The Duncans


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A Thing of Eternity
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Re: The Duncans

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

D Pope wrote:Continued from ch.6

merkin muffley wrote:There would be no need for those abilities to be awakened, because he would have memories of being a mentat. Paul had to have them awakened because he A: didn't know he had been trained as one until someone pointed it out, and B: at that time he still needed more training to become one, remember he is asked whether or not he wants to pursue that path and he says yes.
I'm misunderstanding, I thought Paul had gotten some training- wanted more- then left it for the KH thing.( A ghola from Hayt would already have been through all that.) Do you mean the early training 'awakened' his potential as a mentat?
First off, that's actually a quote of my post, not Merkin's! Not sure how that happened...

Paul was both a mentat and the KH, there's not much mention of where he got his further training after going into the desert, but I imagine it came from his mother.

Once a mentat, any ghola or clone of that person would also be a mentat once he/she got their memories restored (assuming that the cells were taken from a point after which the person was indeed fully a mentat - as would be the case with this arguement about him being Hayt).
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Re: The Duncans

Post by D Pope »

:oops:

Well for fucks sake! I just can't help doing stupid things here lately, i'm sorry- & I don't JUST mean it as an apology. I'm a sorry individual.
Leto II is gone for good, except for OM. The "pearl" was just that; a miniscule portion of what Leto was, and not a compressed version of the whole. The pearl that the worms have do not make them Leto, or in any way similar to him.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by D Pope »

We're mostly in agreement then, I didn't know Muad'dib was a mentat.

How do you feel about the earlier suggestion of a poll?
Leto II is gone for good, except for OM. The "pearl" was just that; a miniscule portion of what Leto was, and not a compressed version of the whole. The pearl that the worms have do not make them Leto, or in any way similar to him.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

I agree with it, I will start a new thread right now.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by merkin muffley »

D Pope wrote:from ch.6
merkin muffley wrote:Word up. I knew his swordmaster abilities and training were relevant.
I just meant it as an example, parallel to mentat. I should think that being a mentat would help with the integration of two lifetimes of memories, maybe swordmater abilities would help too.
What I was thinking of was the fact that if Duncan's swordmaster abilities carried over from Duncan to Hayt, just like his flying style carried over, then mentat capabilities would also carry over from Hayt to subsequent Duncans.

Duncans from Hayt will definitely have the potential to be mentats. My question was whether or not this potential had to be developed through training, like Paul's were, for a new Duncan to actually become a mentat.

If a new Duncan, from Hayt, would quickly be a swordmaster because his training and experience have been unlocked, then he would also be a mentat without the training Paul needed.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by A Thing of Eternity »

They would have already had the training, so yes, instantly unlocked when their memories are awakened. I see no reason to suspect that certain memories would be unlocked while others were pushed back.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by D Pope »

merkin muffley wrote:
What I was thinking of was the fact that if Duncan's swordmaster abilities carried over from Duncan to Hayt, just like his flying style carried over, then mentat capabilities would also carry over from Hayt to subsequent Duncans.

Duncans from Hayt will definitely have the potential to be mentats. My question was whether or not this potential had to be developed through training, like Paul's were, for a new Duncan to actually become a mentat.

If a new Duncan, from Hayt, would quickly be a swordmaster because his training and experience have been unlocked, then he would also be a mentat without the training Paul needed.
I think of it like waking up in the morning, I don't need to go through high school every day to still be a graduate. Granted, reawakening a ghola is a bigger deal, but the end result is the same. I'm generally the same person I was yesterday.
Leto II is gone for good, except for OM. The "pearl" was just that; a miniscule portion of what Leto was, and not a compressed version of the whole. The pearl that the worms have do not make them Leto, or in any way similar to him.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by SadisticCynic »

Well, that's a good quote about a Duncan becoming a mentat but doesn't add to how a clone of Hayt could un-become a mentat (other than FH forgetting). Not sure if that was your intention or if you were just adding random trivia about Duncans being mentats.
Basically, yeah that was my intention. If Duncan was able to become a mentat in several incarnations then this implies he was not already a mentat, and therefore gives some credence to him not being Hayt. (Not sure where I stand on this myself actually; I remember having similar thoughts to you when I last read God Emperor of Dune).

Also this was posted in CH. 6:
Nekhrun wrote:Leto didn't allow mentats and this Duncan didn't appear to have those capabilities.
Leto may not have allowed mentats but he did apparently allow Duncan to become one several times during his reign.
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Re: The Duncans

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SadisticCynic wrote:
Well, that's a good quote about a Duncan becoming a mentat but doesn't add to how a clone of Hayt could un-become a mentat (other than FH forgetting). Not sure if that was your intention or if you were just adding random trivia about Duncans being mentats.
Basically, yeah that was my intention. If Duncan was able to become a mentat in several incarnations then this implies he was not already a mentat, and therefore gives some credence to him not being Hayt. (Not sure where I stand on this myself actually; I remember having similar thoughts to you when I last read God Emperor of Dune).

Also this was posted in CH. 6:
Nekhrun wrote:Leto didn't allow mentats and this Duncan didn't appear to have those capabilities.
Leto may not have allowed mentats but he did apparently allow Duncan to become one several times during his reign.
Where does that appear?
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Re: The Duncans

Post by SadisticCynic »

Freakzilla wrote:
SadisticCynic wrote:
Well, that's a good quote about a Duncan becoming a mentat but doesn't add to how a clone of Hayt could un-become a mentat (other than FH forgetting). Not sure if that was your intention or if you were just adding random trivia about Duncans being mentats.
Basically, yeah that was my intention. If Duncan was able to become a mentat in several incarnations then this implies he was not already a mentat, and therefore gives some credence to him not being Hayt. (Not sure where I stand on this myself actually; I remember having similar thoughts to you when I last read God Emperor of Dune).

Also this was posted in CH. 6:
Nekhrun wrote:Leto didn't allow mentats and this Duncan didn't appear to have those capabilities.
Leto may not have allowed mentats but he did apparently allow Duncan to become one several times during his reign.
Where does that appear?
Do you mean what Nekhrun wrote? viewtopic.php?f=10&t=208&p=87147&hilit= ... ies#p87147
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Re: The Duncans

Post by Calahil »

Hello, I am new here but I used to be a lurker and an occasional poster over at DoD.

I think there is too much speculation about what Duncan is and not enough of what the Tleilaxu did to him. Many times in GEoD Leto II was over joyed with what the sneaky Tleilaxu added to Duncan. The BT were basically the counterpart to the BG, modifying genetics by physically altering genes with the "Language of God" as opposed to the BG's "getting it on" method. The Duncan project was the BT's way of trying to understand the way the "Language of God" worked. The discrepancies arise because they were not pure Duncan cells...ever. That was part of the allure for Leto II, he would get his old human measuring stick for the GP but also get that fun surprise that the BT left for him because of their meddling with his code to get the Duncan we finally meet in HoD. Duncans OM in HoD isn't like the OM of RM. It's isolated to him but is the accumulated mass of his entire existence. I always envisioned it as a cosmic database that each Duncan was doing a memory dump into and was sometimes able to pull the wrong data out of when reawakened.
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Re: The Duncans

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Calahil wrote:Hello, I am new here but I used to be a lurker and an occasional poster over at DoD.
Achlan wasachlan! Welcome back into the fold. :)
Duncans OM in HoD isn't like the OM of RM. It's isolated to him but is the accumulated mass of his entire existence. I always envisioned it as a cosmic database that each Duncan was doing a memory dump into and was sometimes able to pull the wrong data out of when reawakened.
I always have a bit of problem with this kind of approach because, well, what does it mean in "real" terms (by which I mean "real" in the fictional universe only, of course)?
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Re: The Duncans

Post by Omphalos »

It isn't necessarially wrong though, is it? I'm by no means an expert on the last two books, but isn't it right to say that Duncan's OM is not coming from ancestral lines, but from prior iterations of Duncan?

And welcome to the new/old guy, too!
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Re: The Duncans

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Omphalos wrote:It isn't necessarially wrong though, is it? I'm by no means an expert on the last two books, but isn't it right to say that Duncan's OM is not coming from ancestral lines, but from prior iterations of Duncan?

And welcome to the new/old guy, too!
Yeah, that's right. Instead of ancestors he remembers the lives of past ghola incarnations.
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Re: The Duncans

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I didn't say it was wrong. I just don't like it. It represents yet another hurdle to fly the ole disbelief glowglobe over, and the damned thing's suspensor unit is already smoking and making grinding noises. If it ever comes out that FH really was heading toward some kind of soul concept, I would lose a lot of interest in the series.

Either way, a ghola's memory is obviously linked to genetics in some way. It's not Other Memory, but it's not completely unrelated, either.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by Omphalos »

I can see a manner other than a continuous "soul" to explain this. Could just be that memories are stored elsewhere, and new versions of old dead guys can get at them better then other people. Anyway, I doubt that we are ever going to know where Frank was going, but Ive never seen that in any of the books; they're about human power, not gods and demons.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by Calahil »

I see your problem with it. Unfortunately the BT weren't like anyone else in the entire series. They had kept their religion from the reader and everyone else for 4 1/2 books. They appear to have self centered religion, in which I mean the current individual is more important than future generations. As far as we know the most of the leadership of the BT was around since either before or after Leto II birth. Scytale was older then Leto II, but he only remembered the original's memory and the what the current iteration knew.

The cosmic memory database i referred to doesn't necessarily have to be a floating detached entity, like a soul. It could very well be a gene they either discovered or created in our DNA. The only thing that doesn't line up with that though is the acknowledgment that he has memories from Duncans' where the bodies weren't able to be retrieved. This is why it always seems to be external... In fact the last 2 books deal with hyper awareness of the external world...as opposed to the first 4 books' being geared at hyper awareness of the self.
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Re: The Duncans

Post by Vor »

Freakzilla wrote:Reverend Mothers don't have death memories and they have OM.
I would suspect they don't have death memories because Other Memory is genetically stored, so technically, the memories passed on through their ancestors would end at the time of either the conception of the child carrying on those memories. Gholas, on the other hand, have cells taken from their bodies after their death which would hold the genetic memories of their entire lifetime including their death. Am I wrong on this?
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Re: The Duncans

Post by SadisticCynic »

Sounds good. :handgestures-thumbupright:
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Re: The Duncans

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You've got it.
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Re: The Duncans

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SandChigger wrote:I didn't say it was wrong. I just don't like it. It represents yet another hurdle to fly the ole disbelief glowglobe over, and the damned thing's suspensor unit is already smoking and making grinding noises. If it ever comes out that FH really was heading toward some kind of soul concept, I would lose a lot of interest in the series.

Either way, a ghola's memory is obviously linked to genetics in some way. It's not Other Memory, but it's not completely unrelated, either.

Has there ever been any proof that he was heading towards the soul theory? I never got that impression at all. I definitely prefer the memory gene factor to the idea that a common essence is what equips him with memories of his previous incarnations.
BTW Sand Chigger - where did you find that picture for your avatar. I think my brain just exploded with the cuteness of it.
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Re: The Duncans

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reverendmotherQ. wrote:BTW Sand Chigger - where did you find that picture for your avatar. I think my brain just exploded with the cuteness of it.
Oh... I can't even remember now. ... I think it was some webpage where someone had knitted all these characters and/or scenes from movies? With a Hello Kitty theme? It was probably linked to from here.... (Sorry!)
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Re: The Duncans

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SandChigger wrote:If it ever comes out that FH really was heading toward some kind of soul concept, I would lose a lot of interest in the series.
Why? You and I have souls, you know.
Ha! Just kidding- kind of.

The last Duncan ghola had memories from all his incarnations, even the ones from which no cell samples were taken upon death. Other memory cannot be stored in DNA- too much information! Well, that's what you wrote in one of your posts.
Duncan, and others like him, are able to recall all of their past lives. Reverend Mothers have ancestral memory- the female line. Paul and Leto (anyone else?) were able to recall all of their ancestors' memories. I think that if the Bene Geserit/Bene Tleilax went far enough with their breeding programs/experiments, they would eventually come up with someone able to recall the whole of humanity's experience.

The Dune series is not just science fiction, it's fantasy. It leans towards the mystical at times. Even if you're not for the soul theory, you've got to admit there was some crazy shit going on in those books. Crazy shit that cannot be explained by science.
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Re: The Duncans

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reverendmotherQ. wrote: Has there ever been any proof that he was heading towards the soul theory?
Nope. I also like the "genetics" angle better than the more religeous concept "a soul". I find it very unlikely that Frank would have head into that direction.
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Re: The Duncans

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JustSomeGuy wrote:...Reverend Mothers have ancestral memory- the female line. Paul and Leto (anyone else?) were able to recall all of their ancestors' memories.
Alia and Ghanima until she was hypnotized.
The Dune series is not just science fiction, it's fantasy. It leans towards the mystical at times. Even if you're not for the soul theory, you've got to admit there was some crazy shit going on in those books. Crazy shit that cannot be explained by science.
Allthough I agree that Dune has heavy fantasy elements, genetic memory was a new theory at the time and actually still has some believers.
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