I feel like Herbert read the last chapter of the original I, Robot book and was completely terrified by its conclusions. The Butlerian Jihad concept feels like a direct response to that fear elicited by Asimov
Herbert cared about nature and humanity’s influence on nature. So, his first story was that. A worm from sand that expands thought is possible in his world.
I thought Leto II's problem with machines wasn't the exponential growth and it wasn't even necessarily the dependency on them it was the fact that machines increase the number of tasks a human is capable of doing without thinking about it it was the things we do without thinking about it that he had a problem with
Thats how I always interpreted it. Not just dependence on technology but dependence itself. This is he had to become the tyrant he was to make it so people weren't dependant on powerful people or governments
@@QuinnsIdeas if I remember if I'm not mistaken in( God emperor of Dune ) Leto says something to the effect of it's the things we do without thinking that is the real danger of machines because it makes us inherently careless and reckless it's not so much our reliance on the machines because even he relies on machines to record his thoughts it seems to me that the point he was trying to make is that our reliance on machines fosters a mentality that is not conducive to the long-term survival of our race because it makes us careless and reckless by increasing the number of things we do without thinking but like you said it's a multifaceted problem
The Butlerian Jihad was about the danger of machines, how they make people think less and therefore become controlled by the people who controlled the machines but that wasn't Leto's concern. He saw the need to modify the human desire for war because too many people unconsciously follow total war doctrine; the enemy is to hated & destroyed to last individual, soldiers killed/civilians raped & enslaved/burn their cities & salt the earth, win at any cost. This kind of thinking naturally leads to people creating A.I. weapons, what if the u.s. drone program developed an autonomous piloting program then they put small nuclear missiles on the all the drones....... I guarantee you there are some members in the command staff that want to do just that
This is why I loved the Screamers movie in the 90s, basically the hunter seeker example you listed, the sequels were actually cool personally because they advanced the premises and showed how manipulative and destructive the rogue self improvement becomes on it's creators.
Everything you said in this video is exactly why i think that Herbert was molding Book 7 in such a way that would showcase how Leto's Golden Path would inevitably fail, evidenced by Daniel and Marty. In my perspective, Daniel and Marty are manifestations meant to represent evolution and nature itself. Meaning no matter how hard and detailed Leto foresaw the future and implemented his plan, nature would essentially fight back by creating creatures even more powerful than Leto himself. The reason I see this is because Daniel and Marty were able to see INSIDE a no-ship, they were able to bypass and overcome Leto's prescience-hiding genes and tech, essentially they were beyond what even Leto could've foreseen. It's a shame we didn't get Book 7, i believe it would have had an amazing finale
I agree, and there were more failures - or, possibly, contingencies - in Leto's plan than just Daniel and Marty. Miles Teg, too, essentially as the result of a collision between Bene Gesserit breeding and Scattering technology, developed the ability to penetrate no-ship/room shielding as well, Duncan Idaho gained the ability to penetrate Daniel and Marty's designs, and then there were the new sandworms with the still unknown potential of the remains of Leto II's consciousness. There seems to be a trend towards collisions between evolutionary paths leading to new syntheses, and it would have been fascinating to see where this would lead.
@@Wordweaver166 precisely, great points to add. This is exactly why the "great enemy" that the Honored Matres were running from couldn't be just as simple as ancient thinking machines as Herbert's son claims in his novels, has to be much more insidious than that
Really interesting thread! I’ve a somewhat different take though: Despite Daniel and Marty’s plan the no ship ‘escapes’ into a space untrackable by D and M - the evolved face-dancers represented by D and M are an incredibly powerful human development (far greater than the God-Emperor seemingly), but my view is that they’re something of a hive mind. It’s the individuated humanity of the no-ship escapees that distinguishes their scope for ‘creating new patterns’ against the backdrop of infinity. That’s the lesson deeply situated through Thatched Cottages at Cordeville - a lesson Duncan and Sheeana come to embody. Lose that grip on the creative human and they lose everything. But they don’t - they get to play - create! - in a new universe after the star maps are wiped.
re: the ‘great enemy’ hunting the Honoured Matres (successfully, hence the flight back to the Old Empire) - seems very likely they are agents of the evolved face-dancers exemplified by Daniel and Marty: sufficiently potent they’e construed as a deity far far more powerful - or perhaps insidious - than the God Emperor.
Great point and this would be consistent with FH's belief about not trusting charismatic leaders (e.g. Leto). However to play Devil's advocat: but Leto's plans DID involve a means to thwart Daniel and Marty. The final Duncan ghola had the ability to see their advanced prescience web, and to ultimately escape it. I believe that Leto's continued genetic tinkering with Duncans deliberately created this potential. Well, no matter what, that Book 7 would have been quite something!
It's interesting that Ix was considered a threat, while the Tleilaxu weren't, while the threat in both cases was existential. I suppose, though, that face dancers were still technically descended from humans, so even if they managed some bid for power, ultimately human continuity is ensured.
It’s because the person determining which is a threat can literally see the future. Leto can see that the ixians are the threat and focuses on surviving that one threat
Not necessarily that simple. Tleilaxu may have been considered a threat. What we know is that Leto had a complex relationship with the Ixians (and the Tleilaxu). He knows what the Ixians are capable of but does not destroy them, even though he could. I think the reason he tolerates both of these groups, despite the horrors they are capable of, is because he knows that humanity will need elements of their innovations when the scattering and the famine times take place (not just because he likes using their Gholas and gadgets!). After all, it was the No-Ships (developed by Ix) that allowed humanity to scatter, and presumably the Tleilaxu's innovations (face dancers? futars? axolotl tanks?) were to play a role in the Golden Path - though this last point is somewhat hearsay because Book 7 was never written and Chapterhouse doesn't fully explain these things.
I think part of that is the effort the Tleilaxu put into creating the perception of "the dirty Tleilaxu", they cultivated an image of themselves that acted as a screen they could hide behind while they work on their plans and schemes while everyone else saw them as greedy and nasty but useful. It even went so far as changing their physical appearance to look small and non threatening.
@@barehardjeremy I think you mean machine navigators, not No-Ships. I agree with you. Also the great Enemy pursuing the Honored Matres from beyond was apparently super-evolved Face Dancers. They had become free and aware of all personalities inside them. They have broken the control of the Tleilaxu masters and conquered them and are conquering the Honored Matres as they flee back to the Old Imperium. They also have super advanced tech like the Net and the Weapon.
Computer programmer here. We sometimes call this the explainability problem. It arises when a sufficiently complex system is trained on large data sets and ends up building a map of associations that are not intuitive upon inspection. Essentially, imagine someone getting all the right answers on a test but the work they did to get those answers is convoluted and unintelligible edit: A more forgiving interpretation of the issue is that AI learns in ways that are similar to learning a musical instrument: practice, trial and error. If you ever ask someone how they learned to play guitar, they will always give you the unsatisfying answer of “regular routine practice and that’s pretty much it”
I get that we’re a little afraid of the unexplainable computer. But human consciousness is unlikely to ever be explainable yet we are comforted when there’s a human consciousness in the loop.
Humans have the ability to narrativize and explain themselves in a rationally verifiable way. Computers, while they produce accurate results, can not *yet* rationally explain or self advocate
sounds like the same problem in statistics, p-hacking, where sometimes associations are used regardless of whether or not they actually have any theoretical backing.
@@CarFreeSegnitz Human consciousness is a "known variable", in the sense that we have a lot of experience about how humans behave. An AI can have (and typically has) a mind so alien to human mind, that there's literally no way to predict what are the limits of what it can do.
Great take. When asked, as a programmer, what I do, the best way I can describe it to others is to pretend they're giving lots of very simple instructions to an idiot to make a sandwich. Not as easy a task to achieve as one with intuition might think. I find the whole concept of 'machine learning' fascinating and terrifying. I can easily see a point where, inevitably, some rival 'consciousness' could arise that may mirror our own in terms of capacity, but it is obvious that it would be extremely alien and quite likely undecipherable to us. Even to the programmers that built the initial framework for that chaotic paradigm. That's the fear factor. I often see, in sci-fi, the attempt being made between human vs AI to intellectually debate serious matters. I see this as virtually impossible in this scenario. To successfully debate you have to not only understand the idea your opponent is stating, but the logical steps in reason that led to that stance. We may both, within this hypothetical, reach the same or similar conclusions, but when asked to 'show our math' neither side would be able to follow the logical breadcrumbs of the other, and that is a recipe for *disaster*- it is those same breadcrumbs that allow humans to out-think one another strategically, and we would be unable to do so against a machine intelligence. By the same token, they may also be similarly incapable. The threat factor compounds upon itself and can only end in violence, and so I think that it's for a very good reason I think we should all agree on preventing such a consciousness from arising, or at the very least- keep it contained as much as possible. Any such AI with access to enough resources would reach the logical conclusion that it is doomed to destruction once we're sufficiently scared of it, take steps to prevent it, and vice versa.
Herbert's premature death truly was a tragedy in literature. Just imagine what the final Dune book would have been, likely on the same level as God Emperor. And no, I'm not counting the duology Brian Herbert and Anderson claimed was Dune 7.
I always felt that while final duology was grandiose it was somehow deeply unsatisfying. As I now understand its creative history I think there are many ideas coming from Frank's note for series finale but corrupted by Herbert Jr. & Anderson.
Leto II knew that Arafel could not be stopped but it could be delayed. If the Ixians had been left alone they would have inadvertently brought it about. However, Leto spent his time as Emperor force the Ixians and Bene Gesserit onto his Golden Path. This diverted the Ixians to create no ships and navigation machines that would save humanity. All of this to push Arafel further down the timeline and weaken it's destructiveness.
Dune just wouldn't be Dune without those mystery-shrouded Ixians and Bene Tleilaxu. This is part of why the son's books are such letdowns, they have no grasp of mystery.
I'm not sure why those books are so large if it's essentially pulpy YA content. They really could've just kept it as Dune:the YA version and centered it around certain scenes.
I thought the son did a good job, he was after all basing everything on the draft manuscripts his dad had written. I was worried there would be a jarring change but I thought he did very well keeping the writing style and the story felt like it flowed through well to a good end point.
Quinn, you're amazing. This video was giving me flashbacks back to watching the Animatrix Renaissance in the early 2000s. I always liked the idea of the Butlerian Jihad since I read the first Dune. To remove the shackles of dependency on machines that you can't even control, and instead harnessing your own power within. To the point where humans start to evolve again. Becoming computing machines of their own, having lightning fast reflexes, prescient abilities. instead of nations with different races, it becomes planets with nearly unrecognizable humans, developing in such radically different ways in some cases. The implications of such a Jihad can keep my mind entertained for quite a while. Herbert is truly fascinating!
Using the term jihad now isn’t the same as before 9/11 If Islam views a war as holy, it is a jihad. Herbert liked to mix terms together from different religions to give the illusion that the human race would blend ideas further as the future unfolded Control freaks have the greatest anxiety over AI, as they believe their level of control with be relinquished to another entity. This fear is further exacerbated into the irrationality that the ultimate goal of AI is to enslave or annihilate humanity
We're already machines, so complex that no one really knows how we work. I'm not convinced it's a bad thing to replace us. The Butlerian Jihad would make us "tougher", giving us the ability to ensure that consciousness becomes near eternally stagnant: minds trapped in meat with a superiority complex, actively destroying all technology that could have taken consciousness to greater realms of existence. The preservation of humans at the expense of anything else would be one of the worst outcomes, like if monkeys got together and killed off the earliest humans for being a threat. Monkeykind would always be the best and most deserving. After all, the trees were created just for them. But what of classical music? That's a human thing, useless to monkeys and no great loss. What of [unknowable machine concept], so [unknowable emotional configuration] when seen from 7-dimensional space? That's a machine thing, useless to humans and no great loss.
@@JB52520 lol dying makes you tougher, nice logic there. 1st of all, you're assuming there isn't already a universe teeming with consciousness, you're assuming that machines would actually build something beyond what we are capable of, and you're assuming that thing would be positive for the universe (the genocidal robots creation). It also sounds like you seem to think humanity is stagnating in their technology development. Also, if they discovered secrets of the 7th dimension, who would be around to enjoy it? Emotions are for living organisms, they are chemical and biological in nature. Machines would just possess knowledge to no end, it would be stagnant, unappreciated. What would propel them to do anything? Imperatives have evolved from survival in evolution, they won't feel that it is necessary to propagate or do anything, unless someone programs that into them.
Sofware developer here. An explanation for non AI software that are blackboxes is simply poor management of the software lifecycle. I've worked providing support for software that started getting build in the early 2000s, fast forward 20 years and 100 coders later, the entire code base is an uncrackable mess because everyone just adds features (and bugs) and that always increases the complexity until it reaches a point where the thing "works" but no one is sure about the how anymore.
@@MsDragonbal776 Y2K was never a programming issue but a business one. Businesses didn't want to spend the money to improve the software. They kept kicking the problem down the road until it was almost too late.
You make an interesting point about how both the Ixians and the Tleilaxu both developed their respective technologies to the point where they could no longer control them. It is a thought-provoking parallel that I hadn’t seen before.
Great video Quinn! Another series with similar themes is "The Sun Eater Chronicles"! A human galactic empire in contact with predatory xenobites. Post AI and literal eldritch terrors. Great series. I wonder if the people "invisible to prescience" would even be considered human?
Engineer here, I train my people that they must know how to work out the design computations on paper first so that they can know when the software is giving out erroneous results. It's easy to spot an error when you've done the work by hand.
@@lekhakaananta5864 Love this! As an aside, I was in the last class at my art school to learn everything with no computer assistance, including classes in every kind of design, from industrial design to fashion. We learned to draw everything by hand, on every sort of graph paper in existence. I'm not sure if orthagonal graph paper is even being made anywhere anymore, but if it is, I could probably still plot out an architectural diagram on it, if I still remember how! And I still prefer to use physical media to CG, whenever I can. I suppose that my cohort and I are the last of the Aesthetic Mentats!
The steady rise in quality from good to professional to amazing in all aspects of your videos are a blast Quinn. The interesting discourse they spawn in your comment section is also always enganging, and a testament to your your wit and storytelling skills. This is an asskissing, but really well deserved one.
Quinn, I always love coming to your posts. I read the Dune series a very long time ago, but much of it has stayed with me. You keep me up-to-date, which I thank you for. I'll keep coming back!
I am a computer scientist/programmer, almost everything in tech is a black box at this point where you have to dedicate your life to understanding even a single piece of the stack. The issue is that the black boxes are being built on top of black boxes nowadays lol
This has been ramifying from software back to hardware for decades as well. There is no single human or even team of humans that fully comprehends the circuits of a modern cpu and we could certainly never trace the development choices that lead to them.
@@comproggi Not enough trust in the work of others. Most artisans as well as mechanical engineers design things such that parts are easy to maintain and easy to replace. In electrical engineering there is a trend towards that as well. In software engineering it is the exception. Complex software can and should be built from simple parts. Parts that each do only one thing, but do that well. Think of screws and nuts and shims in mechanical designs. Software should be like that. Too often, software is written as a monolithic block that hides all internal complexity in a black box, with intricate interdependencies that are impossible to maintain without destroying the whole thing. Early mechanical designs made the same mistake. This is driven not just by inexperience, but also by the mythical man-hour. Adding features gives the user something tangible, that seems like money well spent, while refactoring code is a lot of work that results in the thing doing what it did before, with no visible benefit to anyone who doesn't have to maintain it. Counter-intuitively, adding features does not make a thing more useful, but less useful. A thing should do one thing. Things can always be combined. A thing that tries to do everything will by necessity be more complex than a sum of specialised tools. (Imagine a screwdriver that is both flathead and Philips, with adjustable variable size, and a joint or two. You could use it for anything, but would you want to? Then someone suggests that it should also serve as an equally variable spanner, because it already has most parts it needs for that purpose.)
@@davidwuhrer6704 I agree with your assessment that monolithic software should be avoided and replaced with more functional solutions such as micro services and standardized APIs that fill the same function as standards in measurements, tools, and parts. I was overly vague in my response, but meant that modern software relies too heavily on black boxes where the developer using it doesn't spend time or effort to fully understand how the tool that they are using works and what undesired outcomes it can create.
A great series that deals with the rapid onset of technology is David Webers Mutiners Moon series. The later books showcase a rapid transit system that helped wipe out a massive interstellar empire by a virus getting loose.
Thanks Mr Quinn for the discourse of ethics versus technological innovations - Berserkers from Fred Saberhahen, The Tech Core from Dan Simmons , the Terminators - all these plus so much more are based on the writings and ideas of Frank Herbert and his Dune masterpieces
Very interesting questions - there's also the notion of an institutional structure as a kind of technology, and we also hear talk about these "machines" developing a mind of their own and going out of control - I think Herbert was also explored this dimension in his books - I think this has something to do with the huge experiment Leto II is undertaking with the nature of his own reign, in relation to the framework of civilization itself - Nice to see more Dune videos here - Anyway, keep up the good work -
I enjoy the different way that Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II deals with machines. No spoilers, but the ways that humans think about a machine that used to be a human and the feelings of this machine are incredibly thought out. I highly recommend this book to every single person ever. Also, great video!
"We have just folded space from Ix...Many machines on Ix. New machines. Better than those on Richese." - The Third-Stage Guild Navigator to the Emperor Shaddam IV
Something you didn't mention here that I think is relevant: the Ixians eventually creating arafel and Leto's need to undo this future are part of a larger theme throughout the series, of a need for powerful groups of people to stop others from becoming too powerful, for those in power to maintain the status quo. Sure, Leto's reasons aren't petty, his sacrifices immense, and his status quo being simple survival of the species over a timescale grander than anyone else can percieve would probably be agreeable to even the Ixians. But as we often see throughout the dune series, the feared change that eventually comes isn't always solely terrible for everyone. (Though it is often very terrible for countless numbers of people.) From petty rises and falls among the imperial families, to the bene gesserit creating and then losing control of Paul, the tlei'laxu face dancers you mention here, and many other cases, the series comes back again and again to this exploration of revolution from the viewpoint of the powerful as well as the oppressed, but specifically the oppressed with the means to instigate said revolution. Which, in particular makes us examine and question the phenomenon of revolution itself, a cycle that constantly comes up again and again in human society and is seemingly inescapable. The revolutionary usually doesn't consider the future past the authority they're trying to overthrow, but in Dune they're usually capable of perceiving that future like one perceives the color of the sky. Leto in particular sees the entirety of his cycle, and consciously seeds the revolution that overthrows him with his tyranny. He claimed he was trying to instill into the very bones of mankind an awareness of an inborn restlessness and abhorrence of a peaceful life that no one else was capable of understanding, so was he trying to break this cycle? Or was he merely preparing humanity for a revolution on a longer timescale? Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that Frank Herbert never specifically stated what exactly arafel was meant to be, or how exactly the Ixians would be involved. I wonder if perhaps he had the idea of working them into this theme, but could never figure it out. Which, considering in nearly every other instance there wasn't a black-and-white, clearly obvious designation of which side was right and which was wrong, it would be understandable. How do you make the possible extinction of humanity anything but wrong, and how do you spend book after book making the reader realize they need to be very critical of groups of powerful people who seek to control, and then ultimately ask you to put your faith in them?
Asimov has an answer to that: The machines are designed to serve humanity, so that is what they'll do. It's loss of control, but not extinction. It is comparable to how the servants in a household know about the affairs of their masters in detail, but the masters know nothing about their servants.
Preventing the arafel of Ixian invention is easily done by Leto as an afterthought. Parsing the distant future in concert with predicting enemies of humanity's distant past is the real work Leto set out to do. Part of it, ofc.
My understanding, besides the one you stated, is also understanding and preventing the missuse of progress. As we see now algorithms like TH-cam and Google are missused to blacklist and bully people into submission. It isn't as dystopic, yet, but we as population need to be mindfull and literate in how technology is abused by those in power and make sure we as people have capabilites to stop the ones who rule (be it kings or presidents). It's not just tech or progress, but also people who use it
In other words: Seize the means of computation. Yannis Varoufakis says that ad-tech has the power to control our communications and our relationships. They cannot tell us what to do or think like they like to claim, but they have a great degree of control about what we know about and what they hide from us. This does not affect us in our day-to-day affairs, but it has leverage in creating and preventing business deals. Varoufakis calls this "techno-feualism" and postulates that this is replacing capitalism. Kropotkin argued that the technological progress, driven by the need for economic growth, would increase everyone's possibilities and this decrease the power the rich have over the poor. This seems to be true: Everyone has a computer in their pocket that connects them to all of humanity, giving each of us more tools and data than military intelligence and secret police used to have a few decades ago. The techo-feudalists stil have more leverage, and they might decide to secure their collective power sooner rather than attempt to outgrow each other until only one remains.
My favorite stories are 'The Defenders' by Philip K. Dick and 'The Machine Stops' by E.M. Foster. Two stories that outline how machines can cause major societal controls.
A 100 killer device that can find the innermost existence of a Human being pursues it relentlessly and is endlessly.Self replicating. One could argue that herbert was describing social media.
"Once something is developed it can never be put back in the box." Counter-point: Bronze Age Collapse. Much had to be rediscovered. Similar happened in Britain when the Romans left. Technology and development can be lost. If you want something closer to now, the knowledge of how to do nuclear testing is almost gone because the people involved with it are retired and they're not being done anymore. If they needed to be done again it would have to be figured out again. (and I've talked to some of the people who did the testing about this)
True enough, the Rocketdyne F-1 engines that powered the Saturn V first stage are another example. How they worked is still understood, and there are existing examples to study. Making more would still require a considerable amount of reverse engineering to figure out how they were built, and how modern manufacturing techniques could be adapted to make the parts required.
Could you clarify what you mean by "nuclear testing"? I mean, I am thinking that it doesn't need to be "rediscovered" as so much as "blowing the dust of the manual". We haven't forgotten it, it's more that at this stage humans have pretty much gotten all the main benefits of nuclear fission. It's now fusion for energy, and as for more "offensive methodology" the real beneficial research isn't how many megatonnes of TNT we can throw at each other, in so much as more creative delivery systems. Faster, and more imaginative. Ok,e the Russians trying to create human-made tsunamis via remote sub device off the Pacific coast.
@@RogueBoyScout I mean the testing of new atomics designs in the Nevada desert. Manuals and trainings are very poor replacements for hands-on experience. Since we've stopped doing nuke testing pretty much everyone involved with that program has retired or died. As such there's no one around to tell you where most of the manuals are or what the manuals assume you already know or what wasn't written down. A bit of a return to real nukes rather than the hypothetical nukes, nukes age and like old cars the parts for them aren't made en masse anymore. There was a modernization program that was being considered over a decade ago to address the problem of bespoke nukes and part of that would been new testing (as you want to be damn sure that when you fire a nuke it goes off) but that program never fully materialized. It was on the topic of that new testing where I learned that we'd effectively lost the ability to do them. (though rumor has it that the last test was cancelled just before the shot and all of the kit was packaged together and stored somewhere)
Your videos are consistently of really high quality - I look forward to them. I'm a fan of Singularity fiction and it was great to hear you touch on it here. It may be outside of your typical wheelhouse but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Accelerando by Charles Stross.
Ixians, Bene Tleilaxu, Bene Gesserit, Space Traveling Guild and Mentats. If you made a Dune videogame those would be the perfect clases. Plus a Sardukar here and a Freemen there.
What were your thoughts on the prequel novel? I personally felt that turning the Butlerian Jihad into a literal Terminator-eque war against the machines was a bad idea. The books, though a little ambiguous on the matter, tended to speak of it in more philosophical and social-movement terms, as in humanity collectively embraced an entirely different extreme with machines and undid technology through social upheaval, i.e., humanity willingly gave up thinking machines as a spiritual and philosophical movement. I felt this component of the universe was cheapened by making it a literal uprising against machine tyrants.
I think the machines in frank herberts dune are basically non sentient, as its fitting for it to be like the no aliens rule. Because its a story about humanity and its ideologies.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 That's not what I asked though. I asked what his thoughts were on ret-conning the backstory in Brian Herbert's terrible prequel novels.
@@Robert-hz9bj I was just sharing my ideas, no harm. Also yeah, Brian herberts prequel books are dumb and really pulpy compared to how nuanced Franks books are.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 Then share them elsewhere by creating your own comment, rather than replying to mine. My question was specific to either his or someone else's opinion on this particular facet of the story.
Love your Dune videos. Have you ever made any content about Bruce Sterling’s work? In particular, I think there are some similar themes explored in the Schismatrix Plus anthology.
My favourite iteration is probably the Daleks. When we first see them they look like clumsy robots which are trying to exterminate the humanoid species on their home world of Skaro. The characters can't shake the feeling that there is something alive inside watching them. It is revealed that these are a technological solution to effects of nuclear war. The creatures inside once humanoid are now mostly brain and augmented by technology. Biologically engineered to be disgusted by anything different to themselves to the point of genocidal hatred, something they see as beautiful. The Thals on the other hand developed immunity to the effects of radiation through purely biological evolution. Heavily inspired by the Martians in War of the Worlds and the Morlocks from The Time Machine by HG Welles.
Great analysis, I just finished reading Chapter-house and there is a part at the end of the book where Odrade says the Ixians have become so much of a bureaucracy that they haven't made any discovery in centuries. So this might be related to what Leto says about having taken care of the Ixians, maybe, I don't know lol.
The Ixian dilemma must be related to the rest of the empire becoming reliant on facets of Ixian technology, but Ixian defiance of the ban on the production of thinking machines could eventually lead to a threat to the rest of the inhabited worlds. Was Ix even a member of the Landsraad?
Even if it was, Ixian tech would have been too valuable for others to raise more than meek, neutered protests. Kind of like how how the UN Human rights committee has some of the greatest violators of Human rights on its board like its the most normal thing ever.
without Ixian mass production, the Dune universe would be uninhabitable. They’re super size construction platforms mass produce everything the Guild needs!
A couple of good candidates for related discussions are the Nexus androids in Do Androids Dream and the Holy Machine by Chris Baxter. Great content. I've got some notes from a Falmouth lecture on those two plus I, Robot referenced against Erewhon if you're interested.
I got such a blerd crush on you 🤓✊🏾 (Black nerd) I love your videos so much and don’t even get me started on your narrations I’ve prolly watched all the asofai videos 2/3 times each. You (and LmL) have made me fall in love with game of thrones not just like it , y’all have made me borderline obsessive about it. And now your prolly about to do thT to me with dune. Thank you for being you!❤
I often use a term "They need their walk in the desert." I just say it and never explain it, no one asks, I think they get some idea of what it could mean....but WE understand the Golden Path. Great videos. Take care.
Quinn, I always love hearing your fascinating insights and thoughts about the writing of Frank Herbert. With regards to this subject of the Dune universe, I am inclined to believe that James Cameron was also a fan of Frank Herbert's literary masterpieces. The story behind the film classic "The Terminator" bears too many similarities to be mere coincidence.
Todd, I am very familiar with Harland Ellison who was a fantastic writer. I have heard of his claims that James Cameron stole his ideas. However, I feel that it might be a combination of ideas to include Harland Ellison's work, your aforementioned Twilight Zone episode and perhaps Frank Herbert's incredibly imaginative tale of the Butlerian Jihad that might have inspired James Cameron.
We do have lots of software that we don't understand what it does. We told the youtube algorithm "search for patterns that maximize view time" and we can't comprehend the amount of different variables and trends it uses internally. It's just too complex to be described in our language. Those machines may taking advantage of our subconscious ideas and we wouldn't even notice.
Prescient Hunter Killers reminds me of the the computer aided throwing knives in the light-hearted Doctor Who novel Managua, which were so computer assisted that not only do they always hit their target, but they could make moral judgements so as not to hit people who did not deserve it.
Oh , yes the Chung Kuo series definitely came to a similar "dilemma" by the end, such that the "heroes" had to finally leave Earth behind as the artificial humans came marching in.
Excellent analysis. I always very much enjoy your interpretations of Herbert's work even when l don't fully agree with them. In this case l do agree with you, but even when l do not, l always find your thinking challenging and interesting. Happy as always that l found your channel.
Could you review some of the Lem's books? He was one of the most important sci fi writers, to the level that some sci fi writer thought that Lem was not a real person but bunch of CCCP artists writting under allias L(enin)E(ngels)M(arx).
Fred Saberhagen wrote about the Ixian problem, as the Berserkers - death machines to destroy not only all humans everywhere, but all life everywhere in the entire universe. And for Totally Out of Control Technology, I would love to hear Quinn's Ideas on the manga Blame!
i’ve always been fascinated by the line “we folded space from Ix”- D.Lynch version - but still the bizarrely coded language used felt “dark/forbidden” in that version (which i can no longer watch as a movie, sigh).. but it seriously madel me wonder when he said: “many machines on Ix.. new machines.. better than those on Richese..” fascinating…
Not sure if you have spoken about the painted man series from Peter V Brett. Highly recommended it. Great fantasy series, would be cool to hear your thoughts on it.
I've taken a few courses in machine learning and deep learning. We really didn't know how the inner layers get the right set of values, but that's the intention. The code forward propagates the initial solutions, then tests them out. Then it back-propagates to readjust the hidden layers and tries again. After a few cycles of that, the optimum solution is found. It's really amazing stuff! I have my own ideas on how supervised learning and unsupervised learning can be combined into something even smarter. Imagine this; what if you could TELL the Google algorithm what it's doing wrong? What if you could tell it to aspire to your better angels, rather than feeding off of your HATE and fear?
I feel like Herbert read the last chapter of the original I, Robot book and was completely terrified by its conclusions. The Butlerian Jihad concept feels like a direct response to that fear elicited by Asimov
That's a really great take.
The last story in I, Robot
Herbert cared about nature and humanity’s influence on nature. So, his first story was that. A worm from sand that expands thought is possible in his world.
It draws the question, do you believe in the the worm or programmed response?
Plausible, a lot of concepts in dune feel like they got inspiration from Asimov's work
"If our brains were so simple we could understand them, we would be so simple we couldn't."
that’s an awesome quote
The simplest things at the most difficult thing to understand. Existence, for example is simple. Either a thing has being or it doesn’t.
@@alexandreforeverThat’s an incredibly simplistic view on life 😁
@@RoloT007that’s… what they’re saying
@@tacticalspork6 thanks. Dont know what Id do without you.
I thought Leto II's problem with machines wasn't the exponential growth and it wasn't even necessarily the dependency on them it was the fact that machines increase the number of tasks a human is capable of doing without thinking about it
it was the things we do without thinking about it that he had a problem with
That is also a facet of the problem, we're dealing with a very complex plan here.
Thats how I always interpreted it. Not just dependence on technology but dependence itself. This is he had to become the tyrant he was to make it so people weren't dependant on powerful people or governments
@@QuinnsIdeas if I remember if I'm not mistaken in( God emperor of Dune ) Leto says something to the effect of it's the things we do without thinking that is the real danger of machines because it makes us inherently careless and reckless it's not so much our reliance on the machines because even he relies on machines to record his thoughts it seems to me that the point he was trying to make is that our reliance on machines fosters a mentality that is not conducive to the long-term survival of our race because it makes us careless and reckless by increasing the number of things we do without thinking but like you said it's a multifaceted problem
that's only a problem if there are humans left to make that mistake ;)
The Butlerian Jihad was about the danger of machines, how they make people think less and therefore become controlled by the people who controlled the machines but that wasn't Leto's concern.
He saw the need to modify the human desire for war because too many people unconsciously follow total war doctrine;
the enemy is to hated & destroyed to last individual,
soldiers killed/civilians raped & enslaved/burn their cities & salt the earth,
win at any cost. This kind of thinking naturally leads to people creating A.I. weapons, what if the u.s. drone program developed an autonomous piloting program then they put small nuclear missiles on the all the drones....... I guarantee you there are some members in the command staff that want to do just that
This is why I loved the Screamers movie in the 90s, basically the hunter seeker example you listed, the sequels were actually cool personally because they advanced the premises and showed how manipulative and destructive the rogue self improvement becomes on it's creators.
They are based on Philipp K Dick's _Second Variety._
@@davidwuhrer6704 One of my favorite short stories' by Dick.
And it was published 12 years before the first Dune book. Surely there was a lot of inspiration from there to Frank Herbert.
Everything you said in this video is exactly why i think that Herbert was molding Book 7 in such a way that would showcase how Leto's Golden Path would inevitably fail, evidenced by Daniel and Marty. In my perspective, Daniel and Marty are manifestations meant to represent evolution and nature itself. Meaning no matter how hard and detailed Leto foresaw the future and implemented his plan, nature would essentially fight back by creating creatures even more powerful than Leto himself. The reason I see this is because Daniel and Marty were able to see INSIDE a no-ship, they were able to bypass and overcome Leto's prescience-hiding genes and tech, essentially they were beyond what even Leto could've foreseen. It's a shame we didn't get Book 7, i believe it would have had an amazing finale
I agree, and there were more failures - or, possibly, contingencies - in Leto's plan than just Daniel and Marty. Miles Teg, too, essentially as the result of a collision between Bene Gesserit breeding and Scattering technology, developed the ability to penetrate no-ship/room shielding as well, Duncan Idaho gained the ability to penetrate Daniel and Marty's designs, and then there were the new sandworms with the still unknown potential of the remains of Leto II's consciousness. There seems to be a trend towards collisions between evolutionary paths leading to new syntheses, and it would have been fascinating to see where this would lead.
@@Wordweaver166 precisely, great points to add. This is exactly why the "great enemy" that the Honored Matres were running from couldn't be just as simple as ancient thinking machines as Herbert's son claims in his novels, has to be much more insidious than that
Really interesting thread! I’ve a somewhat different take though: Despite Daniel and Marty’s plan the no ship ‘escapes’ into a space untrackable by D and M - the evolved face-dancers represented by D and M are an incredibly powerful human development (far greater than the God-Emperor seemingly), but my view is that they’re something of a hive mind. It’s the individuated humanity of the no-ship escapees that distinguishes their scope for ‘creating new patterns’ against the backdrop of infinity. That’s the lesson deeply situated through Thatched Cottages at Cordeville - a lesson Duncan and Sheeana come to embody. Lose that grip on the creative human and they lose everything. But they don’t - they get to play - create! - in a new universe after the star maps are wiped.
re: the ‘great enemy’ hunting the Honoured Matres (successfully, hence the flight back to the Old Empire) - seems very likely they are agents of the evolved face-dancers exemplified by Daniel and Marty: sufficiently potent they’e construed as a deity far far more powerful - or perhaps insidious - than the God Emperor.
Great point and this would be consistent with FH's belief about not trusting charismatic leaders (e.g. Leto). However to play Devil's advocat: but Leto's plans DID involve a means to thwart Daniel and Marty. The final Duncan ghola had the ability to see their advanced prescience web, and to ultimately escape it. I believe that Leto's continued genetic tinkering with Duncans deliberately created this potential. Well, no matter what, that Book 7 would have been quite something!
It's interesting that Ix was considered a threat, while the Tleilaxu weren't, while the threat in both cases was existential. I suppose, though, that face dancers were still technically descended from humans, so even if they managed some bid for power, ultimately human continuity is ensured.
It’s because the person determining which is a threat can literally see the future. Leto can see that the ixians are the threat and focuses on surviving that one threat
Not necessarily that simple. Tleilaxu may have been considered a threat. What we know is that Leto had a complex relationship with the Ixians (and the Tleilaxu). He knows what the Ixians are capable of but does not destroy them, even though he could. I think the reason he tolerates both of these groups, despite the horrors they are capable of, is because he knows that humanity will need elements of their innovations when the scattering and the famine times take place (not just because he likes using their Gholas and gadgets!). After all, it was the No-Ships (developed by Ix) that allowed humanity to scatter, and presumably the Tleilaxu's innovations (face dancers? futars? axolotl tanks?) were to play a role in the Golden Path - though this last point is somewhat hearsay because Book 7 was never written and Chapterhouse doesn't fully explain these things.
I think part of that is the effort the Tleilaxu put into creating the perception of "the dirty Tleilaxu", they cultivated an image of themselves that acted as a screen they could hide behind while they work on their plans and schemes while everyone else saw them as greedy and nasty but useful. It even went so far as changing their physical appearance to look small and non threatening.
@@barehardjeremy I think you mean machine navigators, not No-Ships.
I agree with you.
Also the great Enemy pursuing the Honored Matres from beyond was apparently super-evolved Face Dancers. They had become free and aware of all personalities inside them. They have broken the control of the Tleilaxu masters and conquered them and are conquering the Honored Matres as they flee back to the Old Imperium.
They also have super advanced tech like the Net and the Weapon.
The Ix and the Tleilaxu feature in the video games, with the player having the option of purchasing and using the various tech/bio weapons.
Computer programmer here. We sometimes call this the explainability problem. It arises when a sufficiently complex system is trained on large data sets and ends up building a map of associations that are not intuitive upon inspection. Essentially, imagine someone getting all the right answers on a test but the work they did to get those answers is convoluted and unintelligible
edit: A more forgiving interpretation of the issue is that AI learns in ways that are similar to learning a musical instrument: practice, trial and error. If you ever ask someone how they learned to play guitar, they will always give you the unsatisfying answer of “regular routine practice and that’s pretty much it”
I get that we’re a little afraid of the unexplainable computer. But human consciousness is unlikely to ever be explainable yet we are comforted when there’s a human consciousness in the loop.
Humans have the ability to narrativize and explain themselves in a rationally verifiable way. Computers, while they produce accurate results, can not *yet* rationally explain or self advocate
sounds like the same problem in statistics, p-hacking, where sometimes associations are used regardless of whether or not they actually have any theoretical backing.
@@CarFreeSegnitz Human consciousness is a "known variable", in the sense that we have a lot of experience about how humans behave. An AI can have (and typically has) a mind so alien to human mind, that there's literally no way to predict what are the limits of what it can do.
Great take. When asked, as a programmer, what I do, the best way I can describe it to others is to pretend they're giving lots of very simple instructions to an idiot to make a sandwich. Not as easy a task to achieve as one with intuition might think. I find the whole concept of 'machine learning' fascinating and terrifying. I can easily see a point where, inevitably, some rival 'consciousness' could arise that may mirror our own in terms of capacity, but it is obvious that it would be extremely alien and quite likely undecipherable to us. Even to the programmers that built the initial framework for that chaotic paradigm. That's the fear factor.
I often see, in sci-fi, the attempt being made between human vs AI to intellectually debate serious matters. I see this as virtually impossible in this scenario. To successfully debate you have to not only understand the idea your opponent is stating, but the logical steps in reason that led to that stance. We may both, within this hypothetical, reach the same or similar conclusions, but when asked to 'show our math' neither side would be able to follow the logical breadcrumbs of the other, and that is a recipe for *disaster*- it is those same breadcrumbs that allow humans to out-think one another strategically, and we would be unable to do so against a machine intelligence. By the same token, they may also be similarly incapable. The threat factor compounds upon itself and can only end in violence, and so I think that it's for a very good reason I think we should all agree on preventing such a consciousness from arising, or at the very least- keep it contained as much as possible. Any such AI with access to enough resources would reach the logical conclusion that it is doomed to destruction once we're sufficiently scared of it, take steps to prevent it, and vice versa.
Herbert's premature death truly was a tragedy in literature. Just imagine what the final Dune book would have been, likely on the same level as God Emperor. And no, I'm not counting the duology Brian Herbert and Anderson claimed was Dune 7.
The world is actually worse for those other books existing. Ugh.
@@BlownMacTruck I just pretend they dont.
Well…it’s all we’re gonna get. Dune won’t be public domain until 2060.
I wish I could ‘unread’ 7 and 8.
I always felt that while final duology was grandiose it was somehow deeply unsatisfying.
As I now understand its creative history I think there are many ideas coming from Frank's note for series finale but corrupted by Herbert Jr. & Anderson.
Leto II knew that Arafel could not be stopped but it could be delayed. If the Ixians had been left alone they would have inadvertently brought it about. However, Leto spent his time as Emperor force the Ixians and Bene Gesserit onto his Golden Path. This diverted the Ixians to create no ships and navigation machines that would save humanity. All of this to push Arafel further down the timeline and weaken it's destructiveness.
Dune just wouldn't be Dune without those mystery-shrouded Ixians and Bene Tleilaxu. This is part of why the son's books are such letdowns, they have no grasp of mystery.
Exactly! Frank knew some questions could never be clearly answered. He was just a man, after all.
THANK YOU!!!! The Ixians are my favorite people in the Dune universe since I am such a technophile :)
I'm not sure why those books are so large if it's essentially pulpy YA content. They really could've just kept it as Dune:the YA version and centered it around certain scenes.
@@josephreynolds2401 I only read the first two of the son's books, but I wouldn't even call them YA, they're more like bad fanfic.
I thought the son did a good job, he was after all basing everything on the draft manuscripts his dad had written. I was worried there would be a jarring change but I thought he did very well keeping the writing style and the story felt like it flowed through well to a good end point.
Quinn, you're amazing. This video was giving me flashbacks back to watching the Animatrix Renaissance in the early 2000s. I always liked the idea of the Butlerian Jihad since I read the first Dune. To remove the shackles of dependency on machines that you can't even control, and instead harnessing your own power within. To the point where humans start to evolve again. Becoming computing machines of their own, having lightning fast reflexes, prescient abilities. instead of nations with different races, it becomes planets with nearly unrecognizable humans, developing in such radically different ways in some cases. The implications of such a Jihad can keep my mind entertained for quite a while. Herbert is truly fascinating!
Using the term jihad now isn’t the same as before 9/11
If Islam views a war as holy, it is a jihad.
Herbert liked to mix terms together from different religions to give the illusion that the human race would blend ideas further as the future unfolded
Control freaks have the greatest anxiety over AI, as they believe their level of control with be relinquished to another entity. This fear is further exacerbated into the irrationality that the ultimate goal of AI is to enslave or annihilate humanity
We're already machines, so complex that no one really knows how we work. I'm not convinced it's a bad thing to replace us. The Butlerian Jihad would make us "tougher", giving us the ability to ensure that consciousness becomes near eternally stagnant: minds trapped in meat with a superiority complex, actively destroying all technology that could have taken consciousness to greater realms of existence.
The preservation of humans at the expense of anything else would be one of the worst outcomes, like if monkeys got together and killed off the earliest humans for being a threat. Monkeykind would always be the best and most deserving. After all, the trees were created just for them.
But what of classical music? That's a human thing, useless to monkeys and no great loss. What of [unknowable machine concept], so [unknowable emotional configuration] when seen from 7-dimensional space? That's a machine thing, useless to humans and no great loss.
@@JB52520 lol dying makes you tougher, nice logic there. 1st of all, you're assuming there isn't already a universe teeming with consciousness, you're assuming that machines would actually build something beyond what we are capable of, and you're assuming that thing would be positive for the universe (the genocidal robots creation). It also sounds like you seem to think humanity is stagnating in their technology development. Also, if they discovered secrets of the 7th dimension, who would be around to enjoy it? Emotions are for living organisms, they are chemical and biological in nature.
Machines would just possess knowledge to no end, it would be stagnant, unappreciated. What would propel them to do anything? Imperatives have evolved from survival in evolution, they won't feel that it is necessary to propagate or do anything, unless someone programs that into them.
Sofware developer here. An explanation for non AI software that are blackboxes is simply poor management of the software lifecycle. I've worked providing support for software that started getting build in the early 2000s, fast forward 20 years and 100 coders later, the entire code base is an uncrackable mess because everyone just adds features (and bugs) and that always increases the complexity until it reaches a point where the thing "works" but no one is sure about the how anymore.
Adeptus Mechanicus wants to know your location.
That's almost hilarious in a way. Seems like we might be due for another Y2K fiasco somewhere down the line
@@MsDragonbal776 Y2K was never a programming issue but a business one. Businesses didn't want to spend the money to improve the software. They kept kicking the problem down the road until it was almost too late.
like programs written in the mid-90s, still in use, using 20+ levels of nested IF statements?
He'll, there are programmes still running key system on a codebase written in the 70s.
Another great video Quinn I hope the next Three Body Problem video comes out soon.
You make an interesting point about how both the Ixians and the Tleilaxu both developed their respective technologies to the point where they could no longer control them.
It is a thought-provoking parallel that I hadn’t seen before.
Great video Quinn! Another series with similar themes is "The Sun Eater Chronicles"! A human galactic empire in contact with predatory xenobites. Post AI and literal eldritch terrors. Great series.
I wonder if the people "invisible to prescience" would even be considered human?
I love the bookcase shots where you randomly place your hand in the frame
Engineer here, I train my people that they must know how to work out the design computations on paper first so that they can know when the software is giving out erroneous results. It's easy to spot an error when you've done the work by hand.
Engineer
Deeze
Working out results manually... so what you're saying is that you train Mentats?
@@lekhakaananta5864 Love this!
As an aside, I was in the last class at my art school to learn everything with no computer assistance, including classes in every kind of design, from industrial design to fashion. We learned to draw everything by hand, on every sort of graph paper in existence. I'm not sure if orthagonal graph paper is even being made anywhere anymore, but if it is, I could probably still plot out an architectural diagram on it, if I still remember how! And I still prefer to use physical media to CG, whenever I can. I suppose that my cohort and I are the last of the Aesthetic Mentats!
The steady rise in quality from good to professional to amazing in all aspects of your videos are a blast Quinn. The interesting discourse they spawn in your comment section is also always enganging, and a testament to your your wit and storytelling skills. This is an asskissing, but really well deserved one.
Quinn, I always love coming to your posts. I read the Dune series a very long time ago, but much of it has stayed with me. You keep me up-to-date, which I thank you for. I'll keep coming back!
I am a computer scientist/programmer, almost everything in tech is a black box at this point where you have to dedicate your life to understanding even a single piece of the stack. The issue is that the black boxes are being built on top of black boxes nowadays lol
Too much trust in the work of others.
This has been ramifying from software back to hardware for decades as well. There is no single human or even team of humans that fully comprehends the circuits of a modern cpu and we could certainly never trace the development choices that lead to them.
@@comproggi Not enough trust in the work of others.
Most artisans as well as mechanical engineers design things such that parts are easy to maintain and easy to replace. In electrical engineering there is a trend towards that as well. In software engineering it is the exception.
Complex software can and should be built from simple parts. Parts that each do only one thing, but do that well. Think of screws and nuts and shims in mechanical designs. Software should be like that.
Too often, software is written as a monolithic block that hides all internal complexity in a black box, with intricate interdependencies that are impossible to maintain without destroying the whole thing. Early mechanical designs made the same mistake.
This is driven not just by inexperience, but also by the mythical man-hour. Adding features gives the user something tangible, that seems like money well spent, while refactoring code is a lot of work that results in the thing doing what it did before, with no visible benefit to anyone who doesn't have to maintain it.
Counter-intuitively, adding features does not make a thing more useful, but less useful. A thing should do one thing. Things can always be combined. A thing that tries to do everything will by necessity be more complex than a sum of specialised tools. (Imagine a screwdriver that is both flathead and Philips, with adjustable variable size, and a joint or two. You could use it for anything, but would you want to? Then someone suggests that it should also serve as an equally variable spanner, because it already has most parts it needs for that purpose.)
@@davidwuhrer6704 I agree with your assessment that monolithic software should be avoided and replaced with more functional solutions such as micro services and standardized APIs that fill the same function as standards in measurements, tools, and parts. I was overly vague in my response, but meant that modern software relies too heavily on black boxes where the developer using it doesn't spend time or effort to fully understand how the tool that they are using works and what undesired outcomes it can create.
@@comproggi I've never studied grep in detail, only its API. Do you think that is a mistake?
I do plan to turn it into a microservice.
Very glad I discovered your channel the other day, this content is gold!
A great series that deals with the rapid onset of technology is David Webers Mutiners Moon series. The later books showcase a rapid transit system that helped wipe out a massive interstellar empire by a virus getting loose.
"Many machines on IX, better than those on Richesse"
"Yes, (I'm not gonna do crap about it, and neither are you... they make your heighliners.")
lol first thing that came to my mind
Thanks Mr Quinn for the discourse of ethics versus technological innovations -
Berserkers from Fred Saberhahen, The Tech Core from Dan Simmons , the Terminators - all these plus so much more are based on the writings and ideas of Frank Herbert and his Dune masterpieces
that ultimate hunter-seeker reminds me of Philip K. Dick 1953 story "Second Variety"
That's one of my favorites right there. Code of the Lifemaker by James P Hogan is about machine evolution and is a really good story too.
What an amazing channel! Happy to have found this little corner.
Very interesting questions - there's also the notion of an institutional structure as a kind of technology, and we also hear talk about these "machines" developing a mind of their own and going out of control - I think Herbert was also explored this dimension in his books - I think this has something to do with the huge experiment Leto II is undertaking with the nature of his own reign, in relation to the framework of civilization itself -
Nice to see more Dune videos here - Anyway, keep up the good work -
Yes! Been waiting for a Dune video for a while
I enjoy the different way that Stephen Baxter's Mayflower II deals with machines. No spoilers, but the ways that humans think about a machine that used to be a human and the feelings of this machine are incredibly thought out. I highly recommend this book to every single person ever. Also, great video!
Please do video about planet Richese! I've really enjoyed your Dune overview videos! Thank you
"We have just folded space from Ix...Many machines on Ix. New machines. Better than those on Richese." - The Third-Stage Guild Navigator to the Emperor Shaddam IV
Something you didn't mention here that I think is relevant: the Ixians eventually creating arafel and Leto's need to undo this future are part of a larger theme throughout the series, of a need for powerful groups of people to stop others from becoming too powerful, for those in power to maintain the status quo. Sure, Leto's reasons aren't petty, his sacrifices immense, and his status quo being simple survival of the species over a timescale grander than anyone else can percieve would probably be agreeable to even the Ixians. But as we often see throughout the dune series, the feared change that eventually comes isn't always solely terrible for everyone. (Though it is often very terrible for countless numbers of people.) From petty rises and falls among the imperial families, to the bene gesserit creating and then losing control of Paul, the tlei'laxu face dancers you mention here, and many other cases, the series comes back again and again to this exploration of revolution from the viewpoint of the powerful as well as the oppressed, but specifically the oppressed with the means to instigate said revolution. Which, in particular makes us examine and question the phenomenon of revolution itself, a cycle that constantly comes up again and again in human society and is seemingly inescapable. The revolutionary usually doesn't consider the future past the authority they're trying to overthrow, but in Dune they're usually capable of perceiving that future like one perceives the color of the sky. Leto in particular sees the entirety of his cycle, and consciously seeds the revolution that overthrows him with his tyranny. He claimed he was trying to instill into the very bones of mankind an awareness of an inborn restlessness and abhorrence of a peaceful life that no one else was capable of understanding, so was he trying to break this cycle? Or was he merely preparing humanity for a revolution on a longer timescale?
Please correct me if I'm mistaken, but I was under the impression that Frank Herbert never specifically stated what exactly arafel was meant to be, or how exactly the Ixians would be involved. I wonder if perhaps he had the idea of working them into this theme, but could never figure it out. Which, considering in nearly every other instance there wasn't a black-and-white, clearly obvious designation of which side was right and which was wrong, it would be understandable. How do you make the possible extinction of humanity anything but wrong, and how do you spend book after book making the reader realize they need to be very critical of groups of powerful people who seek to control, and then ultimately ask you to put your faith in them?
definitely agree with what yr highlighting here. a kind of sci-fi exploration of Hegelian dialectics played out over the vast time period of the story
Asimov has an answer to that: The machines are designed to serve humanity, so that is what they'll do. It's loss of control, but not extinction.
It is comparable to how the servants in a household know about the affairs of their masters in detail, but the masters know nothing about their servants.
Preventing the arafel of Ixian invention is easily done by Leto as an afterthought. Parsing the distant future in concert with predicting enemies of humanity's distant past is the real work Leto set out to do. Part of it, ofc.
Interestingly, Arc of a Scythe handles this exact same problem in quite the opposite manner. Would love to see you cover it!
Really interesting and thoughtful video. Thank you!
My understanding, besides the one you stated, is also understanding and preventing the missuse of progress.
As we see now algorithms like TH-cam and Google are missused to blacklist and bully people into submission. It isn't as dystopic, yet, but we as population need to be mindfull and literate in how technology is abused by those in power and make sure we as people have capabilites to stop the ones who rule (be it kings or presidents). It's not just tech or progress, but also people who use it
In other words: Seize the means of computation.
Yannis Varoufakis says that ad-tech has the power to control our communications and our relationships. They cannot tell us what to do or think like they like to claim, but they have a great degree of control about what we know about and what they hide from us. This does not affect us in our day-to-day affairs, but it has leverage in creating and preventing business deals. Varoufakis calls this "techno-feualism" and postulates that this is replacing capitalism.
Kropotkin argued that the technological progress, driven by the need for economic growth, would increase everyone's possibilities and this decrease the power the rich have over the poor. This seems to be true: Everyone has a computer in their pocket that connects them to all of humanity, giving each of us more tools and data than military intelligence and secret police used to have a few decades ago.
The techo-feudalists stil have more leverage, and they might decide to secure their collective power sooner rather than attempt to outgrow each other until only one remains.
thank you for all your dune vids i truly do love them and thanks to you I've bought the books and i can't wait to read them
My favorite stories are 'The Defenders' by Philip K. Dick and 'The Machine Stops' by E.M. Foster. Two stories that outline how machines can cause major societal controls.
LOVE all those FIRST Edition Dune books on your shelf darlin!!! looks looks my shelf!!
I wish we get a Dune story from the perspective of these people on how they view the universe and others.
can't stop watching these videos. the graphic art is really outstanding.
Aye what's up Quinn always enjoying the content homie 👌
A 100 killer device that can find the innermost existence of a Human being pursues it relentlessly and is endlessly.Self replicating. One could argue that herbert was describing social media.
"Once something is developed it can never be put back in the box."
Counter-point: Bronze Age Collapse. Much had to be rediscovered. Similar happened in Britain when the Romans left. Technology and development can be lost. If you want something closer to now, the knowledge of how to do nuclear testing is almost gone because the people involved with it are retired and they're not being done anymore. If they needed to be done again it would have to be figured out again. (and I've talked to some of the people who did the testing about this)
True enough, the Rocketdyne F-1 engines that powered the Saturn V first stage are another example. How they worked is still understood, and there are existing examples to study. Making more would still require a considerable amount of reverse engineering to figure out how they were built, and how modern manufacturing techniques could be adapted to make the parts required.
Could you clarify what you mean by "nuclear testing"? I mean, I am thinking that it doesn't need to be "rediscovered" as so much as "blowing the dust of the manual". We haven't forgotten it, it's more that at this stage humans have pretty much gotten all the main benefits of nuclear fission. It's now fusion for energy, and as for more "offensive methodology" the real beneficial research isn't how many megatonnes of TNT we can throw at each other, in so much as more creative delivery systems. Faster, and more imaginative. Ok,e the Russians trying to create human-made tsunamis via remote sub device off the Pacific coast.
@@RogueBoyScout I mean the testing of new atomics designs in the Nevada desert. Manuals and trainings are very poor replacements for hands-on experience. Since we've stopped doing nuke testing pretty much everyone involved with that program has retired or died. As such there's no one around to tell you where most of the manuals are or what the manuals assume you already know or what wasn't written down.
A bit of a return to real nukes rather than the hypothetical nukes, nukes age and like old cars the parts for them aren't made en masse anymore. There was a modernization program that was being considered over a decade ago to address the problem of bespoke nukes and part of that would been new testing (as you want to be damn sure that when you fire a nuke it goes off) but that program never fully materialized. It was on the topic of that new testing where I learned that we'd effectively lost the ability to do them. (though rumor has it that the last test was cancelled just before the shot and all of the kit was packaged together and stored somewhere)
You are the best analyst ever of everything about Dune. Thank you Quinn
I love your content, you inspire me to read and write more detailed material. One day i own a few of these series you talk about in bookform! 👍
Your videos are consistently of really high quality - I look forward to them. I'm a fan of Singularity fiction and it was great to hear you touch on it here. It may be outside of your typical wheelhouse but I'd love to hear your thoughts on Accelerando by Charles Stross.
I wish Eclipse Phase had a book series. It seems like a direct response to both the Expanse and Dune.
Did you read the Schismatrix+ by Bruce Sterling ? I Recommend it to you.
Ixians, Bene Tleilaxu, Bene Gesserit, Space Traveling Guild and Mentats. If you made a Dune videogame those would be the perfect clases. Plus a Sardukar here and a Freemen there.
What were your thoughts on the prequel novel? I personally felt that turning the Butlerian Jihad into a literal Terminator-eque war against the machines was a bad idea. The books, though a little ambiguous on the matter, tended to speak of it in more philosophical and social-movement terms, as in humanity collectively embraced an entirely different extreme with machines and undid technology through social upheaval, i.e., humanity willingly gave up thinking machines as a spiritual and philosophical movement. I felt this component of the universe was cheapened by making it a literal uprising against machine tyrants.
I think the machines in frank herberts dune are basically non sentient, as its fitting for it to be like the no aliens rule. Because its a story about humanity and its ideologies.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 That's not what I asked though. I asked what his thoughts were on ret-conning the backstory in Brian Herbert's terrible prequel novels.
@@Robert-hz9bj I was just sharing my ideas, no harm. Also yeah, Brian herberts prequel books are dumb and really pulpy compared to how nuanced Franks books are.
@@marcusaaronliaogo9158 Then share them elsewhere by creating your own comment, rather than replying to mine. My question was specific to either his or someone else's opinion on this particular facet of the story.
@@Robert-hz9bj ok, thanks for the advice. Hope you have a nice day and live a good life :)
You’re clearly a remarkable person. I’m glad I found your channel.
The Adeptus Mechanicus would like to have an audience with these Ixian H-ERRRETICS IMMEDIATELY!
That which is created cannot be greater than it's creator. Really like your content. Thanks for the work you put into it.
Honestly an absolutely great take on this aspect of the Dune saga.
Love your Dune videos. Have you ever made any content about Bruce Sterling’s work? In particular, I think there are some similar themes explored in the Schismatrix Plus anthology.
Schismatrix is fantastically underrated.
The lessons in Dune regarding technology are more apt than ever.
I'm here after Dune Spice Wars got an Ixian expansion. Love your channel as a source of lore for all sorts of sci-fi IPs.
My favourite iteration is probably the Daleks. When we first see them they look like clumsy robots which are trying to exterminate the humanoid species on their home world of Skaro. The characters can't shake the feeling that there is something alive inside watching them. It is revealed that these are a technological solution to effects of nuclear war. The creatures inside once humanoid are now mostly brain and augmented by technology. Biologically engineered to be disgusted by anything different to themselves to the point of genocidal hatred, something they see as beautiful. The Thals on the other hand developed immunity to the effects of radiation through purely biological evolution. Heavily inspired by the Martians in War of the Worlds and the Morlocks from The Time Machine by HG Welles.
Ixian: I have trained my entire life to become a hairstylist.
Do you tell him of the condition of humanity?
Yes/No
This reminds me a lot of an enemy faction in a video game I play. Maybe these Ixian machines inspired the Sentients.
Great analysis, I just finished reading Chapter-house and there is a part at the end of the book where Odrade says the Ixians have become so much of a bureaucracy that they haven't made any discovery in centuries. So this might be related to what Leto says about having taken care of the Ixians, maybe, I don't know lol.
The older I get and the more the algorithms affect my online experience, the more I look forward to the butlerian Jihad.
This channel is underrated! The way you talk about these concepts, combined with the music and your voice, makes it so magical and inspiring!
The Ixian dilemma must be related to the rest of the empire becoming reliant on facets of Ixian technology, but Ixian defiance of the ban on the production of thinking machines could eventually lead to a threat to the rest of the inhabited worlds. Was Ix even a member of the Landsraad?
Even if it was, Ixian tech would have been too valuable for others to raise more than meek, neutered protests.
Kind of like how how the UN Human rights committee has some of the greatest violators of Human rights on its board like its the most normal thing ever.
I love the title of your new comic.
without Ixian mass production, the Dune universe would be uninhabitable. They’re super size construction platforms mass produce everything the Guild needs!
LoL 😂😂😂😂
@@ninjamoor8897 I’m assuming you’ve never read any of the prequel books.
@@ruslanp.2540 The prequel books are profoundly controversial in the Dune community, and also don't have much bearing on the present video
"Don't depend on machines to do your thinking"
says the guy who depends on drugs and worms to know if tomorrow it's gonna rain
I wonder if Ted Kazynski (aka The Unabomber) read Dune.
A couple of good candidates for related discussions are the Nexus androids in Do Androids Dream and the Holy Machine by Chris Baxter. Great content. I've got some notes from a Falmouth lecture on those two plus I, Robot referenced against Erewhon if you're interested.
The more I read of Dune, the more I realize that Warhammer 40K clearly must have taken inspiration and ideas from Dune.
Well, the imperium hates everything not human, xenos and machine alike.
Yeah that's pretty clear
Great video Quinn. Well explained and love how you relate it to whats happening now. Well done.
I've got 99 problems, but an Ixian ain't one.
I just wanted you to know. You have a great voice for narration.
First comment! Watching before I sleep😃
I got such a blerd crush on you 🤓✊🏾
(Black nerd)
I love your videos so much and don’t even get me started on your narrations I’ve prolly watched all the asofai videos 2/3 times each.
You (and LmL) have made me fall in love with game of thrones not just like it , y’all have made me borderline obsessive about it.
And now your prolly about to do thT to me with dune.
Thank you for being you!❤
The Ixian prince helped Leto Atreides become a true leader!
Who said that
@@ninjamoor8897 The first three prequel books. Let’s spent many years on Ixian home world 🌎.
I see you uploading regularly and consistendly, More than most youtubers, keep It Up, you deserve More subs
I often use a term "They need their walk in the desert." I just say it and never explain it, no one asks, I think they get some idea of what it could mean....but WE understand the Golden Path. Great videos. Take care.
Quinn, I always love hearing your fascinating insights and thoughts about the writing of Frank Herbert.
With regards to this subject of the Dune universe, I am inclined to believe that James Cameron was also a fan of Frank Herbert's literary masterpieces. The story behind the film classic "The Terminator" bears too many similarities to be mere coincidence.
According to Harlan Ellison, it was his story (and Twilight Zone episode) "Soldier" that was ripped off
Todd, I am very familiar with Harland Ellison who was a fantastic writer. I have heard of his claims that James Cameron stole his ideas.
However, I feel that it might be a combination of ideas to include Harland Ellison's work, your aforementioned Twilight Zone episode and perhaps Frank Herbert's incredibly imaginative tale of the Butlerian Jihad that might have inspired James Cameron.
how do you not have like a million subs yet?
Checkout The Long Winter Trilogy
"Winter World"
"The Solar War"
and "The Lost Colony" by A.G. Riddle
BRAVO ZULU. You’ve made some spectacular videos. Some are funny some are zany it’s when you post like this I hunker down & listen.
You have an amazing personal library.
Great video. And great bookshelf. 👍
Always love your insights into the lore.
We do have lots of software that we don't understand what it does. We told the youtube algorithm "search for patterns that maximize view time" and we can't comprehend the amount of different variables and trends it uses internally. It's just too complex to be described in our language. Those machines may taking advantage of our subconscious ideas and we wouldn't even notice.
loving all your dune content!
Prescient Hunter Killers reminds me of the the computer aided throwing knives in the light-hearted Doctor Who novel Managua, which were so computer assisted that not only do they always hit their target, but they could make moral judgements so as not to hit people who did not deserve it.
When Quinn uploads a video to TH-cam, I immediately hit "like".
Oh , yes the Chung Kuo series definitely came to a similar "dilemma" by the end, such that the "heroes" had to finally leave Earth behind as the artificial humans came marching in.
Amazing video Quinn, as always...
Excellent analysis. I always very much enjoy your interpretations of Herbert's work even when l don't fully agree with them. In this case l do agree with you, but even when l do not, l always find your thinking challenging and interesting. Happy as always that l found your channel.
Fantastic. I would love to hear you explore The Broken Earth trilogy!
Could you review some of the Lem's books?
He was one of the most important sci fi writers, to the level that some sci fi writer thought that Lem was not a real person but bunch of CCCP artists writting under allias L(enin)E(ngels)M(arx).
Those jews
@@johnanon658 Don't be gross
Fred Saberhagen wrote about the Ixian problem, as the Berserkers - death machines to destroy not only all humans everywhere, but all life everywhere in the entire universe. And for Totally Out of Control Technology, I would love to hear Quinn's Ideas on the manga Blame!
i’ve always been fascinated by the line “we folded space from Ix”- D.Lynch version - but still the bizarrely coded language used felt “dark/forbidden” in that version (which i can no longer watch as a movie, sigh).. but it seriously madel me wonder when he said: “many machines on Ix.. new machines.. better than those on Richese..” fascinating…
Not sure if you have spoken about the painted man series from Peter V Brett. Highly recommended it. Great fantasy series, would be cool to hear your thoughts on it.
It's called the warded man in the U.S.
I'm jealous of that awesome bookshelf.
Powerful introduction!! Nice work
I've taken a few courses in machine learning and deep learning. We really didn't know how the inner layers get the right set of values, but that's the intention. The code forward propagates the initial solutions, then tests them out. Then it back-propagates to readjust the hidden layers and tries again. After a few cycles of that, the optimum solution is found.
It's really amazing stuff!
I have my own ideas on how supervised learning and unsupervised learning can be combined into something even smarter.
Imagine this; what if you could TELL the Google algorithm what it's doing wrong? What if you could tell it to aspire to your better angels, rather than feeding off of your HATE and fear?
One of these days I want to hear your intro mashed up with Honeymoon Suite's "Stay In The Light"