User talk:Lundse/Dune quotes

Quotes by others on FH's Jihad

I had proposed to FH that he and I collaborate on a prequel to the Dune saga called "Prequel to Dune: the Butlerian Jehad" or some similar title. FH and I had discussed writing it together and he agreed with my general plot outline, completed first chapter, and so on but his untimely death prevented us from continuing. He had been living in the LA area at the time and we often discussed it by phone, but I have no written notes from him about it, unfortunately The prequel would have followed in general terms the story as outlined in the DE - sketched in my notes - which I still have - and written in final published form by one of my colleagues at Cal State.

Willis McNelly

Not Jihad-related, but just great

Leto II's vision of the Golden Path had fragmented humanity so that they no longer followed a single charismatic leader, and now Murbella had to repair that damage. Diversity might once have been a path to survival, but unless the numerous worlds and armies could stand together against the far greater foe, they would all perish. - Sandworms of Dune

Links and resources on the prequels

Noel Gough article: [[1]]

Non-Dune FH quotes

What we have paused to discuss right now is probably the single most important barrier to the widespread useful development of individual computers. It involves a lot of people blathering about their "computer intelligence." According to this scare story, "computer intelligence will win out someday over human intelligence and then we're all going to be in deep trouble. That makes good science fiction drama, but it ain't gonna happen."

Frank Herbert - Without Me You're Nothing. P. 33

We definitly do not want to call them [computers] electronic brains That is the most misleading name to come along.

Frank Herbert - Without Me You're Nothing. P. 44

We are saying that it is not our tools that are at fault, it's how we use those tools and the beliefs we invest in them.

Frank Herbert - Without Me You're Nothing. P. 73

We are questioning more than the philosophy behind our dependence upon limited and limiting systems. We question the power structures that have grown up around such systems.

Frank Herbert - Without Me You're Nothing. P. 73

Quotes from Dune and sequels

"Scytale glanced at the old Reverend Mother, seeing the ancient hates which colored her responses. From the days of the Butlerian Jihad when "thinking machines" had been wiped from most of the universe, computers had inspired distrust. Old emotions colored the human computer as well."

Note that Mohiam is against mentats because they are "like" computers - the Bene Gesserit share this trait. If the problem was that machines started murdering and torturing, her dislike of mentats makes no freakin' sense - mentats are not going to do that all of a sudden. Such coloring from old emotions only makes sense if you have a problem with... machine thinking, machine logic, machine-attitude.

"This was a human computer, mind and nervous system fitted to the tasks relegated long ago to hated mechanical devices"

From Dune Messiah, Pauls thoughts about Hayt. "Relegated" is something you do willingly - not because an evil robot is aiming a laser at you.

"His gods were Routine and Records. He was served by mentats and prodigious filing systems. Expediency was the first word in his catechism, although he gave proper lip-service to the precepts of the Butlerians. Machines could not be fashioned in the image of a man's mind, he said, but he betrayed by every action that he preferred machines to men, statistics to individuals, the faraway general view to the intimate personal touch requiring imagination and initiative."

From Dune Messiah, Pauls thoughts about the typical civil servant is his empire. If the Jihad was a war of annihilation against mankind, then "giving lip-service" takes on an interesting meaning. A person giving lip-service is not convinced of what he or she is saying, so this would mean that these civil servants do not really agree that mankind should have defended against and survived the onslaught of megalomanic killing machine. They presumably aim to destroy mankind. This is probably not the goal of every civil servant in the known universe - although I am sure on could write a quick trilogy of books about such a plot.

The Reverend Mother closed her eyes to hide his face. Damnation! To cast the genetic dice in such a way! Loathing boiled in her breast. The teaching of the Bene Gesserit, the lessons of the Butlerian Jihad -- all proscribed such an act. One did not demean the highest aspirations of humankind. No machine could function in the way of a human mind. No word or deed could imply that men might be bred on the level of animals.

Note that the "act", going against the "lessons of the Butlerian Jihad" is "demean[ing] the highest aspirations of humankind". The lesson of the Jihad was that man should not be demeaned (not that he should not get killed by a rogue AI).

The Butlerian Jihad tried to rid our universe of machines which simulate the mind of man.

Not machines which killed men, which would be the more relevant point if that was what they did.

One moment he felt himself setting forth on the Butlerian Jihad, eager to destroy any machine which simulated human awareness. That had to be the past -- over and done with. Yet his senses hurtled through the experience, absorbing the most minute details. He heard a minister-companion speaking from a pulpit: "We must negate the machines-that-think. Humans must set their own guidelines. This is not something machines can do. Reasoning depends upon programming, not on hardware, and we are the ultimate program!" He heard the voice clearly, knew his surroundings -- a vast wooden hall with dark windows. Light came from sputtering flames. And his minister-companion said: "Our Jihad is a 'dump program.' We dump the things which destroy us as humans!"

Leto II remebering genetically. This is a funny kind of speech to be giving if the machines are trying to eradicate you - why talk about how they "negate us as humans"? That we must "set our own guidelines"?

Did anyone in a zombie movie ever rally the survivors saying "zombies cannot set our guidelines for us"? Would you, acting in selfdefence against an assailant shout for help because you are being "destroyed as human"?

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

"Turned their thinking over" - mankind was not coerced, put in slave pens or routinely eradicated. They turned their thinking over. Themselves.

Then came the Butlerian Jihad -- two generations of chaos. The god of machine-logic was overthrown among the masses and a new concept was raised: "Man may not be replaced."

"The god of machine logic", not "the hegemony of the evil ~~Darth Grievious~~, ~~Skynet~~, Omnious". Even the ban on "replacing mankind" would make no sense if the problem was a murderous AI - a ban on autonomous AIs would be more than sufficient to deal with that problem.

JIHAD, BUTLERIAN: (see also Great Revolt) -- the crusade against computers, thinking machines, and conscious robots begun in 201 B.G. and concluded in 108 B.G. Its chief commandment remains in the O.C. Bible as "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Its possession was the shibboleth of this age, but it carried also the taint of old immorality. Once, they'd been guided by an artificial intelligence, computer brains. The Butlerian Jihad had ended that, but it hadn't ended the aura of aristocratic vice which enclosed such things.

About a fencing machine - which is the closest thing to a robot in the Dune universe. Note that humanity was "guided", not "led into slavepens for extermination". With the danger on "going Godwin" on this one, if this happened in the same universe as Omnious, it would be like a historian saying the Nazis "governed" the Jews during the Third Reich. A slight understatement, in other words :-)

The human-computer replaced the mechanical devices destroyed by the Butlerian Jihad. Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind! But Alia longed now for a compliant machine. They could not have suffered from Idaho's limitations. You could never distrust a machine.

So trusting the machine was never the problem. Note that Alia has Other Memory and hence, rather specific knowledge of the Jihad. She desires a 'compliant' machine to give her advice and generally do the work of Duncan Idaho, a mentat. This would be an intelligent computer, and completely non-sensical if she remembers how one such machine enslaved and almost killed all of humanity.

1. Alia has memories from the time of the Jihad and knows details regarding Omnius et al.
2. She is wishing for a machine to give her advice on the level of a mentat's capabilities.
3. She characterises such a machine as 'compliant' and trustworthy.
4. A machine with capabilities re. political advice on the level of, or beyond, a mentat is a powerful artificial intelligence.
5. Omnius was a powerful artificial intelligence.
6. Omnius enslaved and tried to kill mankind.
7. Omnius was an AI which was not compliant or trustworthy, to a catstrophic degree (from 5 and 6).
8. Alia knows that a powerful AI can be untrustworthy and non-'compliant' the level of genocide or human extinction (from 1 and 7).
9. Alia believes a powerful AI would be trustworthy and 'compliant' (from 3 and 4).
10. Alia both believes, and does not believe, that a powerful artificial intelligence is 'compliant' and trustworthy (from 8 and 9) - Quod Est Absurdum.

They [Ixians] made their devices in the image of the mind the very thing which had ignited the Jihad's destruction and slaughter.

There is no way this sentence makes sense if the beginning ("They made their devices in the image of the mind ") is not the cause for the later part, ie. the Jihad. So the Jihad was started because of this 'image of the mind', either its creation of the thing itself. The abhorrence of the thing, not its abhorrent actions.

"The target of the Jihad was a machine-attitude as much as the machines," Leto said. "Humans had set those machines to usurp our sense of beauty, our necessary selfdom out of which we make living judgments. Naturally, the machines were destroyed."

Leto II again, telling us the reason behind the Jihad - our loss of self-determination. No mention of slaughtering innocent humans, one notes...

Odrade was suddenly aware she had touched on the force that had powered the Butlerian Jihad - mob motivation.

People do not need motivation for survival, they need it to start a bloody, ideological revolt. The battle against Omnious was not "powered" by mob motivation, it was done out of a need for survival.