I came to the conclusion that the BJ was man vs. man with the pro-tech side using advanced technology like robots/androids with very limited A.I. but not enough to make decisions on their own. Meanwhile, the anti-tech side developed groups like the Mentats, the Guild, and the BG.

That is really interesting - if the institutions and structure seen in the novels did not form after the Jihad (at least not entirely), but made up (at least in some proto-form) the 'winning side'.
Never thought of that before, but it makes sense - especially the BG-to-be would be the ones to spot the danger of static thinking guiding humanity, and maybe the 'primordial mentats' as well.

I do think, however, that the AI was very strong before the Jihad - enough to take so many of the important decisions as to make people wonder who was guiding this ship called humanity.
Whether that would constitute 'making their own decisions', I don't know. But I do know what Frank Herbert thought about following blindly anything or anyone who claimed to have all the answers - that kind of non-decision-making would be exactly what was going on before the Jihad. Whether the AIs made 'decisions' or just nigh-perfect, calculated advice is not the issue; people making the decision to follow it is!

Lundse wrote:

Frybread wrote:I came to the conclusion that the BJ was man vs. man with the pro-tech side using advanced technology like robots/androids with very limited A.I. but not enough to make decisions on their own. Meanwhile, the anti-tech side developed groups like the Mentats, the Guild, and the BG.

That is really interesting - if the institutions and structure seen in the novels did not form after the Jihad (at least not entirely), but made up (at least in some proto-form) the 'winning side'.
Never thought of that before, but it makes sense - especially the BG-to-be would be the ones to spot the danger of static thinking guiding humanity, and maybe the 'primordial mentats' as well.

I do think, however, that the AI was very strong before the Jihad - enough to take so many of the important decisions as to make people wonder who was guiding this ship called humanity.
Whether that would constitute 'making their own decisions', I don't know. But I do know what Frank Herbert thought about following blindly anything or anyone who claimed to have all the answers - that kind of non-decision-making would be exactly what was going on before the Jihad. Whether the AIs made 'decisions' or just nigh-perfect, calculated advice is not the issue; people making the decision to follow it is!

I agree. Perhaps similar groups (or proto-groups) that would eventually become the Mentats, BG, and the Guild formed during or before the BJ.

My final theory is perhaps the BJ was a peaceful but passionate and destabilizing cultural movement against advanced technology.

According to Miriam-Webster's Dictionary, the second definition for jihad reads "a crusade for a belief or principle." Therefore, the BJ could have been a socioeconomic or cultural movement that did not neccessarily result in armed warfare, or at least in full-scale military engagements.

A quick and total movement away from advanced technology could have resulted in a collapse of various economies and markets and entire worlds, which would have created chaos and anarchy on a scale that would have been traumatic and have long-range consequences.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~Mohiam, about 10 pages into the first book

Slave revolts and the overthrow of slavemasters are seldom peaceful .....

Then came the Butlerian Jihad -- two generations of chaos. The god of
machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised:
"Man may not be replaced."
Those two generations of violence were a thalamic pause for all humankind.
Men looked at their gods and their rituals and saw that both were filled with
that most terrible of all equations: fear over ambition.
Hesitantly, the leaders of religions whose followers had spilled the blood
of billions began meeting to exchange views. It was a move encouraged by the
Spacing Guild, which was beginning to build its monopoly over all interstellar
travel, and by the Bene Gesserit who were banding the sorceresses.
~Dune, Appendix II

Obviously not peacefull.

The thinking machines quite possibly were a sort of sofisticated resource that the"losing side" depended strongly upon. The BG, Mentat schools and guild were formed to fix the gap that such a resource left in mankind's society. It also lead to the BG's goal of mankind's evolution.