KWISATZ HADERACH

orald · Post by **orald** » 09 Mar 2008 21:46

SandChigger wrote:if unpopular and they forgot to turn on the snoopers before eating.

The first is a must, the second is unreasonable.

Rakis · Post by **Rakis** » 09 Mar 2008 23:05

orald wrote:The Corrino dynasty tells you absolutely nothing about how many standard years a "generation" is(a generation has no accurate time meaning anyway), since being the Emperors they recieve just about the best medical care and could easily rule 100 years each before being succeeded.

And maybe even more than a hundred years with taking the Spice. Miles Teg was, what, 300 years old? It's possible a generation could span over a century...

orald · Post by **orald** » 09 Mar 2008 23:34

Argh, it's not a normal generation at all, that's the point.

From Dictionary.com:
Generation...

2. the term of years, roughly 30 among human beings, accepted as the average period between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring.

Now, they're still human, not stupid, song loving Elves that don't get children and need horney human warriors to show them what to do with an Elf-chick, so they'll still be reproducing at a human rate(i.e 25-30 years).

Monarchic generation isn't a reproductive generation. It only refers to the time between succeeding monarchs, which can be 1 day to 100 years and byond.

So:

And maybe even more than a hundred years with taking the Spice. Miles Teg was, what, 300 years old? It's possible a generation could span over a century...

You won't find any 100 y-o guy waiting for the right lady to settle down and make babies.

Rakis · Post by **Rakis** » 09 Mar 2008 23:48

Monarchic generation...i get it, thanks! Makes more sense.

Phaedrus · Post by **Phaedrus** » 10 Mar 2008 10:16

orald wrote:Argh, it's not a normal generation at all, that's the point.

From Dictionary.com:
Generation...
2. the term of years, roughly 30 among human beings, accepted as the average period between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring.

Now, they're still human, not stupid, song loving Elves that don't get children and need horney human warriors to show them what to do with an Elf-chick, so they'll still be reproducing at a human rate(i.e 25-30 years).

I have to assume that with the spice, people are fertile for much longer. Assuming that's true, why wouldn't the generation span increase?

Monarchic generation isn't a reproductive generation. It only refers to the time between succeeding monarchs, which can be 1 day to 100 years and byond.

So:
And maybe even more than a hundred years with taking the Spice. Miles Teg was, what, 300 years old? It's possible a generation could span over a century...

You won't find any 100 y-o guy waiting for the right lady to settle down and make babies.

Well, Teg was still fertile at a ripe old 300 years, so it's actually entirely possible in the Duniverse.

inhuien · Post by **inhuien** » 10 Mar 2008 10:27

Phaedrus wrote:I have to assume that with the spice, people are fertile for much longer. Assuming that's true, why wouldn't the generation span increase?

I understand what you’re saying here that Melange lengthens the period of human fertility, but why do you assume that it would also weaken the procreative desire. As that is the only reason, I can think of, for the time span from the birth of one generation to the next to increase. People will always want to make babies with or without Spice.

orald · Post by **orald** » 10 Mar 2008 11:18

Yes, people always make babies, whether it's wise or not, whether they can support them or not, against religeous and social taboos.
In short, people like to frak!

Human males can be naturally fertile until well over their 50's(about the time when females usually lose their fertility? can Mandy verify this?

) without any special treatment, yet they still try to reproduce as early as possible.

Mandy · Post by **Mandy** » 10 Mar 2008 11:23

Shut up Orald

I think males can be fertile well past their 50's, with women it varies, but normally fertility ends somewhere in the 40's.

orald · Post by **orald** » 10 Mar 2008 11:47

Yes, males can be fertile about as long as they live, if they don't break up while mating, that is. But I don't want to stretch it too much to make my point plausible.
That's why I don't mention rare late-life pregnancies.

Phaedrus · Post by **Phaedrus** » 11 Mar 2008 11:55

I'm aware of all that. But isn't the generation gap increasing if anything? A few hundred years ago, marriages at the age of puberty were normal. Now, anything under 16 or 17 is almost taboo, and teenage weddings and pregnancies are frowned upon. Another thing that's happened in that time is that people live longer. When you're looking forward to a good 80 years of life rather than maybe 25-30 if you're lucky, the need to procreate so quickly isn't as overwhelming. It only makes sense that the generation gap would only increase with longer expected lifespans.

In most cases, of course. I imagine Fremen courtship starts as early as possible, but they're in circumstances that would require that kind of pattern.

orald · Post by **orald** » 11 Mar 2008 17:09

As for the unwashed masses, being without spice for their personal use, they'll have about the same life expectancy as humans today, maybe slightly longer, since the majority always seem too poor and neglected to be able to afford state of the art medical care(let alone a Suk doctor which only rich merchants and noble houses seem to be able to afford).
This is the Duniverse, not some faery-tale Star-Trek(though even with all their tech they still don't seem to last that long, funny).

But even though some individuals may choose to wait a long time, maybe until they're financially settled, to procreate, most would probably feel the need to do so much earlier. No doubt noble houses would, in order to ensure there are enough heirs in the likely event that some of them die.

Anathema · Post by **Anathema** » 11 Jul 2008 09:06

Appendix III contains a report from Jessica's agents after the Arrakis affair. It says:
"Kwisatz Haderach...what they sought was a human with mental powers permitting him to understand and use higher order dimensions.
They were breeding for a super-Mentat, a human computer with some of the prescient abilities found in Guild navigators."
Of course it makes no mention of who these agents were, or what they knew of anything.

I always had the impression that the OM of the past would enable the person to learn what to look for in the future, that they complemented eachother to determin what course humanity should be set upon. The mentat awareness would serve to collect even the smallest bits of information from both and draw conclusions from it. For the record, when Paul and Jessica have just escaped it does mention that Paul has a piece of awareness recording and computing everything, now matter how much he hated it.

orald · Post by **orald** » 11 Jul 2008 10:25

It has a flaw though, with Paul forseeing Chaney and other stuff well before he finds out anything really about the Fremen(and where will he learn of Chaney from anyway? not from his OM or Atreides intelligence officers), and that's just a little thing.

Anathema · Post by **Anathema** » 11 Jul 2008 10:40

I don't see how that's a flaw. Paul and the rest were slated for Arrakis at that point and the downfall of the Atreides was pretty much a given seeing what he could do about it (nothing). Those dreams were simply glimpses of the path he was going to be forced on.

SandChigger · Post by **SandChigger** » 11 Jul 2008 10:58

The prescience in the books is obviously much more than just a mathematical projection of probable developments from current conditions augmented with an encyclopedic knowledge of what has happened in the past. You agree with that, right?

orald · Post by **orald** » 11 Jul 2008 11:48

Err...what?

You're saying that he can calculate the future from the past(which, BTW, was blocked to him at the time) and good information like mentats need for their predictions- but where is this info coming from?
Did Idaho or somesuch tell him about Chaney and all?

Also, his info about the Harko+Corrino attack would've been flawed as well, restrictd to Thufir's lacking predictions.

In short, presience is NOT OM+supreme mentatry.

Anathema · Post by **Anathema** » 11 Jul 2008 12:09

I'm not saying that ancestral memory has any part in prescience. The navigators don't have them. And while they knew advanced mathematics to understand the folding of space, they're not (all) mentats either.
What I was trying to say is that someone who had ancestral memories would be more knowledgable about humanity's previous failures and would be more likely to chose the right future.

I've always envisioned it something like this: prescience is knowing the outcomes of possible actions. You'll know that doing A will lead to situation X, wich will offer the choices between B, C and D and so on. Greater prescience allows you to look further. It only becomes complicated when other oracles are involved whose actions affect the situations you may get yourself into. Lesser oracles will cast a fog; though in Paul's situation he could still see the eventual outcomes behind the fog, but not necessarily the paths leading to it. In the end he was a prisoner of one vision thread because it was the only course of action wich he knew wouldn't result in bad endings.

Phaedrus · Post by **Phaedrus** » 11 Jul 2008 12:26

Anathema wrote:I don't see how that's a flaw. Paul and the rest were slated for Arrakis at that point and the downfall of the Atreides was pretty much a given seeing what he could do about it (nothing). Those dreams were simply glimpses of the path he was going to be forced on.

One of Paul's first prescient dreams(at a very young age) was of Chani's death.

Paul, caught by wonder at the persistent Fremen mythos, felt a heart constriction, a thing inflicted upon his lifeline: adab, the demanding memory. He recalled his childhood room on Caladan then . . . dark night in the stone chamber . . . a vision! It'd been one of his earliest prescient moments. He felt his mind dive into the vision, saw through a veiled cloud-memory (vision-within-vision) a line of Fremen, their robes trimmed with dust. They paraded past a gap in tall rocks. They carried a long, cloth-wrapped burden.
And Paul heard himself say in the vision: "It was mostly sweet . . . but you were the sweetest of all . . . "
Adab released him.

"Quiet!" Paul held up a hand. "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what, m'Lord?"
Paul shook his head. Duncan hadn't heard it. Had he only imagined the sound? It'd been his tribal name called from the desert -- far away and low: "Usul . . . Uuuussssuuuullll . . . "
"What is it, m'Lord?"
Paul shook his head. He felt watched. Something out there in the night shadows knew he was here. Something? No -- someone.
"It was mostly sweet," he whispered, "and you were the sweetest of all."
"What'd you say, m'Lord?"
"It's the future," Paul said.
That amorphous human universe out there had undergone a spurt of motion, dancing to the tune of his vision. It had struck a powerful note then. The ghost-echoes might endure.
"I don't understand, m'Lord," the ghola said.
"A Fremen dies when he's too long from the desert," Paul said. "They call it the 'water sickness.' Isn't that odd?"
"That's very odd."

"Chani . . ." Tandis said.
"Is dead," Paul whispered. "I heard her call."

orald · Post by **orald** » 11 Jul 2008 12:33

It was mostly sweet . . . but you were the sweetest of all . . . "

"It was mostly sweet," he whispered, "and you were the sweetest of all."

Where's KJA to note that FH made a "mistake" by having one version say "but" and the other "and" as the connecting word between the two parts of the sentence?

Phaedrus · Post by **Phaedrus** » 11 Jul 2008 12:36

"I am an Atreides," Paul whispered, and then louder: "It's not right that I give up entirely the name my father gave me. Could I be known among you as Paul-Muad'Dib?"
"You are Paul-Muad'Dib," Stilgar said.
And Paul thought: That was in no vision of mine. I did a different thing.

=P

orald · Post by **orald** » 11 Jul 2008 16:36

Talifan excuses! FH was wroooong!!!

SandChigger · Post by **SandChigger** » 11 Jul 2008 21:02

Being able to project all possible outcomes and knowing which is more statistically probable based on the outcomes of similar situations in the past doesn't explain the prescience in the books.

Think about the incident with the stone-burner when Paul lost his eyes and how he was still able to function afterwards because of what he had foreseen. There's no way he could have predicted who would be there and where and exactly what they would be doing to that accuracy based only on the above simple model of prescience.

There's something more involved.

Phaedrus · Post by **Phaedrus** » 11 Jul 2008 21:30

Or think about the above situation. Paul had prescience before he had his ancestral memories or Mentat abilities. Leto had both ancestral memories and Mentat abilities, but his prescience was limited until he took the spice trip.

As the Reverend Mothers watched in awe, Leto laid out for Idaho the exact points for ambushes, detailing the size of each force and even some of the specific personnel, the timing, the necessary weapons, the precise deployments at each place. Idaho's capacious memory catalogued each instruction. He was too caught up in the recital to question it until Leto fell silent, but a look of puzzled fear came over Idaho then.

Logic can't tell you what's going to happen in a battle that you haven't seen reports from.

The prescience from the novel is definitely much more than a lot of math.

The future of prescience cannot always be locked into the rules of the past. The threads of existence tangle according to many unknown laws. Prescient future insists on its own rules. It will not conform to the ordering of the Zensunni nor to the ordering of science. Prescience builds a relative integrity. It demands the work of this instant, always warning that you cannot weave every thread into the fabric of the past.
-Kalima: The Words of Muad'Dib, The Shuloch Commentary

loremaster · Post by **loremaster** » 12 Jul 2008 04:07

put it this way..... if tomorrow it turned out that a child was born with wings, laser eyes and the ability to breathe underwater then a prescient would see it coming.

No amount of logical extrapolation from the past could predict that. It's similar to the whole "Machines cant create, only imitate" argument.

Plus, remember how anti Logic FH was as a tool. Paraphrasing i think he says "Logic is fine for pyramid chess, but too slow for real life" (i think teg to belonda).

Also Frank once said:

One of the best things to come out of the home computer revolution could be the general and widespread understanding of how severely limited logic really is.

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/autho ... rbert.html

- Logic was NOT everything it was cracked up to be in the duniverse.

orald · Post by **orald** » 12 Jul 2008 09:29

loremaster wrote:- Logic was NOT everything it was cracked up to be in the duniverse.

And yet you talifans bitch about Hunters and Sandworms! Hypocracy!