Fremen performing the sandwalk to prevent detection by the sandworms as a metaphor for the evolution of humankind to avoid detection by prescience. I like it 😄
The novels written by Frank touch on this near the end. One of the sisters, I can't recall who as it has been years, laid out that maybe the clairvoyant leader can't see the future but rather can see what is so completely that they can create the future which matches Leto's goal. If there are those who are outside of the vision that allows such control then such control can never be so complete as to dictate the future entirely, there is always that unknown element that can change the tides. Leto's goal was to make sure mankind could never fall to such tyranny as his again.
Ooooh this makes me want to write some sort of a fanfic where the attempt at this succedes, and now there is no way to prevent the emergence of thinking machines whichc leads to the destruction of mankind because "the golden path" was only golden, because at the point all the other ones turn bad in this path the prescience stops working....so you can not see it turning bad .....which would catapult the universe to being essentialy deterministic again (as all the non-deterministic actions are always inevitably overturned)
Well, Leto 2 did explain his goal in God Empire. His prescience gave him awareness of some future threat that would eradicate humanity through the use of prescience, so he endeavored to not only force humanity grow beyond it's spice dependency, but to also use the BG breeding program to develop a genetic trait that makes people immune to prescience. His goals were technically accomplished. He gave humanity a chance to survive what was coming.
This is exactly right, when Paul is about to fight feyd and he meets Fenring for the first time a failed kwisatz, Fenring was invisible to prescience, and it shocked Paul bc he understood that generics presence was affecting the future he could see. Makes me think if this guy even read the book
In Dune: Messiah, it's described how individuals with prescience are actually more or less blind to the activities of other prescient figures. The conspiracy against Paul uses a powerful Guild Navigator to mask the outcomes of their meetings. This means that a prescient character can essentially see everybody else following their deterministic path, but because other oracles are acting on information from the *future* they are not bound by determinism and therefore their paths become much more challenging to follow. In Messiah we also meet a dwarf who has some sort of mutation that grants foresight - Paul is not able to see that character's path. I've always assumed that Leto II's breeding program was in part leveraging something like that - building up a genetic line that could pass a minor foresight mutation throughout the human genome. Also a bonus detail: the conspiracy in Messiah attempt to subtly block Paul's visions by seeding the markets in Arrakeen with copies of a new tarot deck. Basically they hope to add more randomness to the decision-making of the population. They hope that this might seed enough variability that Paul's prescience becomes fuzzy.
One would say the prescience is incomplete. But in any case, that loophole is not needed to create a free will paradox. There is no paradox even with a perfect Laplace daemon, because foreknowledge does not imply causation. Free will is about causal power/agency, not about foreknowledge. You can tell me I am about to play Radiohead's Spinning Plates in a minute from now, but that does not cause me to play the track. If I choose to "exercise free will" and defy you then you simply lacked accurate foreknowledge. If I "obey" you that does not imply you caused me to play the track, I am still exercising free will, it's just that you knew my mood well, a trick many "mentalists" can do some of the time. I can say that I'm not going to let your prediction bother me and that I would've played the track regardless of hearing your words.
@@Achrononmaster Not entirely sure who you're arguing with here, but nothing you said seems relevant to my comment. Yes, free will is about causal power and agency, but the position taken *by Frank Herbert* is that a "Laplace's Demon" as you call it could accurately read the causal chain that leads to you wanting to exercise your agency in a particular way. Someone who has a perfect understanding of your history, your music taste, your brain chemistry, and your trajectory through space could *in Dune* develop an instinctual understanding of what you're going to listen to and when. If they don't inform you of their prediction, you will probably continue down your path and listen to Spinning Plates a minute from now. Sure, that's your "free will" but you're choosing to do something based on a long chain of choices and influences stretching back to before you were born. Imagine two oracles were mapping your trajectory, and made bets. Paul and Leto II both stake the future of Arrakis and human civilization on whether or not you choose to play Spinning Plates or not. Paul weighs all his inputs and sees clearly that you will choose to listen to Spinning Plates because that is what you are most likely to do. However, Leto II can see the same chain of events and thus knows that Paul will bet on this. So he decides to interfere - he sends an agent to stab you in the ears so you can never listen to music again. You never even got to the point where you were going to choose what music to listen to, but both you and Paul have suffered massively just because Leto II decided that he wasn't happy with your most likely path. *This is what I mean by oracles being invisible to other oracles, because one oracle can choose to disrupt the events that other oracles are betting on, and thus disrupt their visions of the future.*
@@Achrononmaster Yes absolutely, but in your case, the demon wouldn't say that you were about to play the track. Because if he did he'd know that you then wouldn't play it, or if you were double-switching on him, he would know that you'd play it anyways if you thought to trick him thinking he actually calculated that you wouldn't and so on and so forth. Essentially, by telling you that you are or aren't about to do something that you have the control to change, he already knows you have the power to change the outcome and factors that in, meaning he either knows you'll do it regardless, or is lying to you by saying that you will/won't.
knowing the future which has horrible outcomes for so many billions of people but also knowing that's the only way forward for the survival of the species is much more of a curse than a gift
Well thats the thing, in dune you could argue that it was necessary bc if it never happened there would have never been a golden path, but this was only possible bc Paul knew how to led humanity into that way. In real life tho we can't forgive atrocities even if the outcome is positive bc nobody knows what is going to happen in the future, and if there is a "good ending" is mostly probably bc of luck.
Excellent video. The Butlerian Jihad is the last desperate reaction against near extinction. That is a very clear example of "Generational Scarring" and sociological conditioning. The gut reaction against machines is very clear in all the 6 books.
I always found it interesting how by the later books that was slowly changing. Leto let IX continue to experiment and make some forbidden things during his reign and was enamored with his IXan machines. The old Imperium had gone back to using machine guided ships for FTL travel since the spice is scarce and the Benne Gesserite are starting to cyborg some people
@@NaatClark Yes, but with Siona gene the threat of a prescient machine that leads to the extinction of humanity is averted. That’s, I believe, why Leto II says at one point “"Do not fear the Ixians. They can make the machines, but they can no longer make arafel.”
Probably my favorite thing about dune is that in order to 'win' the protagonist had to the badguy. Paul couldn't do it. His own humanity stoped him. And Leto II could only do it because as a pre-born he had the collective memories of all of his ancestors. He had the context needed to realize that it was the _only_ way for humanity to survive.
And even he struggled. In God Emperor of Dune, he debates to himself whether this is really what he wants, he knows that at the end he will die.. or rather his body will die and his mind will splinter into tiny fragments trapped inside the mind of the newly born sandworms. But there is another path a path that could lead to his happiness, he could be with the woman he loves. But he eventually discards the plan because he knows that realistically by the time he can return to human, she would be long dead. So he chooses to walk the golden path. He chose to be the monster to be trapped by the future.
Paul still becomes the bad guy, he later admits Hitler's genocides pales in comparison to his own. The Jihad kills billions upon billions , but the alternative would be death for him and everyone he's ever cared about.
I put Dune right next to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the novels by Sartre and Camus and other major examples of deeply philosophical works in the form of fiction. It’s just so rich, so elaborated, so accomplished as a philosophical inquire that I think it’s crazy it isn’t studied in literature classes and there are so few in-depth analysis of it
That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard all year. Dune is a fantasy novel. The worms are dragons, the voice is a spell. Dune is a piece of decent fiction. Nothing more. No great truths lie within. It speaks of a culture that DOES NOE EXIST. So it is not historical. It breaks no philosophical ground. Fail. Like comparing Sponge Bob to Mozart.
@@nicokarsen6131 Probably Dune. Which I disagree with but usually people that say that are used to reading books that are at a high school reading level with action every other page. If anyone says Nietzsche is boring, they must not be reading it at all.
I reread (listened) all the dunes over this year. One thing that I recall here is that Paul and Leto II admitted that they can't 'see' the future, rather they select one from the many paths. Like picking a colour from the rainbow or infinite possibilities. The one Leto picked was the only path that led to human survival. This implied free will. Determinism implies we are just actors playing out our roles and that clearly didn't happen in the books. NOTE : I liked the philosophy so much that I had to stop and think often what Frank was saying.
As much as i love that Brian Herbert carried on his father's Legacy with the later Dune books, i sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Frank Herbert wrote those last few novels, as the idea that thinking machines were the Great Enemy was sorta a piecing together or Frank's notes and Brians own ideas
Yeah, I never got the impression that it was a machine from the core books. It always felt like it was something else entirely, something organic, yet alien.
Same, I always envisioned the Ones of Many Faces to be Super Face Dancers, who somehow had the ability to break the No-Ships, which is how the two old guys in the garden could come into contact with Duncan Idaho.
Thinking Machines were never the enemy. The whole thing about the Butlerian Jihad, and the sophistication of Frank Herbert's argument, is that the problem was humans using machines against other humans. That makes a whole lot of difference.
So in short, the entire Dune saga has an underlying thread of "Could a Laplace Demon create a factor that, beyond its creation, even the Demon couldn't predict?" That's actually kind of a mind bender when you stop to think about it
Not really a mind bender if you get to the core of it. The first question that you should ask about Laplace's demon is: if the demon is part of the universe, does it predict itself too? In answering this question you'll run into exceptions in set theory, endless loops, and finally end up on incompleteness and never find a proof. Such a demon cannot exist because if it could, it could be proven mathematically, which is not the case. In the end, the universe is not deterministic, making Laplace's demon just a fun thought experiment but not really confusing if you take time to understand it.
Maybe, but that's not the only reading. Laplace's daemon only _knows,_ it does not _cause_ (or does not _have_ to be a causal agent). All that Herbert needed to resolve the apparent paradox is that the prescient minds know events only up to some clock time, and for all time after this point their foreknowledge is simply false (delusions). This is no paradox if their foreknowledge is not the agency causing events. Foreknowledge is not causation.
Leplace's demon is a tempting philosphy even with the awareness of quantum indeterminism. It used to make me very sad and unmotivated, however now I've decided while Leplace's demon might be true for humanity, to be human and enjoy life is to believe in free will, or simply ignore the existence of determinism. Otherwise I fine it nearly impossible to live a life of meaning and fulfilment
That's why I love this quote from the book/movie, it breaks you free from this way of thinking. "The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. A process that cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it."
A man can do what he will, but he cannot will what he wills - Schopenhauer Paul and Leto II both saw the Golden Path and they themselves knew how it ends, you could argue that itself was determined but yeah Siona's no-gene was basically the gift of escaping causality (Even though Leto 100% had manipulated her into assassinating him, my friend thinks he didn't know Siona was going to kill him, that was her *purpose*, Leto spends 3500 years knowing the Golden Path cuts to black and he creates a creature that can slip into the shadows beyond his prescience...) So I'm not sure if even Siona even has free will or just that Leto created a large enough blind spot in causality that they can hide in there, I think the only character that showed true will in the whole dune saga was Paul when he denied the Golden Path, so literally the Kwisatz Haderach. Free will does exist, it's just fucking hard - Dolores, Westworld
Didn't Paul have free will though ? He chose not to take the Golden Path, not because he couldn't but he did not want to pay the price. Knowing that his son would have to bear the burden. It's been a very long time since I read the books, but as I understood, it was like after Paul got blinded by the attempt on his life (which he could have avoided). After that he could see that (while technically blind) if he'd move forward he'd fall into a canyon for example (I'm simplifying here). He could choose to either go left or right (or actually fall into the canyon if that is what he desires). Not knowing what would be there until he had gone either way, then seeing what would be ahead in whatever direction he had chosen. For the golden path it would mean that it was a clear way to follow all the way to the end in order to save humanity (from this one specific threat). But only because 'left' and 'right' of it was uncertainty. Basically falling into the canyon knowing that you'll be breaking your legs but it's like a green valley , your legs will heal and in the end all is good. While left and right might have been, probably, much worse outcome. So in this case breaking you legs is the prefered option because you know it ends well. Don't know if this makes any sense, I'm not native english speaking, it's pretty late, a lot of heavy books.. and I actually do like your explanation a lot. Good job, packing that into a 20 minute presentation.
I was always under the assumption that when Paul lost his eyes that forced him to follow a certain path, instead of having the free will to change his path as he had been doing the whole time until that point. Since he was no longer able to see, he was no longer able to properly take information in and calculate the outcomes of that information, so he was forced to follow the one path that he saw in his head from all the information that he had already stored up at that point (whether this was the golden path or not; idk, but i like to assume it was) because he was no longer able to intake visual information.
@@Tusspot1I think his loss of vision is actually the opposite. It signifies his inability to do anything *but* see the world through this golden path. I think the subtext points to a Paul who spends the rest of his life actively trying to prevent the path which he is ultimately only able to delay. If he hadn’t lost his sight, he could probably have changed it. Losing his sight was a canon event. 😂
@@Tusspot1But we do actually live a deterministic existence. The true free will that is expressed in the books is fantasy. We, and the author himself, don't understand how undetermined free will would work. It would need to exist outside of cause and effect, which is a truly mystical alien concept. You guys keep treating choice like it's something you're free to do whatever you want. It feels that way, but rest assured, any choice you will ever make will be dependant upon your unique mind, with all its experiences, inspirations, likes and hates, ideas, ignorances, philosophies, etc, etc, which are more like scars than anything you created for yourself... Paired with the unique circumstances you find yourself in, which you do not choose either. You did not create yourself or your history, you are just the result. You cannot like the things you don't like... Without being inspired to. You cannot choose what you wouldn't choose without being convinced to. Your past failures? You couldn't have done them any other way. You did the best with what you had, and what you knew, and had you known better, or the situation been imperceptibly different, the outcome could have been different. But you didn't, and it wasn't. How to exist or think like someone outside of your life, who isn't you, is not something we can do. And we can only ever do what we're doing at any given time. Had we done something else, it never could have been any other way. 😁 By the point any character encounters "choice" they are already doomed to choose the only way they would. Not free will. I hope but doubt this was sufficient. But maybe, this wall of text will inspire or convince you of something. And if it does, you didn't have a choice but to let it become a part of your mind and impact your future thoughts. 😁 You will now only be someone who has read this. Sorry/your welcome.
Making choices doesn't mean you have free will. The choices you make can be uncoerced but they cannot be free because every element in reaching the decision was predetermined before you were born. Just like we can program computers to do certain things, calculate certain things, our brains are no different. They are thinking machines. We 'choose' to do things because our neurons fired a certain way, because our brains are structured a certain way, because a particular chemical docked with our neurotransmitters in a certain way, and so on. We have no control over any of this, our thoughts happen *to* us. Our thoughts are the mechanical results of a linear chain of cause and effect stretching back in time to the big bang. Whenever we ask ourselves 'why did I do that?' We are implicitly acknowledging there is a *reason* why we did something and therefore, by extension, that our thoughts are mechanical outcomes.
no, he discussed that seeing the cage meant that he had no choice, because free will requires some limit to the knowledge of consequence. if you know everything, you can only choose to do things well or not
This is the best VOD I've watched on the deeper themes running through the Dune saga. Thank you. Informative and thought-provoking content while maintaining a well-edited and non-overwhelming style.
well, I'd argue it matters a lot if you want to run a judicial system. ask yourself the question: can you truly punish someone for making the wrong decision if that person has no free will? in practice it may not change a whole lot, you'd still have a prison, etc. but the justification for having them would be completely different.
@ty1that‘s what came to my mind, too. You can imprison someone to protect others or to deter others from committing similar crimes but you can not „punish“ someone once you realized that principle. Does hate even make sense after that realisation? What about love?
I have read the Dune series so many times, probably at least 30 time possibly more. Yes I tend to read it once every year or so. In the beginning there were only 3 books then Frank Herbert finished the last 3 books. Every time I have gotten something new from them, now I will have to read them again to look at it from a different perspective. Free will versus determinism. Thank you
The fact that this video left you, even remotely in the same mental space after seeing Oppenheimer, is a gargantuan compliment in my book 😱🧎♂️🙇♂️ Tyvm 😊 🙏
I‘ll be honest with you here, I clicked on this video from a Tale Foundry video and because I saw Dune. I was not expecting to learn about the story of dunes backbone, but I’m not upset about it. Keep making more videos pal, I’m sure you’ll get the recognition you deserve.
What a phenomenal video. I am currently in the middle of an existential crisis in my life, and this just helped me realize that at the very least. I am not alone in some of the questions i ask myself about human nature, past, future, free will and determinism.
I recommend checking out Robert Sapolsky who's a pretty staunch advocate for determism. His rationale, besides agreeing with Spinoza, has to do with neurology, and it's really quite fascinating. Ultimately I find it a much more forgiving outlook, for example would you really want to tell an autistic person that there condition and "odd" behaviors are somehow a result of their own free will? Though I will say while I reject free will as metaphysical reality, it is a worthwhile Kantian ideal. Spinoza himself seems to have recognized that (ignoring the timeline lol), he still puts forth a conception of a "blessed" life emphasizing virtue that we should actively strive for. Free will is such an engrained philosophical idea that I think there is a sort of implicit skepticism towards it for many as it's seem as inherently pessimistic, but the more you analyze it that's not really true at all. In fact free will, so closely tied to ideas of ultimate judgement seems to me like the downer frankly
But still, there was only one timeline. Paul saw strings of possible futures, and chose to change it. This itself was determined. Despite the possible futures, only one played out. Determined, through and through.
This video was so good, I felt my mind blown so hard I was able to fall asleep immediately after, overcoming my insomnia, you gave me one of the best sleeps I've ever had. I'm not being facetious it was an amazing video
Amazing video. A friend of mine sent it to me and I definitely didn't expect such a thorough explanation of Dune. Now I'm even more eager to watch the next part🎉❤
I love how you and I came to the exact same conclusion about Leto II creating a human mind whose calculations are based on quantum fluctuation, as the most likely explanation
WOW! Not a behemoth... not ENOUGH!!! Cant get enough of this stuff. I am completely under the determinism camp. VERY VERY cool implementing the quantum randomness as I love astro and quantum physics. BUT!!! I still think the randomness IS still a fundamental lack of understanding... Like the God in the Gaps kinda thing. The further we go the more we learn that we don't know. So good, so juicy for my own book. Thank you and more please!
I haven't started this yet but I recently watched a series of videos on Nosgoth and the Legacy of Kain series: in that universe people everyone is chained to whatever destiny they had from the start except for a select few; these indifiduals "have" free will but because of their emotions, previous life experiences, and attitudes they are still "expected" to make certain choices in certain situations, making acting outside of those expectations an act of Herculean effort upon itself; this created a very bleak mindset for me as I couldn't help but see the similarities between the way some of the characters acted and the actions of my own neuro-divergent self (ADHD, possible autism). I'm hoping that this video shows an alternative in some way.
Free will is incoherent under any defintion. Thoughts are either determined by prior causes (principle of sufficient reason/ cause and effect) in which you do not control them, or they are random (quantum indeterminacy)/ a mixture of both, in either case you do not control them. Every particle (further divisible to the wave function or possibly strings) in the universe, obeys the laws of physics, and your brain which constitutes of matter is no different; following the 4 fundamental forces, in which you do not control that was set off at a brute fact (the big bang) or infinite regression. Libertarian free will proponents insist that their choices are made for reasons, but also that those reasons do not determine their choices. Or that those reasons are not themselves determined, but also not a matter of chance, this is a contradiction. If it’s a false trichotomy, then what are the other options? Agent causation (of the soul)? But again, does something cause the agent to act, or does the agent act for no reason? Even if you have an immaterial soul, it only makes sense to say that soul is making decisions if its actions are causally determined by prior soul-states. Otherwise, its actions are uncaused, and uncaused events are, by definition, random. If you are acting randomly, that’s not really decision making. It’s only if your actions are done for reasons which cause those actions that you’re really making decisions. You’re not making decisions if you’re just doing things for no reason. A mixture of chance and determinism? Part of the decision-making process involves causal influences, and the rest has no prior cause. This doesn't solve it. Free will, described by its advocates imply a person has control over their decisions. If my decisions are predetermined; how do I have control over them? If my decisions have no cause, and occur for no reason, then how can I control them? What does it mean to say that “we are free and in control of what facts and ideas the mind focuses on”? When I choose to focus on an idea, does something cause me to choose to focus on that idea? If the answer is yes, then I'm not really in control of that act of focusing. If the answer is no, and there is nothing that determines what I will choose to focus on, the act of focusing on anything is no different from a chance event, which by definition are not controlled by anything. So, does something cause a person to focus and think, or does the person’s choice to think and focus happen for no reason? Or is it partly causally influenced and partly chance? I don’t see how responsibility or control fits into any of these options, and I don’t see what other options there are. I can choose 'x' or 'y', however, everything that makes up that choice is caused by both internal and external variables in which you did not pick. E.g., genetics, brain electricity and chemistry, physics of your own atoms and that around you, parents/ who raised you, where you were raised, what you were taught. These make up your beliefs, thoughts, impulses, emotions, knowledge, memory. True free will would be walking off a building and willing your atoms to defy gravity. In the same way your body cannot defy that fundamental force, your brain cannot defy the other 3 forces which makes up your thoughts. You are just matter and energy reacting to the laws of physics. Divine Foreknowledge: The argument is not that God predetermined what he knows ahead of time, it is that in order to infallibly know what will happen in the future, what will happen in the future has to be written in stone. Even if it’s not written in stone by God, it still has to be written in stone in order for God to know it infallibly. Knowing something will happen, even infallibly doesn't deterministically cause it to happen. The point is that in order to infallibly know that an event will happen, that event has to be predetermined. It doesn't have to be predetermined by the knowledge you have, but in order to have that knowledge infallibly, the event cannot be free to not occur. To say that an event is free to occur or not occur is to say whether it will occur or not cannot be infallibly known. There is no coherent scenario, not even hypothetically in which these events do not occur. Even if God is outside time, and our future actions are retroactively causing God to know about them infallibly in the present, then they also lock us into committing them inescapably, otherwise we could defy God's foreknowledge. This would mean that I am predetermined to take every action I will ever take. If we aren't free to act differently, in the future, from how he, presently know we will act, because from his perspective it's already happened, then we have no more freedom to change the future, that we have to change the past.
“Charismatic leaders, not necessarily Messiahs, but messiahs included, tend to create explosive upheavals in human societies that are very dangerous to the individuals and the societies themselves… By just being he creates a power structure and so it's like a magnet the iron fillings the corruptable common and things are done in the name of the leader . . .” This speaks so much about our current times, is as if history is repeating itself.
Big Spoiler; the whole goal of the various Dune plot arcs is to get to the point of sending this final simple message: don’t let others, prophetic or not, determine your own fate. And family, systems, cultures, technologies, economies, governments and religions will try hard to. The Incredible Dune worlds frame a universe where this grip on humanity is fought by hero’s, anti-hero’s, Demi -gods dying and immortal all powerful beings loosing control - to help humanity graduate to a true place of freedom…
It's important for everyone to at least realize, that on an everyday-life-scale there definitely is determinism. It's humbling to know and helps with thinking about consequences or how to better treat each other.
One thing I think is worth mentioning about Paul and Leto II being akin to Laplace’s demon is that they are both fundamentally imperfect in their predictions. Paul experiences a complete shift in his visions after Duncan dies, fails to even see count Fenring until he physically lays eyes on him, and most notably doesn’t realize that Chani is pregnant with twins. Leto II craves surprise more than anything in his life as the God Emperor and even outside of Hwi, Siona, and the no-chamber, we see him surprised by his subjects in small ways.
This video was recommended to me by the youtube algorithm. I really enjoyed it and this depended my appreciation of the dune universe. While I believe that we will experience something quite different than the butlerian jihad, I think it’s still a monumentally important thought experiment to see a very advanced civilization existing without AI robots. Thanks for this video essay, I subscribed. ❤
If you really want to get into it Paul wasn't technically the KH his son was. Paul was the closest they'd gotten but he only had future sight not ancestral memory.
He did have ancestral (Other) memory, though. Paul was the first male in history to successfully transform Water of Life. Paul had consumed only one drop of the bile, and it had put him into such a deep coma that he was believed dead. After three weeks, however, he emerged, having successfully converted the bile into the Water of Life. Paul then informed Chani and his mother that not only could he see the past and future, but also the present, into the space above Arrakis, where the Emperor's invading fleet was orbiting the planet.
One difference is that the KH sought by the BG would have been with them and of them. In Paul’s defiance we see the BG at risk of defeat, contrary to the interpretations that he embodies their triumph.
Paul does say "We are Harkonnen." thus implying he can see the Baron's memories among the others in his inner mind. Of the three KH of Dune, Paul was certainly the weakest, both in mentality but also various biases and family ties, yet highly suppressed by other prescients. Leto II was the strongest mentally, and in temporal power as well. Lastly, Miles Teg becomes the KH which can see No-ships, thus breaching the last barrier and obtaining total freedom. His new sight can ensure his escape from any situation, even when he chooses not to do so. There is some doubt if Duncan or Scytale are also KH, since their past memories are restricted to their own clones, making them a version of the Reverend Mothers, but for men.
Given the context of the story neither Paul nor his son are the KH because they're not part of the Bene Gesserit's plan. But more importantly than that Paul wasn't the KH because he didn't really want to be, which where free will enters at play. Leto II made the conscious decision to be what his father rejected
I may or may not have in fact always been here watching this video for this exact 22 minutes. Seriously though, this is, textually and close reading-wise, the very single reason for God Emperor. It's buried in there and most people miss it! Dune presents a shift of power from Spice/Economy to Prescience. Dune Messiah shows the power struggle for prescience. Children of dune shows the need to be free of Prescience (Leto II works very hard to avoid prescience as much as possible). And God Emperor shows the need for humans to be free from prescience. After this, Herbert struggled to connect the dots. Heretics is exploring the Matres who are running from the Machines, and Chapterhouse is the joining of the Matres and BG to fight the machines ... but yep, you are right on! Paul reveals the domination of determinism, and Leto II gives freedom from it. The cool thing about all this is that it really does peer into the nature of reality and the capacity of the human brain to keep surprising and keep doing the same thing again and again too.
A LEORY JANKINS reference in 2023!?!?!!?!? Thumbs up! I wonder how much of your audience got that. It is worth pointing out that in God Emperor, Leto II flirts briefly with the idea of suicide in one scene. It is mentioned that for a few seconds, the Golden Path winks in and out of existence, implying that he does indeed have a free will decision. Paul also sees multiple "critical decision points" and various possible futures in both Dune and Dune: Messiah. This seems to imply free will within the scope of available choices, but whether or not that applies in any way to average humans is debatable. Leto II in Children of Dune has a conversation with Jessica where he describes time, saying that Prescience collapses all of time into an infinite now. There is no difference between 1000 years ago, 1000 years in the future, and 10 seconds from now. This would seem to imply that those who use Prescience lock themselves into their own vision, or collapse the universal wavefunction by means of their observation. Perhaps this happens only for them, because if other Prescient Beings can hide from each other and confer that protection on those who share their aims (Dune: Messiah), that means everybody has their own little Reality bubble. It could be that only the ignorant are truly free, as for them, the wavefunction remains un-collapsed until the moment they make a choice, forcing the universe to generate a response to that choice.
I disagree about it being Siona that was the beginning. "We go forward, we go back," was a common phrase in the book and series "Children of Dune." It all started with Ghanima and Farad'n Corrino. Leto II began his Golden Path with that pairing, usurping House Corrino's control over the Sardaukar. This solidified his control to start his plan. With his continual demands for "his" Duncan Idaho, we know the type of individualistic people Leto II wanted the people on the path to be, as Moneo proved to Duncan Idaho.
An aspect I never heard from you was the conversation between Paul and his son in Children of Dune where Leto had taken on the sand skin and chosen the Golden Path. Paul described that he could not choose that path. That line gives some determinism to Paul. I always thought of Paul as having been put in a position where so many events had led to his position and condition that he had few choices, regardless of his ability to see future choices.
Great vid. I think there’s a real moral imperative in Hebert’s tangle with philosophical determinism and techne. I think it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that he senses in it the same danger that Heidegger identified as “enframing“. The horror of the physicist’s ‘block universe’ is something only an artist could meaningfully evoke outside the ivory tower. My fantasy of a hopeful future is one in which Frank Herbert has the status among scholiasts of an information age Milton.
Dune fan and I haven’t watched the video yet. Just wanted to say that I always thought the promises of coming messiahs were stories of hero’s who didn’t know they’re being heroic and they still changed the world, and those were the reasons that our history sometimes depends on one or two decisions by one or few people. I always imagined Dune like scenarios as examples of winning hero stories being just be the best of themselves, where it counts. A bit of luck and time to see themselves were the miracle they were looking for. I’ve loved Dune from 1984. This Dune and maybe Dune 2, are the best interpretations of the story so far. The most famous best kept secret of 2023 where we saw it differently to the same outcome before. So naturally, I/ I expect a lot from Paul Moadib II
I believe this is Identity overtime, present Actions we make have consequences towards are future. The Determinist Hate Accountability So instead they blame the god of Fatalism/Determinism (there own vain Imagination) to offset there Anxiety/Depression from Bad Past Life Dicisions
As someone who personally subcribes to the idea that free will is not only real but very important to what makes us us, I always found Dunes take on the matter, the whole golden path, to be somewhat hopeful. The idea of being in a deterministic universe and finding a method to make a truly free humanity that can never fall to likes of monsters like Leto II again, I find deeply compelling, and a sort of spark of light in the fairly dark and depressing world the dune universe is at times.
Is there free will in a capitalist society? Isn’t what you do determined by neoliberal capitalism? Now add AI in that mix. With philosophy as a discipline disappearing in Academic institutions, a forum such as this is essential. Thank you for the opportunity…
There's no such thing as free will, it's an illusion. You have will, but that will is entirely shaped by things outside your control. The two ideas are completely incompatible with each other and a will being free is impossible to describe or conceive of
@@billystanton1522 neoliberal capitalism in western society is the notion that for an individual to pursue pleasure is its highest virtue. The first of these is the intense focus on the individual, viewed as the most qualified to articulate her or his needs and desires, so society should be structured on reducing barriers to the realization of this goal. Second, unfettered markets are considered the most efficient and effective means (Springer 2011). Basically you have to work to pursue leisure, housing, or food. So is this determinacy or free will or both? Maybe freedom of a forced choice…
@@Portents-Magic-imagination I don't think you realize just how much rhetoric is in your answer. First and foremost, to be a serious thinker, you need to be able to give definitions to ideologies which someone who subscribes to those ideologies would actually agree with. I have no idea who this springer character is but capitalism is defined as "private ownership of the means of production within a free market economy." Neoliberalism is a poorly defined word that has been defined so many different ways, mostly to serve political ends, that it has little praxis today. It originally was simply a way to revive classical liberalism. These have nothing to do with free will or determinism. Free will and determinism are concepts that describe the way in which thoughts arise.
I'm not sure you need to go all the way down into the quantum indeterminacy rabbit hole... Chaos theory and the "three-body problem" (to the nth degree with n being a large number) of the indeterminacy of behaviour of complex systems is usually more than enough to do the trick. I've never bought into the idea that the opposite of "determinism" is "free will": in my mind, "randomness" or "chaos" are better candidates for that role in the macro universe at large. The (relative) unpredictability of human behaviour is at best a special case of a particular, biological complex system - and not necessarily the most chaotic such case at that. In my "devotion" to Dune (I use the term in quotations ironically), I'm willing to suspend disbelief and to accept as intriguing a mythic story in which certain individual humans have quasi Cassandra-like abilities to (partly) perceive "The Future" - or, more accurately, the POSSIBLE futures of a "many worlds" universe - up to the point where a particular vision runs into a blind spot creates by the actions of OTHER prescient beings. Paul's early visions - even in the first Dune book (and then again in "Messiah" and "Children") are NEVER certain/deterministic all the way out into an indeterminate future horizon. From the very start it's clear that most possible futures get lost in the fog at some point in the prescience. And Paul is constantly becoming aware that he had never seen a particular prescient individual in his visions - not even his own son. It's part of the multi-generational tragedy of Dune's Atreides (worthy of the original Greek myth refering to a different family known by the same name) that Paul's imperfect foresight and the fatal flaw in himself - his feet of clay - combined to condemn his own son to the awful fate that the ironically named "Golden Path" reserved for him. Anyone who has ever seen Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" should have no doubt that he's the man to tackle Dune's particular variation on the myth about that person who can "see the future"...
What tragedy does he suffers? The pain he inflicts on the humankind of his story is bigger,their tragedy is nothing compared to him. This guy is just a product of narrow mindedness who is consumed only by prescience. With the resources he had,he could have done pretty much anything but he didn't have any vision of his own.
It would be wonderful to compare and contrast the different presentations of free will vs determinism in Dune, the Foundation Series and The Matrix. Particularly Dune vs the Matrix are such interesting counterpoints on AI, consciousness and determinism.
@@nvnv1807 There is no agreed upon definition as to what "consciousness" is. We only know what it does (for example : spatialize time). So this statement is nonsensical.
Dayum yal want longer? 😆 I cut about 10 extra minutes from this video in truth out of consideration for the runtime, but if more people echo this sentiment, I'll start thinking about 30 min+ content
Very cool video! I’m very familiar with the books up through God Emperor but this video still helped me put some of the concepts together better, thanks!
What’s more important than determining if we have free will or not is what choice we ought to make if we are free. If I am free, my choice is to love myself first and foremost. 🙏
Free will is incoherent under any defintion. Thoughts are either determined by prior causes (principle of sufficient reason/ cause and effect) in which you do not control them, or they are random (quantum indeterminacy)/ a mixture of both, in either case you do not control them. Every particle (further divisible to the wave function or possibly strings) in the universe, obeys the laws of physics, and your brain which constitutes of matter is no different; following the 4 fundamental forces, in which you do not control that was set off at a brute fact (the big bang) or infinite regression. Libertarian free will proponents insist that their choices are made for reasons, but also that those reasons do not determine their choices. Or that those reasons are not themselves determined, but also not a matter of chance, this is a contradiction. If it’s a false trichotomy, then what are the other options? Agent causation (of the soul)? But again, does something cause the agent to act, or does the agent act for no reason? Even if you have an immaterial soul, it only makes sense to say that soul is making decisions if its actions are causally determined by prior soul-states. Otherwise, its actions are uncaused, and uncaused events are, by definition, random. If you are acting randomly, that’s not really decision making. It’s only if your actions are done for reasons which cause those actions that you’re really making decisions. You’re not making decisions if you’re just doing things for no reason. A mixture of chance and determinism? Part of the decision-making process involves causal influences, and the rest has no prior cause. This doesn't solve it. Free will, described by its advocates imply a person has control over their decisions. If my decisions are predetermined; how do I have control over them? If my decisions have no cause, and occur for no reason, then how can I control them? What does it mean to say that “we are free and in control of what facts and ideas the mind focuses on”? When I choose to focus on an idea, does something cause me to choose to focus on that idea? If the answer is yes, then I'm not really in control of that act of focusing. If the answer is no, and there is nothing that determines what I will choose to focus on, the act of focusing on anything is no different from a chance event, which by definition are not controlled by anything. So, does something cause a person to focus and think, or does the person’s choice to think and focus happen for no reason? Or is it partly causally influenced and partly chance? I don’t see how responsibility or control fits into any of these options, and I don’t see what other options there are. I can choose 'x' or 'y', however, everything that makes up that choice is caused by both internal and external variables in which you did not pick. E.g., genetics, brain electricity and chemistry, physics of your own atoms and that around you, parents/ who raised you, where you were raised, what you were taught. These make up your beliefs, thoughts, impulses, emotions, knowledge, memory. True free will would be walking off a building and willing your atoms to defy gravity. In the same way your body cannot defy that fundamental force, your brain cannot defy the other 3 forces which makes up your thoughts. You are just matter and energy reacting to the laws of physics. Divine Foreknowledge: The argument is not that God predetermined what he knows ahead of time, it is that in order to infallibly know what will happen in the future, what will happen in the future has to be written in stone. Even if it’s not written in stone by God, it still has to be written in stone in order for God to know it infallibly. Knowing something will happen, even infallibly doesn't deterministically cause it to happen. The point is that in order to infallibly know that an event will happen, that event has to be predetermined. It doesn't have to be predetermined by the knowledge you have, but in order to have that knowledge infallibly, the event cannot be free to not occur. To say that an event is free to occur or not occur is to say whether it will occur or not cannot be infallibly known. There is no coherent scenario, not even hypothetically in which these events do not occur. Even if God is outside time, and our future actions are retroactively causing God to know about them infallibly in the present, then they also lock us into committing them inescapably, otherwise we could defy God's foreknowledge. This would mean that I am predetermined to take every action I will ever take. If we aren't free to act differently, in the future, from how he, presently know we will act, because from his perspective it's already happened, then we have no more freedom to change the future, that we have to change the past.
The belief in "free will" is one of the primary enemies of love. It's the source of the pride in your "choices" and it's a source of distinguishing between this being and that. Belief in "free will" is one of the primary obstaces to true, unviersal love.
@@MrCmon113 funny I actually think that if there is “free will” the most important choice to make is choosing to love. 😂 Love yourself first and foremost. Making that “choice” then inevitably leads to gratitude. Choose love and breathe in gratitude 🧘 ❤🙏
@@hudsontd7778 Love is nothing more than a biochemical reaction. The fact that it feels stronger and deeper than a mere chemical to you is a feature of that biochemical reaction. The sociological utility and benefits provided by love bonds would not exist if that love bond felt weak or meaningless. People wouldn't be so quick to defend their infants if that bond between them felt like it was a fleeting thing, no more powerful than the sugar rush you get when you down a pixie stick. The fact that it feels like something more important and stronger than that is a biological requirement for it to be the evolutionary benefit that it is. Your deeply felt love for those you are bonded with drives you to do a multitude of things that you otherwise wouldn't without it, which are to the benefit and success of the species. To say that with such disdain, "nothing more than a biological chemical reaction," like that means that it's practically nothing. We are biology; we are chemicals. Biological chemical reactions are about as major as it gets for us. You think it's something magical, spiritual? Okay, prove magic or spirits exist. Until you do, biochemical reactions are the height of experience. It doesn't get any bigger than that. Chemicals are determined by physics...
12:40 already explained around the time of the trial, predictive computers cant predict predictive computers too well because regular expected futures in the world are predicted by other things that affect them, predictive computers. People with precience cant see eachothers futures from a far, its like being a character in a book and writing the book yourself
I would say the only free-will someone in dune or in this world has is our reaction to events already determined. He can be happy of the future deaths, sad, look forward to it, or truly give in, but anyone with that much power elevates to a higher realm becoming wiser. As for us we can choose how we act to determined events events that came into being due to our actions.
The events that eventually led to Atreides and his son becoming prescient started to unfold before they were born, in a deterministic universe. Hence, the fact that they acquired the power to gift the universe with free will was also predetermined. Therefore, the universe never ceased to be deterministic, there was only an illusion of such. If you are predetermined to be free, is your freedom real? Much like in The Matrix, Neo presumably chose the red pill to free himself... But what if that choice was also predetermined?
the quote u put at the end from Leto is literally cementing the universe as deterministic. Humanity will never again be under threat of extinction, meaning its path is even more determined than before
I firmly believe that Dune has impacted fiction more than any other novel series, especially in film from the 70’s through to today. But, as someone with a huge appreciation for analysis and opinion of fiction, I would have easily enjoyed a long form video essay that ran as long as all of the Dune films and the sci-fi channel’s series. I don’t think we can explore all of the theories and avenues that Herbert put to print. Cracking stuff, mate.
Is it determinism when in the books it’s clearly stated that multiple options and possibilities are always there? Paul (and others) never are 100% sure with their premonitions and in the end still makes a clear choice.
as odd as this sounds, i dropped my phone after watching a video to remove water from my speaker and then this video turned on with you immediately asking me if i picked this which was odd. Now im sitting here watching this video that i never intended on watching yet im being told i wanted to watch this, but im hooked. The path has began and i must fulfill this prophecy
actually, I answered no to your first question since I land heavily on the side of determinism. to the point that I think Psychohistory is actually possible (its real-world equivalent Cliodynamics already exists). but I am not at all surprised that Dune plays around with this concept and even tried to subvert it. though, unlike prescience, Psychohistory would not allow you to hunt down every individual human because it just does not work like that. I am glad you mention quantum randomness because I believe it's our only chance at free will, though I think it's not enough of a factor to make a difference in human decisionmaking.
Lol I glad there were some No's, because what an incredible insight! Your proposition that dunes thinking machines could be utilizing psychohistory as the structure for predicting humanity is such a novel (and totally viable) suggestion. I briefly glanced into cliodynamics actually when writing my historical accuracy video, but admittedly I hadn't given it much thought until now. Outside of The Foundation, I haven't seen the psychohistory discussed that often so maybe this is the catalyst that starts another video 🤔 😄
@@BrandoCastro215 All I meant is that Dune is likely influenced by Foundation and therefore would play around with its themes. you extrapolated the rest on your own, though I do agree (and am kinda jealous it didn't realize this myself). Psychohistory though predicts broad events but breaks down at the individual level where prescience seems much more powerful with the ability to predict even individual choice. I don't think that is possible but combining Cliodynamics, with other predictive modeling from fields like social studies and economics would allow you to make general yet sophisticated predictions (where Nostradamus is just vague and can retroactively be fitted to mean anything). who knows how accurate a system like this can become after a few iterations and refinement and how much further ahead you could predict things if that is the case. though then much like Philip k Dick also pointed out in Minority Report: once you know the future you can change it. which is kinda what Hari Seldon does after learning that the empire is about to collapse. still not an argument for free will, a version of you that know the future is fundamentally different from one that does not, resulting in completely different choices because of different circumstances no free will is required. any technology can either improve the lives of everyone or increase already existing inequalities depending on who controls it. if psychohistory (or something like it) would ever be invented for real then, if wealthy, powerful elites end up controlling it it's not unlikely they'd use it to control the masses and make themselves more wealthy and powerful. a scenario like that could result in a situation that leads to the Butlerian jihad.
@kashutosh9132 The concept of free will is nonsense*. If you believe that the atoms & molecules in your car behave lawfully, then why would the atoms and molecules in your body not behave lawfully? Choice is not free will. We all makes choices but those choices are the result of our individual and our species' histories. Those choices conform with the laws of nature (physics, chemistry & biology). *There's nothing wrong using the social concept of "free will" but it's a bit like talking about the sun "rising" in the East. It describes our experience of nature but it does not describe nature accurately. It's a concept that's legitimate to use outside of science, but if you believe that the past causes the present, then the idea of humans' decisions not being caused by the past is ludicrous.
@@HeroicAge616 I don't know if we can. There's a lot of stuff at the quantum level that can be inferred without direct observation. I think quantum is too weird for classical guys.
Interesting video, I had a lot of thoughts about The Sight and determinism that was echoed in this video, but I just can't make myself accept randomness, so the "invisible gene" always bugged me. And when I learned about quantum mechanics I quickly rebelled against randomness there too. If you haven't, check out the youtuber you mentioned, lookingglass, she made some videos about Pilot Wave Theory, which explains things like the double slit experiment within a deterministic framework.
Brooo I love this video, I always argue for deternism as I get older, I wonder if there is a correlation with being older and being more inclined to think you don't have free will, you might even know the answer. Lmk if you do
As you get older, your personal life has been hemmed in, and you tend to see the trajectory of your life better, so you may think you have less free will. You could very well choose to quit and start some new aspect of your career, but the amount of work required to change that trajectory makes it untenable.
Fascinating thought! While I don't think there's a "concrete" correlation between age and belief in Determinism, I definitely see what you're driving at. As we get older, our life experience (hopefully) offers us exposure to new and different philosophical ideas and that could be the catalyst for a change in our beliefs
Years mean context, and time to see how decisions made by yourself and others shaped the present. When you are old enough to advise and support younger generations it is impossible not to reflect on your own youth and see all the times you thought you were being independent but were actually doing exactly what you were programmed to do. You also get the experience of seeing thought leaders and artists from your youth become out of touch and backward thinking while their younger replacements sound incredibly familiar. The cyclical nature of society plays out in front of your eyes maybe three or four times by the time you are old
i like how the norns phrased it in god of war ragnarok where people have free will but some people are become so predictable in their actions that their paths look determined
Everything is predetermined because of causality not because of consciousness. If you make a prediction and your prediction turns out to be incorrect, that doesn't mean determinism is wrong, that means your prediction is wrong, your consciousness is wrong. If take a step back and analyse what causes led you to make your prediction, you will notice that even your prediction turning out to be incorrect was predetermined. Determinism is not about making perfect predictions, is about the fact that everything that is going to happen in your life was already set in stone since the beginning of time, even your correct and incorrect predictions were already determined.
I didn't answer it intuitively, I answered "yes" because I have an argument where I use modal logic to proove that any defense of determinism will contradict itself.
@@Loreweavver I was not originally written in portuguese, I think that I have an english translation but I don't know if it is as well written and explained as my original one...
@@Loreweavver Belief in determinism encompasses two important propositions that I will call here D1 and D2, and which can be united into a larger proposition that I will call D. The aim of the argument is to refute proposition D, because if it is false so is the determinism. I will present the following propositions. D1 : □∀P [ B(i,P)⇒F(f,B(i,P)) ] D1 claims that for every proposition, if I believe it then some pre-existing factor made me believe that proposition. D2 : □∀P [ B(i,P)⇒□B(i,P) ] D2 claims that for every proposition, if I believe it, then I necessarily believe it (ie, it would not be possible for me not to believe it, in the event that this has been determined). D : □(D1∧D2) D is the junction of D1 and D2, and the claim that both are a necessary truth, and the thesis of determinism is only true of D for. Now, the argument, each P will be a proposition and each C a corollary, so, for example, C1 is corollary from proposition P1 and so on... P1 : F ( f,B(i,P) ) ⇒¬□ ( B(i,P)∧P ) P1: If some pre-existing factor made me believe in something, then not necessarily what I believe is true (pre-existing factors can determine us to believe in false propositions). C1: F ( f,B(i,D) ) ⇒¬□ ( B(i,D)∧D ) C1: This also applies to the belief in D, that is, if some preexisting factor made me believe in D, then not necessarily D is true. P2 : K(i,D)⇒ ( □∀P[B(i,P)⇒F(f,B(i,P))] ) P2: If I know that D is true, then for every proposition, if I believe it then some preexisting factor made me believe this proposition (definition of D1). C2.1: K(i,D)⇒ ( □∀P[B(i,P)⇒¬□(B(i,P)∧P)] ) C2.1: If I know that D is true then for every proposition, if I believe it, then it is not necessarily true. (implication of P1) C2.2: K(i,D)⇒□ ( B(i,D)⇒¬□(B(i,D)∧D) ) C2.2: And this also goes for belief D, if I know D is true then if I believe D, not necessarily and D is true. (implication of C1) C2.3: K(i,D)⇒□ ( B(i,D)⇒(¬□B(i,D)∨¬□D) ) C2.3: If I know that D is true, then if I believe D, either not necessarily D is true, or not necessarily I believe D (which is the same as saying that it is possible for D to be false, or that it is possible that I do not believe in D). (application of De Morgan's laws) P3 : K(i,D)⇒B(i,D) P3: If I know that D is true, then I believe D. (this comes from the definition of knowing and believing, being knowing how to believe something that is true) C3: K(i,D)⇒(¬□B(i,D)∨¬□D) C3: So if I know D is true or not necessarily D is true, or not necessarily I believe D. (implication of C2.3) P4 : K(i,P)⇒□B(i,P) P4: If I know that D is true, then I necessarily believe D. (implication of D2) C4: K(i,D)⇒□B(i,D) ∴ K(i,D)⇒¬□D D⇔□D ∴ K(i,D)⇒¬D Therefore, joining the obtained corollaries C3 and C2.3, if I know that D is true then, how or not necessarily D is true, or not necessarily I believe in D (option that cannot be valid because its negation is already an implication I know that D is true (C3)), the only option left is for D not necessarily to be true. (law of disjunctive syllogism) However, since D is already a proposition that contains the necessity operator, D not necessarily being true is equivalent to D not being true. That is, if I say that I know that D is true (which I do by asserting that determinism is correct) this implies that determinism is false, because D is false, resulting in a contradiction. If I know that D is true then D is not true. The conclusion of defending determinism is logical nonsense. Prove by reduction to absurdity.
The YT algorithm works with what is known as "re-inforcement learning" - and it also re-inforces our learned behaviour if it is good at predicting our "choices" - or better "preferences" that can be re-inforced to the point that our decisions tend to become compusive reactions, rather than thoughtful responses. And this looks what one might want to call "neurological determinism" while its is just a learned pattern, that because our brains have something called "plasticity" , can mold in various tendencies. The qeustion is, what makes these changes possible if we would consider that reinforcements are inevitable results. They are of course not inevitable, otherwise you could not learn anything. Re-inforcement bases on preferences and the connotations of what they mean to us. There is this case of a quadrupel sisters in the UK and how slight changes in how they were treated by their parents resulted in differences in personality trades. So is all of it really determined - but what exactly makes the criteria of determinism behave the way they do? Because turning to the left or turning to the right must be elementary and not derived from infinite chains of other criteria that are determined up my ass. If everything is determined without an actual meaning, how are we supposed to make a decision based on infinte determinism. So at some point reality must have seeds of meaning that can grow into complex structures and these seeds are themselves not ruled by raw determinism - they are what they are inthemselves and not because another condition made them so. From this point tendencies can be observed and every law to make something happen can be studied without getting insane. Hopefully.
The concept of "free will" as being action that is unaffected by the prior state of the actor or of the universe is incoherent and meaningless. You could no more have free will by THAT definition than you could have a real number that was both prime and not an integer. It's a self-contradiction in terms! Quantum Indeterminacy actually proves this by giving us a clear empirical look at what such events actually look like! They aren't willful actions; they are random events. A person who acted so, would NOT be acting WILLFULLY, but RANDOMLY!!!!!! It is a necessary feature of the nature of WILL that one's choices happen for REASONS! Similarly, FREEDOM is the opposite of COMPULSION not the opposite of CAUSALITY. The meaning of free will, once stripped of incoherent self-contradictory conceptions, reduces to merely mean that one's choices happen for one's OWN reasons, rather than another's reasons. The interesting consequence of this is that freedom, and thus free will, becomes a phenomenon of ego-boundaries between one's self and the rest of society and the universe. This was best expressed by another science fiction author, Heinlein: "I am free no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them. If they are too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I accept sole moral responsibility for everything I do." Think about that. We often say that Responsibility is the price of Liberty. But Heinlein reveals the flip-side of that relationship: Responsibility is the MEANS of Liberty too! The vast majority of humans look to their parents, or governments, or employers, or churches, or the market, or any number of other outside entities or forces to excuse them of responsibility for their actions. They say to themselves: "it wasn't me that ate those potato chips... its not my fault I'm fat... it's the evil corporations that marketed them to me, or made them taste better than healthy food. I'm not to blame. I'm not responsible." It's that evasion of responsibility that makes such people not free. Exactly the same person could eat exactly the same potato chips and be free... it would simply require that they CHOOSE to take responsibility for it and all consequences that came of it. I like to think that is what the Siona mutation of the Golden Path truly represents: A strain of human who has lost the ability to evade their own responsibility for their own actions. They KNOW unshakably deep inside their souls that they DESERVE everything they get, good or bad, and they ACT accordingly.
It was rewarding to not have decided to experience this presentation from which I have been opened to so many possibilities which I will have no ability to not experience.
Fantastic video! The pronunciation of character names in this series is always up for debate. (Har-KO-nen vs Har-kanen, most recently in film.) The character Siona has a name that, were it in Irish, would be pronounced "Sheeana." Since there actually IS a character named Sheeana in Heretics of Dune, I had always thought those pronunciations should match.
the bene gesserit could only access female memories because they only had x chromosomes. Paul has x and y chromosomes, thus access to both his male and female ancestoral memories
By observing quantum events at all we allow it to influence our decisions. You can take it one step further and get an app that uses quantum measurements sent from a lab as a "coin flip" so you can truly break determinism when you are faced with any decision.
How exactly does that 'break determinism' in any useful sense? It certainly doesn't do so in any that gives any kind of free will. As in that case you would literally be doing what an app on your phone tells you. Randomness in preceding causes to your act does not make your act free.
I was unable to grasp most of that but I enjoyed it very much. I enjoy Dune because of how obligatory, tremendous power has been portrayed. A story that leaves its readers grasping to comprehend the bitter rivalry of great Houses & their struggle to win the favor of the emperor, when suddenly something foretold comes to terrible fruition. "Plans within Plans." These people have evolved, they no longer have free Will.
Honestly I've never heard anyone describe how free will could be possible (with _or without_ determinism; because without determinism what you're saying is things are Truly Random; effects aren't tied to causes; and therefore how could a mind ever choose anything in a reality like that?). So "free will vs. determinism" feels weird to me, since without determinism there's even less possibility that we're _really choosing_ anything.
Yeah, free will as a concept makes no sense at all, and I think that people who subscribe to it just haven't thought enough on exactly what it is. Every decision you make is obviously influenced by something outside of yourself, whether that's genetics, your upbringing, emotional state etc. You live in this world, so how could you not be affected by it?
Before I saw the video: This video is going to explain me what "Determinism" means. After watching the video: Guess I'll subscribe to another channel, smash the like button and click the notification bell.
Thank you and well done. My only objection is that your images of Siona, show her as a blond haired woman. When in fact, Siona Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides, had very dark hair. I know it's a petty complaint, but, details matter, and I'm a bit obsessive.
4:52 Because men don’t survive the ordeal. It’s an ordeal that only women are strong enough to go through. That’s why the presence of the Kwisatz Haerach is such a big deal.
I had no choice but to watch a video about Determinism and Dune.
true!
Same
As it was written
I just finished my therapy session, which, by the end, became a conversation on free will.
As the Bene Gesserit told you to. 😂
Fremen performing the sandwalk to prevent detection by the sandworms as a metaphor for the evolution of humankind to avoid detection by prescience. I like it 😄
So sand walk is ad blocker and vpn?
Whoa
@@LD1345 more like, using signal noise as a means of communication
@@ataarono survival of the slickest
The novels written by Frank touch on this near the end. One of the sisters, I can't recall who as it has been years, laid out that maybe the clairvoyant leader can't see the future but rather can see what is so completely that they can create the future which matches Leto's goal. If there are those who are outside of the vision that allows such control then such control can never be so complete as to dictate the future entirely, there is always that unknown element that can change the tides. Leto's goal was to make sure mankind could never fall to such tyranny as his again.
Ooooh this makes me want to write some sort of a fanfic where the attempt at this succedes, and now there is no way to prevent the emergence of thinking machines whichc leads to the destruction of mankind because "the golden path" was only golden, because at the point all the other ones turn bad in this path the prescience stops working....so you can not see it turning bad .....which would catapult the universe to being essentialy deterministic again (as all the non-deterministic actions are always inevitably overturned)
Well, Leto 2 did explain his goal in God Empire. His prescience gave him awareness of some future threat that would eradicate humanity through the use of prescience, so he endeavored to not only force humanity grow beyond it's spice dependency, but to also use the BG breeding program to develop a genetic trait that makes people immune to prescience. His goals were technically accomplished. He gave humanity a chance to survive what was coming.
This is exactly right, when Paul is about to fight feyd and he meets Fenring for the first time a failed kwisatz, Fenring was invisible to prescience, and it shocked Paul bc he understood that generics presence was affecting the future he could see. Makes me think if this guy even read the book
In Dune: Messiah, it's described how individuals with prescience are actually more or less blind to the activities of other prescient figures. The conspiracy against Paul uses a powerful Guild Navigator to mask the outcomes of their meetings. This means that a prescient character can essentially see everybody else following their deterministic path, but because other oracles are acting on information from the *future* they are not bound by determinism and therefore their paths become much more challenging to follow. In Messiah we also meet a dwarf who has some sort of mutation that grants foresight - Paul is not able to see that character's path. I've always assumed that Leto II's breeding program was in part leveraging something like that - building up a genetic line that could pass a minor foresight mutation throughout the human genome.
Also a bonus detail: the conspiracy in Messiah attempt to subtly block Paul's visions by seeding the markets in Arrakeen with copies of a new tarot deck. Basically they hope to add more randomness to the decision-making of the population. They hope that this might seed enough variability that Paul's prescience becomes fuzzy.
nice!
One would say the prescience is incomplete. But in any case, that loophole is not needed to create a free will paradox. There is no paradox even with a perfect Laplace daemon, because foreknowledge does not imply causation. Free will is about causal power/agency, not about foreknowledge. You can tell me I am about to play Radiohead's Spinning Plates in a minute from now, but that does not cause me to play the track. If I choose to "exercise free will" and defy you then you simply lacked accurate foreknowledge. If I "obey" you that does not imply you caused me to play the track, I am still exercising free will, it's just that you knew my mood well, a trick many "mentalists" can do some of the time. I can say that I'm not going to let your prediction bother me and that I would've played the track regardless of hearing your words.
The Sun will obey my command that it shall rise in the East tomorrow. Yeah... I caused that!
@@Achrononmaster Not entirely sure who you're arguing with here, but nothing you said seems relevant to my comment. Yes, free will is about causal power and agency, but the position taken *by Frank Herbert* is that a "Laplace's Demon" as you call it could accurately read the causal chain that leads to you wanting to exercise your agency in a particular way. Someone who has a perfect understanding of your history, your music taste, your brain chemistry, and your trajectory through space could *in Dune* develop an instinctual understanding of what you're going to listen to and when. If they don't inform you of their prediction, you will probably continue down your path and listen to Spinning Plates a minute from now. Sure, that's your "free will" but you're choosing to do something based on a long chain of choices and influences stretching back to before you were born.
Imagine two oracles were mapping your trajectory, and made bets. Paul and Leto II both stake the future of Arrakis and human civilization on whether or not you choose to play Spinning Plates or not. Paul weighs all his inputs and sees clearly that you will choose to listen to Spinning Plates because that is what you are most likely to do. However, Leto II can see the same chain of events and thus knows that Paul will bet on this. So he decides to interfere - he sends an agent to stab you in the ears so you can never listen to music again. You never even got to the point where you were going to choose what music to listen to, but both you and Paul have suffered massively just because Leto II decided that he wasn't happy with your most likely path. *This is what I mean by oracles being invisible to other oracles, because one oracle can choose to disrupt the events that other oracles are betting on, and thus disrupt their visions of the future.*
@@Achrononmaster Yes absolutely, but in your case, the demon wouldn't say that you were about to play the track. Because if he did he'd know that you then wouldn't play it, or if you were double-switching on him, he would know that you'd play it anyways if you thought to trick him thinking he actually calculated that you wouldn't and so on and so forth.
Essentially, by telling you that you are or aren't about to do something that you have the control to change, he already knows you have the power to change the outcome and factors that in, meaning he either knows you'll do it regardless, or is lying to you by saying that you will/won't.
knowing the future which has horrible outcomes for so many billions of people but also knowing that's the only way forward for the survival of the species is much more of a curse than a gift
Well thats the thing, in dune you could argue that it was necessary bc if it never happened there would have never been a golden path, but this was only possible bc Paul knew how to led humanity into that way. In real life tho we can't forgive atrocities even if the outcome is positive bc nobody knows what is going to happen in the future, and if there is a "good ending" is mostly probably bc of luck.
Eren ??
Excellent video.
The Butlerian Jihad is the last desperate reaction against near extinction.
That is a very clear example of "Generational Scarring" and sociological conditioning.
The gut reaction against machines is very clear in all the 6 books.
Ohh, good point.
I always found it interesting how by the later books that was slowly changing. Leto let IX continue to experiment and make some forbidden things during his reign and was enamored with his IXan machines. The old Imperium had gone back to using machine guided ships for FTL travel since the spice is scarce and the Benne Gesserite are starting to cyborg some people
@@NaatClark Yes, but with Siona gene the threat of a prescient machine that leads to the extinction of humanity is averted. That’s, I believe, why Leto II says at one point “"Do not fear the Ixians. They can make the machines, but they can no longer make arafel.”
Probably my favorite thing about dune is that in order to 'win' the protagonist had to the badguy.
Paul couldn't do it. His own humanity stoped him. And Leto II could only do it because as a pre-born he had the collective memories of all of his ancestors. He had the context needed to realize that it was the _only_ way for humanity to survive.
And even he struggled.
In God Emperor of Dune, he debates to himself whether this is really what he wants, he knows that at the end he will die.. or rather his body will die and his mind will splinter into tiny fragments trapped inside the mind of the newly born sandworms.
But there is another path a path that could lead to his happiness, he could be with the woman he loves.
But he eventually discards the plan because he knows that realistically by the time he can return to human, she would be long dead.
So he chooses to walk the golden path.
He chose to be the monster to be trapped by the future.
... Letto II es una herida que nunca cicatriza
Paul still becomes the bad guy, he later admits Hitler's genocides pales in comparison to his own. The Jihad kills billions upon billions , but the alternative would be death for him and everyone he's ever cared about.
@@Erikjust he's not the messiah he's a very naughty boy!
@@averyeich9726 I see you are a man of culture as well.
And remember Romanes eunt domus
I put Dune right next to Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, the novels by Sartre and Camus and other major examples of deeply philosophical works in the form of fiction. It’s just so rich, so elaborated, so accomplished as a philosophical inquire that I think it’s crazy it isn’t studied in literature classes and there are so few in-depth analysis of it
Likewise 🔥
That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard all year. Dune is a fantasy novel. The worms are dragons, the voice is a spell. Dune is a piece of decent fiction. Nothing more. No great truths lie within. It speaks of a culture that DOES NOE EXIST. So it is not historical. It breaks no philosophical ground. Fail. Like comparing Sponge Bob to Mozart.
The writing is so dry and boring though.
@@hieroprotoganist3440 Nietzsche or Herbert?
@@nicokarsen6131 Probably Dune. Which I disagree with but usually people that say that are used to reading books that are at a high school reading level with action every other page.
If anyone says Nietzsche is boring, they must not be reading it at all.
I reread (listened) all the dunes over this year. One thing that I recall here is that Paul and Leto II admitted that they can't 'see' the future, rather they select one from the many paths. Like picking a colour from the rainbow or infinite possibilities. The one Leto picked was the only path that led to human survival.
This implied free will. Determinism implies we are just actors playing out our roles and that clearly didn't happen in the books.
NOTE : I liked the philosophy so much that I had to stop and think often what Frank was saying.
this is the most usual way stuff explains precience. Seeing possible futures,and trying to make one of em happen, not 100 precent certainty
As much as i love that Brian Herbert carried on his father's Legacy with the later Dune books, i sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Frank Herbert wrote those last few novels, as the idea that thinking machines were the Great Enemy was sorta a piecing together or Frank's notes and Brians own ideas
Yeah, I never got the impression that it was a machine from the core books. It always felt like it was something else entirely, something organic, yet alien.
Same, I always envisioned the Ones of Many Faces to be Super Face Dancers, who somehow had the ability to break the No-Ships, which is how the two old guys in the garden could come into contact with Duncan Idaho.
Thinking Machines were never the enemy. The whole thing about the Butlerian Jihad, and the sophistication of Frank Herbert's argument, is that the problem was humans using machines against other humans. That makes a whole lot of difference.
So in short, the entire Dune saga has an underlying thread of "Could a Laplace Demon create a factor that, beyond its creation, even the Demon couldn't predict?"
That's actually kind of a mind bender when you stop to think about it
Not really a mind bender if you get to the core of it. The first question that you should ask about Laplace's demon is: if the demon is part of the universe, does it predict itself too? In answering this question you'll run into exceptions in set theory, endless loops, and finally end up on incompleteness and never find a proof. Such a demon cannot exist because if it could, it could be proven mathematically, which is not the case. In the end, the universe is not deterministic, making Laplace's demon just a fun thought experiment but not really confusing if you take time to understand it.
Like God being all good and evil eternally???
Maybe, but that's not the only reading. Laplace's daemon only _knows,_ it does not _cause_ (or does not _have_ to be a causal agent). All that Herbert needed to resolve the apparent paradox is that the prescient minds know events only up to some clock time, and for all time after this point their foreknowledge is simply false (delusions). This is no paradox if their foreknowledge is not the agency causing events. Foreknowledge is not causation.
This what happens when science tries to understsnd conciousness. Only conciousness can observe itself.
through stranger aeons even death may die😊
Leplace's demon is a tempting philosphy even with the awareness of quantum indeterminism. It used to make me very sad and unmotivated, however now I've decided while Leplace's demon might be true for humanity, to be human and enjoy life is to believe in free will, or simply ignore the existence of determinism. Otherwise I fine it nearly impossible to live a life of meaning and fulfilment
That's why I love this quote from the book/movie, it breaks you free from this way of thinking.
"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience. A process that cannot be understood by stopping it. We must move with the flow of the process. We must join it."
A man can do what he will, but he cannot will what he wills - Schopenhauer
Paul and Leto II both saw the Golden Path and they themselves knew how it ends, you could argue that itself was determined but yeah Siona's no-gene was basically the gift of escaping causality
(Even though Leto 100% had manipulated her into assassinating him, my friend thinks he didn't know Siona was going to kill him, that was her *purpose*, Leto spends 3500 years knowing the Golden Path cuts to black and he creates a creature that can slip into the shadows beyond his prescience...)
So I'm not sure if even Siona even has free will or just that Leto created a large enough blind spot in causality that they can hide in there, I think the only character that showed true will in the whole dune saga was Paul when he denied the Golden Path, so literally the Kwisatz Haderach.
Free will does exist, it's just fucking hard - Dolores, Westworld
Crap, i spoiled it for myself
Didn't Paul have free will though ? He chose not to take the Golden Path, not because he couldn't but he did not want to pay the price. Knowing that his son would have to bear the burden. It's been a very long time since I read the books, but as I understood, it was like after Paul got blinded by the attempt on his life (which he could have avoided). After that he could see that (while technically blind) if he'd move forward he'd fall into a canyon for example (I'm simplifying here). He could choose to either go left or right (or actually fall into the canyon if that is what he desires). Not knowing what would be there until he had gone either way, then seeing what would be ahead in whatever direction he had chosen.
For the golden path it would mean that it was a clear way to follow all the way to the end in order to save humanity (from this one specific threat). But only because 'left' and 'right' of it was uncertainty. Basically falling into the canyon knowing that you'll be breaking your legs but it's like a green valley , your legs will heal and in the end all is good. While left and right might have been, probably, much worse outcome. So in this case breaking you legs is the prefered option because you know it ends well.
Don't know if this makes any sense, I'm not native english speaking, it's pretty late, a lot of heavy books.. and I actually do like your explanation a lot. Good job, packing that into a 20 minute presentation.
I was always under the assumption that when Paul lost his eyes that forced him to follow a certain path, instead of having the free will to change his path as he had been doing the whole time until that point. Since he was no longer able to see, he was no longer able to properly take information in and calculate the outcomes of that information, so he was forced to follow the one path that he saw in his head from all the information that he had already stored up at that point (whether this was the golden path or not; idk, but i like to assume it was) because he was no longer able to intake visual information.
@@Tusspot1I think his loss of vision is actually the opposite. It signifies his inability to do anything *but* see the world through this golden path. I think the subtext points to a Paul who spends the rest of his life actively trying to prevent the path which he is ultimately only able to delay. If he hadn’t lost his sight, he could probably have changed it.
Losing his sight was a canon event. 😂
@@Tusspot1But we do actually live a deterministic existence. The true free will that is expressed in the books is fantasy. We, and the author himself, don't understand how undetermined free will would work. It would need to exist outside of cause and effect, which is a truly mystical alien concept.
You guys keep treating choice like it's something you're free to do whatever you want. It feels that way, but rest assured, any choice you will ever make will be dependant upon your unique mind, with all its experiences, inspirations, likes and hates, ideas, ignorances, philosophies, etc, etc, which are more like scars than anything you created for yourself... Paired with the unique circumstances you find yourself in, which you do not choose either. You did not create yourself or your history, you are just the result. You cannot like the things you don't like... Without being inspired to. You cannot choose what you wouldn't choose without being convinced to. Your past failures? You couldn't have done them any other way. You did the best with what you had, and what you knew, and had you known better, or the situation been imperceptibly different, the outcome could have been different. But you didn't, and it wasn't.
How to exist or think like someone outside of your life, who isn't you, is not something we can do. And we can only ever do what we're doing at any given time. Had we done something else, it never could have been any other way. 😁
By the point any character encounters "choice" they are already doomed to choose the only way they would. Not free will.
I hope but doubt this was sufficient. But maybe, this wall of text will inspire or convince you of something. And if it does, you didn't have a choice but to let it become a part of your mind and impact your future thoughts. 😁 You will now only be someone who has read this. Sorry/your welcome.
Making choices doesn't mean you have free will. The choices you make can be uncoerced but they cannot be free because every element in reaching the decision was predetermined before you were born.
Just like we can program computers to do certain things, calculate certain things, our brains are no different. They are thinking machines. We 'choose' to do things because our neurons fired a certain way, because our brains are structured a certain way, because a particular chemical docked with our neurotransmitters in a certain way, and so on. We have no control over any of this, our thoughts happen *to* us. Our thoughts are the mechanical results of a linear chain of cause and effect stretching back in time to the big bang.
Whenever we ask ourselves 'why did I do that?' We are implicitly acknowledging there is a *reason* why we did something and therefore, by extension, that our thoughts are mechanical outcomes.
no, he discussed that seeing the cage meant that he had no choice, because free will requires some limit to the knowledge of consequence. if you know everything, you can only choose to do things well or not
This is the best VOD I've watched on the deeper themes running through the Dune saga. Thank you.
Informative and thought-provoking content while maintaining a well-edited and non-overwhelming style.
i clicked on this video because i binge-watched every Dune analysis on youtube and this video was on the list
The right question is not if i choose freely or not, it is: does it matter?
well, I'd argue it matters a lot if you want to run a judicial system. ask yourself the question: can you truly punish someone for making the wrong decision if that person has no free will?
in practice it may not change a whole lot, you'd still have a prison, etc. but the justification for having them would be completely different.
And the answer is: yes.
@@lucidity1 You certainly can punish someone for making the wrong decision even if they have no free will. Why? Because you have no choice. 😁
Cause you don't know it's not matter
@ty1that‘s what came to my mind, too. You can imprison someone to protect others or to deter others from committing similar crimes but you can not „punish“ someone once you realized that principle. Does hate even make sense after that realisation? What about love?
I have read the Dune series so many times, probably at least 30 time possibly more. Yes I tend to read it once every year or so. In the beginning there were only 3 books then Frank Herbert finished the last 3 books. Every time I have gotten something new from them, now I will have to read them again to look at it from a different perspective. Free will versus determinism. Thank you
So, how did it go?
I am impressed.
Well written. Well produced. Well edited. Pleasing VO. Well done, sir! Thank you for your hard work
First TH-cam video in a long time that left me thinking like this, last time felt it at the end of Oppenheimer.
Really good video!
The fact that this video left you, even remotely in the same mental space after seeing Oppenheimer, is a gargantuan compliment in my book 😱🧎♂️🙇♂️
Tyvm 😊 🙏
I chose to watch this video. I did not choose to WANT to watch this video - that was a result of factors which are completely beyond my control.
I have philosophy exam tomorrow, I could have not found a better video.
One of the best summaries of the major themes and concepts of Dune I've ever come across. Great job.
“The details given about the BJ are a bit vague…”
Lol….I snickered…I know, I’m a child…
There's a 12 year old in all of us
Dw, we've all been 12 at some point, lmao
The child never goes away, really
I‘ll be honest with you here, I clicked on this video from a Tale Foundry video and because I saw Dune.
I was not expecting to learn about the story of dunes backbone, but I’m not upset about it.
Keep making more videos pal, I’m sure you’ll get the recognition you deserve.
What a phenomenal video. I am currently in the middle of an existential crisis in my life, and this just helped me realize that at the very least. I am not alone in some of the questions i ask myself about human nature, past, future, free will and determinism.
I recommend checking out Robert Sapolsky who's a pretty staunch advocate for determism. His rationale, besides agreeing with Spinoza, has to do with neurology, and it's really quite fascinating. Ultimately I find it a much more forgiving outlook, for example would you really want to tell an autistic person that there condition and "odd" behaviors are somehow a result of their own free will?
Though I will say while I reject free will as metaphysical reality, it is a worthwhile Kantian ideal. Spinoza himself seems to have recognized that (ignoring the timeline lol), he still puts forth a conception of a "blessed" life emphasizing virtue that we should actively strive for.
Free will is such an engrained philosophical idea that I think there is a sort of implicit skepticism towards it for many as it's seem as inherently pessimistic, but the more you analyze it that's not really true at all. In fact free will, so closely tied to ideas of ultimate judgement seems to me like the downer frankly
"Free will" is complete nonsense whether the universe is deterministic or not.
@@MrCmon113 I choose to be born Dad!
But still, there was only one timeline. Paul saw strings of possible futures, and chose to change it. This itself was determined. Despite the possible futures, only one played out. Determined, through and through.
This video was so good, I felt my mind blown so hard I was able to fall asleep immediately after, overcoming my insomnia, you gave me one of the best sleeps I've ever had. I'm not being facetious it was an amazing video
Amazing video.
A friend of mine sent it to me and I definitely didn't expect such a thorough explanation of Dune. Now I'm even more eager to watch the next part🎉❤
I love how you and I came to the exact same conclusion about Leto II creating a human mind whose calculations are based on quantum fluctuation, as the most likely explanation
WOW! Not a behemoth... not ENOUGH!!! Cant get enough of this stuff. I am completely under the determinism camp. VERY VERY cool implementing the quantum randomness as I love astro and quantum physics. BUT!!! I still think the randomness IS still a fundamental lack of understanding... Like the God in the Gaps kinda thing. The further we go the more we learn that we don't know. So good, so juicy for my own book. Thank you and more please!
Yeah, the coherent explanations of quantum mechanics are still deterministic.
I haven't started this yet but I recently watched a series of videos on Nosgoth and the Legacy of Kain series: in that universe people everyone is chained to whatever destiny they had from the start except for a select few; these indifiduals "have" free will but because of their emotions, previous life experiences, and attitudes they are still "expected" to make certain choices in certain situations, making acting outside of those expectations an act of Herculean effort upon itself; this created a very bleak mindset for me as I couldn't help but see the similarities between the way some of the characters acted and the actions of my own neuro-divergent self (ADHD, possible autism). I'm hoping that this video shows an alternative in some way.
So my answer was "no" :D
Still a great video, and it gave me something to look into, namely Determinism; thank you!
Free will is incoherent under any defintion.
Thoughts are either determined by prior causes (principle of sufficient reason/ cause and effect) in which you do not control them, or they are random (quantum indeterminacy)/ a mixture of both, in either case you do not control them.
Every particle (further divisible to the wave function or possibly strings) in the universe, obeys the laws of physics, and your brain which constitutes of matter is no different; following the 4 fundamental forces, in which you do not control that was set off at a brute fact (the big bang) or infinite regression.
Libertarian free will proponents insist that their choices are made for reasons, but also that those reasons do not determine their choices. Or that those reasons are not themselves determined, but also not a matter of chance, this is a contradiction.
If it’s a false trichotomy, then what are the other options? Agent causation (of the soul)? But again, does something cause the agent to act, or does the agent act for no reason?
Even if you have an immaterial soul, it only makes sense to say that soul is making decisions if its actions are causally determined by prior soul-states. Otherwise, its actions are uncaused, and uncaused events are, by definition, random. If you are acting randomly, that’s not really decision making. It’s only if your actions are done for reasons which cause those actions that you’re really making decisions. You’re not making decisions if you’re just doing things for no reason.
A mixture of chance and determinism? Part of the decision-making process involves causal influences, and the rest has no prior cause. This doesn't solve it. Free will, described by its advocates imply a person has control over their decisions. If my decisions are predetermined; how do I have control over them? If my decisions have no cause, and occur for no reason, then how can I control them?
What does it mean to say that “we are free and in control of what facts and ideas the mind focuses on”? When I choose to focus on an idea, does something cause me to choose to focus on that idea? If the answer is yes, then I'm not really in control of that act of focusing. If the answer is no, and there is nothing that determines what I will choose to focus on, the act of focusing on anything is no different from a chance event, which by definition are not controlled by anything.
So, does something cause a person to focus and think, or does the person’s choice to think and focus happen for no reason? Or is it partly causally influenced and partly chance? I don’t see how responsibility or control fits into any of these options, and I don’t see what other options there are.
I can choose 'x' or 'y', however, everything that makes up that choice is caused by both internal and external variables in which you did not pick. E.g., genetics, brain electricity and chemistry, physics of your own atoms and that around you, parents/ who raised you, where you were raised, what you were taught.
These make up your beliefs, thoughts, impulses, emotions, knowledge, memory.
True free will would be walking off a building and willing your atoms to defy gravity. In the same way your body cannot defy that fundamental force, your brain cannot defy the other 3 forces which makes up your thoughts. You are just matter and energy reacting to the laws of physics.
Divine Foreknowledge:
The argument is not that God predetermined what he knows ahead of time, it is that in order to infallibly know what will happen in the future, what will happen in the future has to be written in stone. Even if it’s not written in stone by God, it still has to be written in stone in order for God to know it infallibly. Knowing something will happen, even infallibly doesn't deterministically cause it to happen. The point is that in order to infallibly know that an event will happen, that event has to be predetermined. It doesn't have to be predetermined by the knowledge you have, but in order to have that knowledge infallibly, the event cannot be free to not occur. To say that an event is free to occur or not occur is to say whether it will occur or not cannot be infallibly known. There is no coherent scenario, not even hypothetically in which these events do not occur.
Even if God is outside time, and our future actions are retroactively causing God to know about them infallibly in the present, then they also lock us into committing them inescapably, otherwise we could defy God's foreknowledge. This would mean that I am predetermined to take every action I will ever take. If we aren't free to act differently, in the future, from how he, presently know we will act, because from his perspective it's already happened, then we have no more freedom to change the future, that we have to change the past.
Leto II just evolved ADHD humans all over again.
“Charismatic leaders, not necessarily Messiahs, but messiahs included, tend to create explosive upheavals in human societies that are very dangerous to the individuals and the societies themselves… By just being he creates a power structure and so it's like a magnet the iron fillings the corruptable common and things are done in the name of the leader . . .”
This speaks so much about our current times, is as if history is repeating itself.
Big Spoiler; the whole goal of the various Dune plot arcs is to get to the point of sending this final simple message: don’t let others, prophetic or not, determine your own fate. And family, systems, cultures, technologies, economies, governments and religions will try hard to. The Incredible Dune worlds frame a universe where this grip on humanity is fought by hero’s, anti-hero’s, Demi -gods dying and immortal all powerful beings loosing control - to help humanity graduate to a true place of freedom…
It's important for everyone to at least realize, that on an everyday-life-scale there definitely is determinism.
It's humbling to know and helps with thinking about consequences or how to better treat each other.
One thing I think is worth mentioning about Paul and Leto II being akin to Laplace’s demon is that they are both fundamentally imperfect in their predictions. Paul experiences a complete shift in his visions after Duncan dies, fails to even see count Fenring until he physically lays eyes on him, and most notably doesn’t realize that Chani is pregnant with twins. Leto II craves surprise more than anything in his life as the God Emperor and even outside of Hwi, Siona, and the no-chamber, we see him surprised by his subjects in small ways.
This video was recommended to me by the youtube algorithm. I really enjoyed it and this depended my appreciation of the dune universe. While I believe that we will experience something quite different than the butlerian jihad, I think it’s still a monumentally important thought experiment to see a very advanced civilization existing without AI robots. Thanks for this video essay, I subscribed. ❤
That video is soooo good… keep up the great work. Once you catch the TH-cam algorithm… you’ll be riding high man!
"I tried to shape the future, and it wound up shaping me."
Also Iron "FILE-ings" and "DAY-us ex Machina".
This vid is way too good for a 3k sub channel. Nice work.
This was amazingly intelligent! Thank you for making content I thirst for.
If you really want to get into it Paul wasn't technically the KH his son was. Paul was the closest they'd gotten but he only had future sight not ancestral memory.
He did have ancestral (Other) memory, though.
Paul was the first male in history to successfully transform Water of Life.
Paul had consumed only one drop of the bile, and it had put him into such a deep coma that he was believed dead. After three weeks, however, he emerged, having successfully converted the bile into the Water of Life.
Paul then informed Chani and his mother that not only could he see the past and future, but also the present, into the space above Arrakis, where the Emperor's invading fleet was orbiting the planet.
The difference wasn't in ancestral memory, but more in the capabilities of his prescience.
One difference is that the KH sought by the BG would have been with them and of them. In Paul’s defiance we see the BG at risk of defeat, contrary to the interpretations that he embodies their triumph.
Paul does say "We are Harkonnen." thus implying he can see the Baron's memories among the others in his inner mind. Of the three KH of Dune, Paul was certainly the weakest, both in mentality but also various biases and family ties, yet highly suppressed by other prescients. Leto II was the strongest mentally, and in temporal power as well. Lastly, Miles Teg becomes the KH which can see No-ships, thus breaching the last barrier and obtaining total freedom. His new sight can ensure his escape from any situation, even when he chooses not to do so.
There is some doubt if Duncan or Scytale are also KH, since their past memories are restricted to their own clones, making them a version of the Reverend Mothers, but for men.
Given the context of the story neither Paul nor his son are the KH because they're not part of the Bene Gesserit's plan. But more importantly than that Paul wasn't the KH because he didn't really want to be, which where free will enters at play. Leto II made the conscious decision to be what his father rejected
I may or may not have in fact always been here watching this video for this exact 22 minutes. Seriously though, this is, textually and close reading-wise, the very single reason for God Emperor. It's buried in there and most people miss it! Dune presents a shift of power from Spice/Economy to Prescience. Dune Messiah shows the power struggle for prescience. Children of dune shows the need to be free of Prescience (Leto II works very hard to avoid prescience as much as possible). And God Emperor shows the need for humans to be free from prescience. After this, Herbert struggled to connect the dots. Heretics is exploring the Matres who are running from the Machines, and Chapterhouse is the joining of the Matres and BG to fight the machines ... but yep, you are right on! Paul reveals the domination of determinism, and Leto II gives freedom from it. The cool thing about all this is that it really does peer into the nature of reality and the capacity of the human brain to keep surprising and keep doing the same thing again and again too.
Very well done bro. Top quality vid👍👍👍(I was always going to write this comment)
A LEORY JANKINS reference in 2023!?!?!!?!? Thumbs up! I wonder how much of your audience got that.
It is worth pointing out that in God Emperor, Leto II flirts briefly with the idea of suicide in one scene. It is mentioned that for a few seconds, the Golden Path winks in and out of existence, implying that he does indeed have a free will decision. Paul also sees multiple "critical decision points" and various possible futures in both Dune and Dune: Messiah. This seems to imply free will within the scope of available choices, but whether or not that applies in any way to average humans is debatable. Leto II in Children of Dune has a conversation with Jessica where he describes time, saying that Prescience collapses all of time into an infinite now. There is no difference between 1000 years ago, 1000 years in the future, and 10 seconds from now. This would seem to imply that those who use Prescience lock themselves into their own vision, or collapse the universal wavefunction by means of their observation. Perhaps this happens only for them, because if other Prescient Beings can hide from each other and confer that protection on those who share their aims (Dune: Messiah), that means everybody has their own little Reality bubble.
It could be that only the ignorant are truly free, as for them, the wavefunction remains un-collapsed until the moment they make a choice, forcing the universe to generate a response to that choice.
I love that to find creators in such an early state of their channel. Btw your video is really good 😁👌
This is such a great overview. Thank you for putting it together and sharing. Dune is so awesome, and you draw out one of the deeper points
I disagree about it being Siona that was the beginning.
"We go forward, we go back," was a common phrase in the book and series "Children of Dune." It all started with Ghanima and Farad'n Corrino. Leto II began his Golden Path with that pairing, usurping House Corrino's control over the Sardaukar. This solidified his control to start his plan. With his continual demands for "his" Duncan Idaho, we know the type of individualistic people Leto II wanted the people on the path to be, as Moneo proved to Duncan Idaho.
Imagine having a mind able to create such an epic and detailed story in the first place.
Unless you subscribe to the Everett interpretation, then reality would only be probabilistic “locally”, but deterministic as a whole
0:10 Well now that you've pointed that out I dont want to watch the rest of the video because I'm petty like that.
An aspect I never heard from you was the conversation between Paul and his son in Children of Dune where Leto had taken on the sand skin and chosen the Golden Path. Paul described that he could not choose that path. That line gives some determinism to Paul. I always thought of Paul as having been put in a position where so many events had led to his position and condition that he had few choices, regardless of his ability to see future choices.
Great vid. I think there’s a real moral imperative in Hebert’s tangle with philosophical determinism and techne. I think it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to say that he senses in it the same danger that Heidegger identified as “enframing“. The horror of the physicist’s ‘block universe’ is something only an artist could meaningfully evoke outside the ivory tower. My fantasy of a hopeful future is one in which Frank Herbert has the status among scholiasts of an information age Milton.
Dune fan and I haven’t watched the video yet. Just wanted to say that I always thought the promises of coming messiahs were stories of hero’s who didn’t know they’re being heroic and they still changed the world, and those were the reasons that our history sometimes depends on one or two decisions by one or few people. I always imagined Dune like scenarios as examples of winning hero stories being just be the best of themselves, where it counts. A bit of luck and time to see themselves were the miracle they were looking for. I’ve loved Dune from 1984. This Dune and maybe Dune 2, are the best interpretations of the story so far. The most famous best kept secret of 2023 where we saw it differently to the same outcome before. So naturally, I/ I expect a lot from Paul Moadib II
My experiences are part of who I am, so them affecting my decisions is part of my free will.
I believe this is Identity overtime, present Actions we make have consequences towards are future.
The Determinist Hate Accountability So instead they blame the god of Fatalism/Determinism (there own vain Imagination) to offset there Anxiety/Depression from Bad Past Life Dicisions
As someone who personally subcribes to the idea that free will is not only real but very important to what makes us us, I always found Dunes take on the matter, the whole golden path, to be somewhat hopeful. The idea of being in a deterministic universe and finding a method to make a truly free humanity that can never fall to likes of monsters like Leto II again, I find deeply compelling, and a sort of spark of light in the fairly dark and depressing world the dune universe is at times.
Is there free will in a capitalist society? Isn’t what you do determined by neoliberal capitalism? Now add AI in that mix. With philosophy as a discipline disappearing in Academic institutions, a forum such as this is essential. Thank you for the opportunity…
There's no such thing as free will, it's an illusion. You have will, but that will is entirely shaped by things outside your control. The two ideas are completely incompatible with each other and a will being free is impossible to describe or conceive of
@@Portents-Magic-imaginationcan you define "capitalism" and "neoliberalism?" These things have nothing to do with "will" or how it could be free
@@billystanton1522 neoliberal capitalism in western society is the notion that for an individual to pursue pleasure is its highest virtue. The first of these is the intense focus on the individual, viewed as the most qualified to articulate her or his needs and desires, so society should be structured on reducing barriers to the realization of this goal. Second, unfettered markets are considered the most efficient and effective means (Springer 2011).
Basically you have to work to pursue leisure, housing, or food. So is this determinacy or free will or both? Maybe freedom of a forced choice…
@@Portents-Magic-imagination I don't think you realize just how much rhetoric is in your answer. First and foremost, to be a serious thinker, you need to be able to give definitions to ideologies which someone who subscribes to those ideologies would actually agree with. I have no idea who this springer character is but capitalism is defined as "private ownership of the means of production within a free market economy." Neoliberalism is a poorly defined word that has been defined so many different ways, mostly to serve political ends, that it has little praxis today. It originally was simply a way to revive classical liberalism.
These have nothing to do with free will or determinism. Free will and determinism are concepts that describe the way in which thoughts arise.
Amazing, thank you!!! After reading all 6 novels this helped me a lot understanding the deeper meaning.❤
I'm not sure you need to go all the way down into the quantum indeterminacy rabbit hole... Chaos theory and the "three-body problem" (to the nth degree with n being a large number) of the indeterminacy of behaviour of complex systems is usually more than enough to do the trick.
I've never bought into the idea that the opposite of "determinism" is "free will": in my mind, "randomness" or "chaos" are better candidates for that role in the macro universe at large.
The (relative) unpredictability of human behaviour is at best a special case of a particular, biological complex system - and not necessarily the most chaotic such case at that.
In my "devotion" to Dune (I use the term in quotations ironically), I'm willing to suspend disbelief and to accept as intriguing a mythic story in which certain individual humans have quasi Cassandra-like abilities to (partly) perceive "The Future" - or, more accurately, the POSSIBLE futures of a "many worlds" universe - up to the point where a particular vision runs into a blind spot creates by the actions of OTHER prescient beings.
Paul's early visions - even in the first Dune book (and then again in "Messiah" and "Children") are NEVER certain/deterministic all the way out into an indeterminate future horizon. From the very start it's clear that most possible futures get lost in the fog at some point in the prescience. And Paul is constantly becoming aware that he had never seen a particular prescient individual in his visions - not even his own son.
It's part of the multi-generational tragedy of Dune's Atreides (worthy of the original Greek myth refering to a different family known by the same name) that Paul's imperfect foresight and the fatal flaw in himself - his feet of clay - combined to condemn his own son to the awful fate that the ironically named "Golden Path" reserved for him.
Anyone who has ever seen Denis Villeneuve's "Arrival" should have no doubt that he's the man to tackle Dune's particular variation on the myth about that person who can "see the future"...
What tragedy does he suffers?
The pain he inflicts on the humankind of his story is bigger,their tragedy is nothing compared to him.
This guy is just a product of narrow mindedness who is consumed only by prescience. With the resources he had,he could have done pretty much anything but he didn't have any vision of his own.
This video made me fall in love with the dune saga once again 🙌🏽🙌🏽
It would be wonderful to compare and contrast the different presentations of free will vs determinism in Dune, the Foundation Series and The Matrix. Particularly Dune vs the Matrix are such interesting counterpoints on AI, consciousness and determinism.
consciousness doesnt exist.
@@nvnv1807 There is no agreed upon definition as to what "consciousness" is. We only know what it does (for example : spatialize time). So this statement is nonsensical.
@@nvnv1807 "i think therefor i am" would suggest that consciousness is the only thing we can be sure does exist.
@@nvnv1807that statement can only come from a being lacking consciousness 😮
Your account is a recommendation and an instant Sub! Great job. I love this kind of stuff
If you can, make longer videos. These are gold.
Dayum yal want longer? 😆
I cut about 10 extra minutes from this video in truth out of consideration for the runtime, but if more people echo this sentiment, I'll start thinking about 30 min+ content
Very cool video! I’m very familiar with the books up through God Emperor but this video still helped me put some of the concepts together better, thanks!
11:23 “Once you know where to look for it, you see it everywhere.”
This is the dune related video title I’ve been waiting for
What’s more important than determining if we have free will or not is what choice we ought to make if we are free.
If I am free, my choice is to love myself first and foremost. 🙏
Free will is incoherent under any defintion.
Thoughts are either determined by prior causes (principle of sufficient reason/ cause and effect) in which you do not control them, or they are random (quantum indeterminacy)/ a mixture of both, in either case you do not control them.
Every particle (further divisible to the wave function or possibly strings) in the universe, obeys the laws of physics, and your brain which constitutes of matter is no different; following the 4 fundamental forces, in which you do not control that was set off at a brute fact (the big bang) or infinite regression.
Libertarian free will proponents insist that their choices are made for reasons, but also that those reasons do not determine their choices. Or that those reasons are not themselves determined, but also not a matter of chance, this is a contradiction.
If it’s a false trichotomy, then what are the other options? Agent causation (of the soul)? But again, does something cause the agent to act, or does the agent act for no reason?
Even if you have an immaterial soul, it only makes sense to say that soul is making decisions if its actions are causally determined by prior soul-states. Otherwise, its actions are uncaused, and uncaused events are, by definition, random. If you are acting randomly, that’s not really decision making. It’s only if your actions are done for reasons which cause those actions that you’re really making decisions. You’re not making decisions if you’re just doing things for no reason.
A mixture of chance and determinism? Part of the decision-making process involves causal influences, and the rest has no prior cause. This doesn't solve it. Free will, described by its advocates imply a person has control over their decisions. If my decisions are predetermined; how do I have control over them? If my decisions have no cause, and occur for no reason, then how can I control them?
What does it mean to say that “we are free and in control of what facts and ideas the mind focuses on”? When I choose to focus on an idea, does something cause me to choose to focus on that idea? If the answer is yes, then I'm not really in control of that act of focusing. If the answer is no, and there is nothing that determines what I will choose to focus on, the act of focusing on anything is no different from a chance event, which by definition are not controlled by anything.
So, does something cause a person to focus and think, or does the person’s choice to think and focus happen for no reason? Or is it partly causally influenced and partly chance? I don’t see how responsibility or control fits into any of these options, and I don’t see what other options there are.
I can choose 'x' or 'y', however, everything that makes up that choice is caused by both internal and external variables in which you did not pick. E.g., genetics, brain electricity and chemistry, physics of your own atoms and that around you, parents/ who raised you, where you were raised, what you were taught.
These make up your beliefs, thoughts, impulses, emotions, knowledge, memory.
True free will would be walking off a building and willing your atoms to defy gravity. In the same way your body cannot defy that fundamental force, your brain cannot defy the other 3 forces which makes up your thoughts. You are just matter and energy reacting to the laws of physics.
Divine Foreknowledge:
The argument is not that God predetermined what he knows ahead of time, it is that in order to infallibly know what will happen in the future, what will happen in the future has to be written in stone. Even if it’s not written in stone by God, it still has to be written in stone in order for God to know it infallibly. Knowing something will happen, even infallibly doesn't deterministically cause it to happen. The point is that in order to infallibly know that an event will happen, that event has to be predetermined. It doesn't have to be predetermined by the knowledge you have, but in order to have that knowledge infallibly, the event cannot be free to not occur. To say that an event is free to occur or not occur is to say whether it will occur or not cannot be infallibly known. There is no coherent scenario, not even hypothetically in which these events do not occur.
Even if God is outside time, and our future actions are retroactively causing God to know about them infallibly in the present, then they also lock us into committing them inescapably, otherwise we could defy God's foreknowledge. This would mean that I am predetermined to take every action I will ever take. If we aren't free to act differently, in the future, from how he, presently know we will act, because from his perspective it's already happened, then we have no more freedom to change the future, that we have to change the past.
The belief in "free will" is one of the primary enemies of love. It's the source of the pride in your "choices" and it's a source of distinguishing between this being and that. Belief in "free will" is one of the primary obstaces to true, unviersal love.
@@MrCmon113 funny I actually think that if there is “free will” the most important choice to make is choosing to love. 😂 Love yourself first and foremost. Making that “choice” then inevitably leads to gratitude. Choose love and breathe in gratitude 🧘 ❤🙏
Ya if its not your choice to Love(Determinism) then its not true love
@@hudsontd7778 Love is nothing more than a biochemical reaction. The fact that it feels stronger and deeper than a mere chemical to you is a feature of that biochemical reaction. The sociological utility and benefits provided by love bonds would not exist if that love bond felt weak or meaningless. People wouldn't be so quick to defend their infants if that bond between them felt like it was a fleeting thing, no more powerful than the sugar rush you get when you down a pixie stick. The fact that it feels like something more important and stronger than that is a biological requirement for it to be the evolutionary benefit that it is. Your deeply felt love for those you are bonded with drives you to do a multitude of things that you otherwise wouldn't without it, which are to the benefit and success of the species. To say that with such disdain, "nothing more than a biological chemical reaction," like that means that it's practically nothing. We are biology; we are chemicals. Biological chemical reactions are about as major as it gets for us. You think it's something magical, spiritual? Okay, prove magic or spirits exist. Until you do, biochemical reactions are the height of experience. It doesn't get any bigger than that. Chemicals are determined by physics...
Maybe one of the best Dune analysis video on the whole of youtube!
12:40 already explained around the time of the trial, predictive computers cant predict predictive computers too well because regular expected futures in the world are predicted by other things that affect them, predictive computers. People with precience cant see eachothers futures from a far, its like being a character in a book and writing the book yourself
I would say the only free-will someone in dune or in this world has is our reaction to events already determined. He can be happy of the future deaths, sad, look forward to it, or truly give in, but anyone with that much power elevates to a higher realm becoming wiser. As for us we can choose how we act to determined events events that came into being due to our actions.
The events that eventually led to Atreides and his son becoming prescient started to unfold before they were born, in a deterministic universe. Hence, the fact that they acquired the power to gift the universe with free will was also predetermined. Therefore, the universe never ceased to be deterministic, there was only an illusion of such. If you are predetermined to be free, is your freedom real? Much like in The Matrix, Neo presumably chose the red pill to free himself... But what if that choice was also predetermined?
Thank you for another excellent analysis that offers new insight into this most complicated masterpiece.
the quote u put at the end from Leto is literally cementing the universe as deterministic.
Humanity will never again be under threat of extinction, meaning its path is even more determined than before
but thats one thing, nothing to do with determinism
I firmly believe that Dune has impacted fiction more than any other novel series, especially in film from the 70’s through to today.
But, as someone with a huge appreciation for analysis and opinion of fiction, I would have easily enjoyed a long form video essay that ran as long as all of the Dune films and the sci-fi channel’s series.
I don’t think we can explore all of the theories and avenues that Herbert put to print.
Cracking stuff, mate.
Is it determinism when in the books it’s clearly stated that multiple options and possibilities are always there? Paul (and others) never are 100% sure with their premonitions and in the end still makes a clear choice.
as odd as this sounds, i dropped my phone after watching a video to remove water from my speaker and then this video turned on with you immediately asking me if i picked this which was odd. Now im sitting here watching this video that i never intended on watching yet im being told i wanted to watch this, but im hooked. The path has began and i must fulfill this prophecy
actually, I answered no to your first question since I land heavily on the side of determinism. to the point that I think Psychohistory is actually possible (its real-world equivalent Cliodynamics already exists). but I am not at all surprised that Dune plays around with this concept and even tried to subvert it. though, unlike prescience, Psychohistory would not allow you to hunt down every individual human because it just does not work like that.
I am glad you mention quantum randomness because I believe it's our only chance at free will, though I think it's not enough of a factor to make a difference in human decisionmaking.
Lol I glad there were some No's, because what an incredible insight! Your proposition that dunes thinking machines could be utilizing psychohistory as the structure for predicting humanity is such a novel (and totally viable) suggestion. I briefly glanced into cliodynamics actually when writing my historical accuracy video, but admittedly I hadn't given it much thought until now. Outside of The Foundation, I haven't seen the psychohistory discussed that often so maybe this is the catalyst that starts another video 🤔 😄
@@BrandoCastro215 All I meant is that Dune is likely influenced by Foundation and therefore would play around with its themes. you extrapolated the rest on your own, though I do agree (and am kinda jealous it didn't realize this myself).
Psychohistory though predicts broad events but breaks down at the individual level where prescience seems much more powerful with the ability to predict even individual choice. I don't think that is possible but combining Cliodynamics, with other predictive modeling from fields like social studies and economics would allow you to make general yet sophisticated predictions (where Nostradamus is just vague and can retroactively be fitted to mean anything). who knows how accurate a system like this can become after a few iterations and refinement and how much further ahead you could predict things if that is the case.
though then much like Philip k Dick also pointed out in Minority Report: once you know the future you can change it. which is kinda what Hari Seldon does after learning that the empire is about to collapse. still not an argument for free will, a version of you that know the future is fundamentally different from one that does not, resulting in completely different choices because of different circumstances no free will is required.
any technology can either improve the lives of everyone or increase already existing inequalities depending on who controls it. if psychohistory (or something like it) would ever be invented for real then, if wealthy, powerful elites end up controlling it it's not unlikely they'd use it to control the masses and make themselves more wealthy and powerful. a scenario like that could result in a situation that leads to the Butlerian jihad.
Randomness is not free will. We have no more control over a randomly selected number than we do over a number selected by a person we never met.
@@Niall001
Choice to reply to your comment? is it free will or not?
@kashutosh9132
The concept of free will is nonsense*. If you believe that the atoms & molecules in your car behave lawfully, then why would the atoms and molecules in your body not behave lawfully?
Choice is not free will. We all makes choices but those choices are the result of our individual and our species' histories. Those choices conform with the laws of nature (physics, chemistry & biology).
*There's nothing wrong using the social concept of "free will" but it's a bit like talking about the sun "rising" in the East. It describes our experience of nature but it does not describe nature accurately. It's a concept that's legitimate to use outside of science, but if you believe that the past causes the present, then the idea of humans' decisions not being caused by the past is ludicrous.
Case and point to the quote about charismatic leaders - historically kings and emperors die violently.
Quantum systems are indeterminate until observed. Then, they become quite determined. This is the Measurement Problem.
But what does that have to do with humanity? I get that particles act that way but how can we extrapolate that into everything else?
@@HeroicAge616 Every event is determined by the events immediately preceding it, all the way back to the Big Bang.
@@drbuckley1 But how can we confirm this and what might have caused that to be the starting point, if it truly is one?
@@HeroicAge616 I don't know if we can. There's a lot of stuff at the quantum level that can be inferred without direct observation. I think quantum is too weird for classical guys.
Interesting video, I had a lot of thoughts about The Sight and determinism that was echoed in this video, but I just can't make myself accept randomness, so the "invisible gene" always bugged me. And when I learned about quantum mechanics I quickly rebelled against randomness there too. If you haven't, check out the youtuber you mentioned, lookingglass, she made some videos about Pilot Wave Theory, which explains things like the double slit experiment within a deterministic framework.
Brooo I love this video, I always argue for deternism as I get older, I wonder if there is a correlation with being older and being more inclined to think you don't have free will, you might even know the answer. Lmk if you do
As you get older, your personal life has been hemmed in, and you tend to see the trajectory of your life better, so you may think you have less free will. You could very well choose to quit and start some new aspect of your career, but the amount of work required to change that trajectory makes it untenable.
Fascinating thought!
While I don't think there's a "concrete" correlation between age and belief in Determinism, I definitely see what you're driving at.
As we get older, our life experience (hopefully) offers us exposure to new and different philosophical ideas and that could be the catalyst for a change in our beliefs
Nice one mate
I enjoyed this
Years mean context, and time to see how decisions made by yourself and others shaped the present. When you are old enough to advise and support younger generations it is impossible not to reflect on your own youth and see all the times you thought you were being independent but were actually doing exactly what you were programmed to do. You also get the experience of seeing thought leaders and artists from your youth become out of touch and backward thinking while their younger replacements sound incredibly familiar. The cyclical nature of society plays out in front of your eyes maybe three or four times by the time you are old
i like how the norns phrased it in god of war ragnarok where people have free will but some people are become so predictable in their actions that their paths look determined
Yall this dude only has 700 subscribers whilst having videos this great; youtube is 100% rigged.
Everything is predetermined because of causality not because of consciousness. If you make a prediction and your prediction turns out to be incorrect, that doesn't mean determinism is wrong, that means your prediction is wrong, your consciousness is wrong. If take a step back and analyse what causes led you to make your prediction, you will notice that even your prediction turning out to be incorrect was predetermined. Determinism is not about making perfect predictions, is about the fact that everything that is going to happen in your life was already set in stone since the beginning of time, even your correct and incorrect predictions were already determined.
I didn't answer it intuitively, I answered "yes" because I have an argument where I use modal logic to proove that any defense of determinism will contradict itself.
Do share.
@@Loreweavver I was not originally written in portuguese, I think that I have an english translation but I don't know if it is as well written and explained as my original one...
@@Loreweavver
Belief in determinism encompasses two important propositions that I will call here D1 and D2, and which can be united into a larger proposition that I will call D. The aim of the argument is to refute proposition D, because if it is false so is the determinism. I will present the following propositions.
D1 : □∀P [ B(i,P)⇒F(f,B(i,P)) ]
D1 claims that for every proposition, if I believe it then some pre-existing factor made me believe that proposition.
D2 : □∀P [ B(i,P)⇒□B(i,P) ]
D2 claims that for every proposition, if I believe it, then I necessarily believe it (ie, it would not be possible for me not to believe it, in the event that this has been determined).
D : □(D1∧D2)
D is the junction of D1 and D2, and the claim that both are a necessary truth, and the thesis of determinism is only true of D for.
Now, the argument, each P will be a proposition and each C a corollary, so, for example, C1 is corollary from proposition P1 and so on...
P1 : F ( f,B(i,P) ) ⇒¬□ ( B(i,P)∧P )
P1: If some pre-existing factor made me believe in something, then not necessarily what I believe is true (pre-existing factors can determine us to believe in false propositions).
C1: F ( f,B(i,D) ) ⇒¬□ ( B(i,D)∧D )
C1: This also applies to the belief in D, that is, if some preexisting factor made me believe in D, then not necessarily D is true.
P2 : K(i,D)⇒ ( □∀P[B(i,P)⇒F(f,B(i,P))] )
P2: If I know that D is true, then for every proposition, if I believe it then some preexisting factor made me believe this proposition (definition of D1).
C2.1: K(i,D)⇒ ( □∀P[B(i,P)⇒¬□(B(i,P)∧P)] )
C2.1: If I know that D is true then for every proposition, if I believe it, then it is not necessarily true. (implication of P1)
C2.2: K(i,D)⇒□ ( B(i,D)⇒¬□(B(i,D)∧D) )
C2.2: And this also goes for belief D, if I know D is true then if I believe D, not necessarily and D is true. (implication of C1)
C2.3: K(i,D)⇒□ ( B(i,D)⇒(¬□B(i,D)∨¬□D) )
C2.3: If I know that D is true, then if I believe D, either not necessarily D is true, or not necessarily I believe D (which is the same as saying that it is possible for D to be false, or that it is possible that I do not believe in D). (application of De Morgan's laws)
P3 : K(i,D)⇒B(i,D)
P3: If I know that D is true, then I believe D. (this comes from the definition of knowing and believing, being knowing how to believe something that is true)
C3: K(i,D)⇒(¬□B(i,D)∨¬□D)
C3: So if I know D is true or not necessarily D is true, or not necessarily I believe D. (implication of C2.3)
P4 : K(i,P)⇒□B(i,P)
P4: If I know that D is true, then I necessarily believe D. (implication of D2)
C4: K(i,D)⇒□B(i,D)
∴ K(i,D)⇒¬□D
D⇔□D
∴ K(i,D)⇒¬D
Therefore, joining the obtained corollaries C3 and C2.3, if I know that D is true then, how or not necessarily D is true, or not necessarily I believe in D (option that cannot be valid because its negation is already an implication I know that D is true (C3)), the only option left is for D not necessarily to be true. (law of disjunctive syllogism)
However, since D is already a proposition that contains the necessity operator, D not necessarily being true is equivalent to D not being true.
That is, if I say that I know that D is true (which I do by asserting that determinism is correct) this implies that determinism is false, because D is false, resulting in a contradiction.
If I know that D is true then D is not true. The conclusion of defending determinism is logical nonsense.
Prove by reduction to absurdity.
@@RenanL.S. I'll take a better look at this later but I think there's a self referential fallacy at play.
@@RenanL.S.doesn’t this just more likely rule out that “knowing” things is impossible?
The YT algorithm works with what is known as "re-inforcement learning" - and it also re-inforces our learned behaviour if it is good at predicting our "choices" - or better "preferences" that can be re-inforced to the point that our decisions tend to become compusive reactions, rather than thoughtful responses. And this looks what one might want to call "neurological determinism" while its is just a learned pattern, that because our brains have something called "plasticity" , can mold in various tendencies. The qeustion is, what makes these changes possible if we would consider that reinforcements are inevitable results. They are of course not inevitable, otherwise you could not learn anything. Re-inforcement bases on preferences and the connotations of what they mean to us.
There is this case of a quadrupel sisters in the UK and how slight changes in how they were treated by their parents resulted in differences in personality trades. So is all of it really determined - but what exactly makes the criteria of determinism behave the way they do? Because turning to the left or turning to the right must be elementary and not derived from infinite chains of other criteria that are determined up my ass. If everything is determined without an actual meaning, how are we supposed to make a decision based on infinte determinism. So at some point reality must have seeds of meaning that can grow into complex structures and these seeds are themselves not ruled by raw determinism - they are what they are inthemselves and not because another condition made them so. From this point tendencies can be observed and every law to make something happen can be studied without getting insane. Hopefully.
you reading this comment was predetermined
Great video! Quite a lot of what you said here reminded about Eren from Aot & how his story goes. But I really enjoyed this video.
The concept of "free will" as being action that is unaffected by the prior state of the actor or of the universe is incoherent and meaningless. You could no more have free will by THAT definition than you could have a real number that was both prime and not an integer. It's a self-contradiction in terms!
Quantum Indeterminacy actually proves this by giving us a clear empirical look at what such events actually look like! They aren't willful actions; they are random events. A person who acted so, would NOT be acting WILLFULLY, but RANDOMLY!!!!!! It is a necessary feature of the nature of WILL that one's choices happen for REASONS! Similarly, FREEDOM is the opposite of COMPULSION not the opposite of CAUSALITY. The meaning of free will, once stripped of incoherent self-contradictory conceptions, reduces to merely mean that one's choices happen for one's OWN reasons, rather than another's reasons.
The interesting consequence of this is that freedom, and thus free will, becomes a phenomenon of ego-boundaries between one's self and the rest of society and the universe. This was best expressed by another science fiction author, Heinlein: "I am free no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them. If they are too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I accept sole moral responsibility for everything I do."
Think about that. We often say that Responsibility is the price of Liberty. But Heinlein reveals the flip-side of that relationship: Responsibility is the MEANS of Liberty too! The vast majority of humans look to their parents, or governments, or employers, or churches, or the market, or any number of other outside entities or forces to excuse them of responsibility for their actions. They say to themselves: "it wasn't me that ate those potato chips... its not my fault I'm fat... it's the evil corporations that marketed them to me, or made them taste better than healthy food. I'm not to blame. I'm not responsible." It's that evasion of responsibility that makes such people not free. Exactly the same person could eat exactly the same potato chips and be free... it would simply require that they CHOOSE to take responsibility for it and all consequences that came of it. I like to think that is what the Siona mutation of the Golden Path truly represents: A strain of human who has lost the ability to evade their own responsibility for their own actions. They KNOW unshakably deep inside their souls that they DESERVE everything they get, good or bad, and they ACT accordingly.
It was rewarding to not have decided to experience this presentation from which I have been opened to so
many possibilities which I will have no ability to not experience.
Fantastic video!
The pronunciation of character names in this series is always up for debate. (Har-KO-nen vs Har-kanen, most recently in film.) The character Siona has a name that, were it in Irish, would be pronounced "Sheeana." Since there actually IS a character named Sheeana in Heretics of Dune, I had always thought those pronunciations should match.
The algorithm lead me down the golden path to this video, and now I will unavoidably watch this video instead of going to sleep.
the bene gesserit could only access female memories because they only had x chromosomes. Paul has x and y chromosomes, thus access to both his male and female ancestoral memories
This is a great video, very well put together, and very well explained!
By observing quantum events at all we allow it to influence our decisions. You can take it one step further and get an app that uses quantum measurements sent from a lab as a "coin flip" so you can truly break determinism when you are faced with any decision.
Do you know the name of this app?
How exactly does that 'break determinism' in any useful sense? It certainly doesn't do so in any that gives any kind of free will. As in that case you would literally be doing what an app on your phone tells you. Randomness in preceding causes to your act does not make your act free.
Exactly, there is no wiggle room in quantum mechanics for free will to exist, it's nonsense, as usual.@@bandtown8587
I was unable to grasp most of that but I enjoyed it very much. I enjoy Dune because of how obligatory, tremendous power has been portrayed. A story that leaves its readers grasping to comprehend the bitter rivalry of great Houses & their struggle to win the favor of the emperor, when suddenly something foretold comes to terrible fruition. "Plans within Plans." These people have evolved, they no longer have free Will.
Honestly I've never heard anyone describe how free will could be possible (with _or without_ determinism; because without determinism what you're saying is things are Truly Random; effects aren't tied to causes; and therefore how could a mind ever choose anything in a reality like that?). So "free will vs. determinism" feels weird to me, since without determinism there's even less possibility that we're _really choosing_ anything.
Yeah, free will as a concept makes no sense at all, and I think that people who subscribe to it just haven't thought enough on exactly what it is. Every decision you make is obviously influenced by something outside of yourself, whether that's genetics, your upbringing, emotional state etc. You live in this world, so how could you not be affected by it?
Before I saw the video:
This video is going to explain me what "Determinism" means.
After watching the video:
Guess I'll subscribe to another channel, smash the like button and click the notification bell.
Thank you and well done.
My only objection is that your images of Siona, show her as a blond haired woman. When in fact, Siona Ibn Fuad al-Seyefa Atreides, had very dark hair.
I know it's a petty complaint, but, details matter, and I'm a bit obsessive.
4:52 Because men don’t survive the ordeal. It’s an ordeal that only women are strong enough to go through. That’s why the presence of the Kwisatz Haerach is such a big deal.