Marty & Daniel: "Stop spying on us!"

[Freakzilla]

Ix and it's robots?

[A Thing of Eternity]

Ix and it's robots?

Let that one slide it was a very good post other than that slip of the tongue.

[Freakzilla]

You're right, it's just hard for me to let stuff like that pass. It's McDune contamination.

[A Thing of Eternity]

You're right, it's just hard for me to let stuff like that pass. It's McDune contamination.

Happens to the best of us sadly. I haven't read more than a few words in a row that they wrote for years now and it still messes with me.

[Nekhrun]

You're right, it's just hard for me to let stuff like that pass. It's McDune contamination.

While I'm for giving him the benefit of the doubt, I think it's important to point out these slip-ups. It's fucking insidious how these types of details slip into some of the newer readers' minds. Especially those who've read them all in a relatively short period of time. Most of us read FH's books many times, years before McDune. I can see if I'd run through them all once in the span of a few years that some of those things could happen.

We need to keep people pure.

[A Thing of Eternity]

No dissagreement at all.

[SandRider]

We need to keep people pure.

Inquisition ?

hot damn ....

[dogbone]

Ix and it's robots?

of course, Ix and its robots, isn't it obvious that Marty and Daniel were thinking machines all along? Just playin, yeah, that ones my fault, i automatically conflated Ix with the Bulterian Jihad. Btw, no need to treat me with kid gloves either, never been accused of being sensitive, oh, i guess now would be an ideal time to mention that i just dropped a novel on the "Sheeana's vision" thread. Feel free to tear it apart, i'm just happy gleaning new things from the Dune Universe that i didn't know before.

[SandChigger]

IX: see Richese.

RICHESE: fourth planet of Eridani A, classed with Ix as supreme in machine culture. Noted for miniaturization. (For a detailed study on how Richese and lx escaped the more severe effects of the Butlerian Jihad, see The Last Jihad by Sumer and Kautman.)

As I just posted in the other thread where this came up again (I saw that one first), what would the super hunter-seekers (even though Leto prevented them) be but a form of autonomous robot? I have no problem with the Ixians having assembly type robots and automation. Otherwise, what would "supreme in machine culture" mean? (Machine culture = machine way of thinking?)

"And you do not fear the lxians' machine?" Anteac insisted.

"Is automation synonymous with conscious intelligence?" he asked.

Secret, automated production lines are far more Duniverse-plausible than a never-otherwise-mentioned House Major ruling Ix.

[Freakzilla]

I don't doubt Ix had robots, we just don't see them in Dune.

[SandChigger]

Didn't say we did. I'm just saying that I don't necessarily see this as McDune contamination. Had it been phrased "Ix and its super hunter-seekers", would you have jumped on it?

[Freakzilla]

Probably not.

[Slugger]

I'm away from my books, so I can't look it up, but: Who produced that receptionist automata Odrade and party encounters while waiting for the HM at Junction? Wouldn't that be considered a type of robot?

[Freakzilla]

I'm away from my books, so I can't look it up, but: Who produced that receptionist automata Odrade and party encounters while waiting for the HM at Junction? Wouldn't that be considered a type of robot?

It was most definitly a robot.

I don't believe it was mentioned who manufactured the robo-servants but Odrade did note that the comeyes had the look of something from The Scattering. However, it was originally a Guild building and they could have been an artifact of the Old Empire.

[inhuien]

I'm away from my books, so I can't look it up, but: Who produced that receptionist automata Odrade and party encounters while waiting for the HM at Junction? Wouldn't that be considered a type of robot?

It was most definitly a robot.

I don't believe it was mentioned who manufactured the robo-servants but Odrade did note that the comeyes had the look of something from The Scattering. However, it was originally a Guild building and they could have been an artifact of the Old Empire.

Sure they could have been but the Guilds only open adoption of technology extended to the Ixian Navigation Machines, I can't see their gain in such a menial flaunting of the prohibitions. Petty shit was the domain of the HM.

[inhuien]

the above post is mostly pooy but I stand by some of the words, just not all of them.

[Freakzilla]

I think they probably belonged to the HMs, however, that chapter was actually about the Ixians, who happened to have the appointment before the BG, to see the GHM.

[Freakzilla]

To her Bene Gesserit eye, the people of Ix were always recognizable no matter
the disguises. Basic structure of their society colored its individuals.
Ixians displayed a Hogbenesque attitude toward their science: that political
and economic requirements determined permissible research. That said the
innocent naivete of Ixian social dreams had become the reality of bureaucratic
centralism -- a new aristocracy. So they were headed into a decline that would
not be stopped by whatever accommodation this Ixian party made with Honored
Matres.
No matter the outcome of our contest, Ix is dying. Witness: no great Ixian
innovations in centuries.

[Crysknife]

Didn't say we did. I'm just saying that I don't necessarily see this as McDune contamination. Had it been phrased "Ix and its super hunter-seekers", would you have jumped on it?

But would Ix have lost control of these or set them upon humanity to destroy as they were intended? But either way is still different than McDune shit.

I mean, did the off switch get broken, or did some flunky hit the destroy button when no one was looking?

[SandChigger]

I thought the implication, of the "all machines eventually break down" bit, was that they malfunctioned and ran amok...

[SadisticCynic]

I thought the implication, of the "all machines eventually break down" bit, was that they malfunctioned and ran amok...

Do you mean this quote:

That lasgun is no more than a machine. But all machines fail or are superceded.
Still, the Army worships at the shrine of such things-both fascinated and
fearful. Look at how people fear the Ixians! In its guts, the Army knows it is
the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It unleashes technology and never again can the magic
be stuffed back into the bottle.

I had to look that up, but before I did your comment sent me into speculation-land and I started thinking about machines =/= life and how life can be seen as local decreases in entropy and that entropy implies all machines will break down (or their original purposes corrupted), and thus life (with evolution) is somehow greater than machines - but that was before I looked up the quote...

[Crysknife]

I thought the implication, of the "all machines eventually break down" bit, was that they malfunctioned and ran amok...

Yes but It's a really fine line. These things were built in the first place. I mean we built the atom bomb so we had to use it, right? Leto does say that Ix can no longer create arafel, which implies action on their part be it the actual creation of the hunter seekers or the malfunction itself. He is blaming humans, not the machines.

But In short, I'm agreeing with you.

[SandChigger]

This is actually what I was thinking of, from GEoD:

"The lxians contemplated making a weapon—a type of hunter-seeker, self-propelled death with a machine mind. It was to be designed as a self improving thing which would seek out life and reduce that life to its inorganic matter."

"I have not heard of this thing, Lord."

"I know that. The lxians do not recognize that machine makers always run the risk of becoming totally machine. This is ultimate sterility. Machines always fail...given time. And when these machines failed there would be nothing left, no life at all."

Since the machine was a hunter-seeker, it was naturally a weapon and its purpose was to kill, so yes, someone would have used it. And since it was designed to improve itself, it would become better and better at killing. By "fail" Leto of course means "malfunction", not "cease to operate".

I'm always reminded by this of the NOMAD (sp?) probe in that original Star Trek episode: it collided with an alien probe and the two rebuilt themselves into one, with a deadly new interpretation of their original "seek out and analyze alien life."

[Crysknife]

You know, another interpretation of that quote is that the Ixians lost their humanity and became machine in their thinking, and then they "failed"(as humans) and unleashed the hunter seekers.

[Slugger]

"The lxians contemplated making a weapon—a type of hunter-seeker, self-propelled death with a machine mind. It was to be designed as a self improving thing which would seek out life and reduce that life to its inorganic matter."

I've always read that as the Ixians creating some type of nanobots and the situation went Gray Goo (think Beserkers of von Neumann probes).

I'm always reminded by this of the NOMAD (sp?) probe in that original Star Trek episode: it collided with an alien probe and the two rebuilt themselves into one, with a deadly new interpretation of their original "seek out and analyze alien life."

V'ger?