Philosophy Ethics of a real-life Butlerian Jihad

*THASF*

The Halo and Sonic Fan
Obozny
Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make bad times. Bad times make strong men. Repeat

That’s sort of why my ideal society has always been a sort of post-scarcity “automated society” that does away with our current economics and politics entirely; a computerized or “cyberbernized” society that needs no human input to operate. We could break the pendulum if we had a means to create wealth and plenty automatically without human intervention. When disasters and societal collapses happen, there is always a loss of capability, a loss of knowledge and know-how, and, of course, the destruction of much wealth and infrastructure. If it could be avoided, then humanity could maintain a sort of upward, extropian trajectory. The key to avoiding societal collapse is simple; one must engage in full-spectrum entropy-avoidance, at every level of society. Anything that creates waste? Anything that creates excess garbage and pollution? War, strife, destruction of infrastructure? Don’t do it. Don’t waste energy re-creating the same things over and over again.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
“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.”
And then those men destroyed those machines, and decided to instead enslave themselves to these things:
latest
Yeah, that quote loses a lot of impact when you actually sit down and read Dune. The moral of the story is that men will always be slaves to other men; anything else is nothing more than an illusion.
 
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@Terthna a guild navigator is still human, and the balance of powers between the Emperor, Landsraad, Bene Gesserit and Guild is infinitely better than a ruthless optimizing rationalist regime of computers, in which the human spirit is ground under the gears of efficiency. I believe few things justify a war quite so much as automation; certainly we might soon have need to pray Herbert a prophet and Jehanna Butler waiting in the wings.
 

Scottty

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@Terthna a guild navigator is still human, and the balance of powers between the Emperor, Landsraad, Bene Gesserit and Guild is infinitely better than a ruthless optimizing rationalist regime of computers, in which the human spirit is ground under the gears of efficiency. I believe few things justify a war quite so much as automation; certainly we might soon have need to pray Herbert a prophet and Jehanna Butler waiting in the wings.

Depends what's being automated. We couldn't have a website like this one if everything the server does was instead done manually.
Well, technically we could... it would just be ridiculously slow. And expensive.
 
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Depends what's being automated. We couldn't have a website like this one if everything the server does was instead done manually.
Well, technically we could... it would just be ridiculously slow. And expensive.

I have to admit, I love thinking about how you could accomplish most tasks with “dumb” mechatronics systems that would comply with post-Jihad society, it’s certainly how it functions.
 

Terthna

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@Terthna a guild navigator is still human, and the balance of powers between the Emperor, Landsraad, Bene Gesserit and Guild is infinitely better than a ruthless optimizing rationalist regime of computers, in which the human spirit is ground under the gears of efficiency. I believe few things justify a war quite so much as automation; certainly we might soon have need to pray Herbert a prophet and Jehanna Butler waiting in the wings.
Bullhonkey; I'd argue it's far, far worse. At least with automation, the human spirit isn't ground under the heels of competing totalitarian dictators, who are as ambitious as they are capricious; not to mention all the corpses such a system demands on a regular basis. If we did have an evil monster like Jehanna Butler in the wings (and I say this with every ounce of conviction I have in my soul), I'd be one of those who would stand ready to fight them to my last breath; because their vision of the future is nothing less than a boot stomping on a human face, forever.



@Terthna

Whats your opinion on the OP story?
Considering everything I've learned about Sweden over the past few years? I'm not surprised; the real problem is going to be figuring out how to stand in the way of the regressive leftists in other countries, who will want to imitate this insanity. Sweden itself, however? Yeah, they're doomed.
 
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Bullhonkey; I'd argue it's far, far worse. At least with automation, the human spirit isn't ground under the heels of competing totalitarian dictators, who are as ambitious as they are capricious; not to mention all the corpses such a system demands on a regular basis. If we did have an evil monster like Jehanna Butler in the wings (and I say this with every ounce of conviction I have in my soul), I'd be one of those who would stand ready to fight them to my last breath; because their vision of the future is nothing less than a boot stomping on a human face, forever.


In the original plan that Herbert discussed with his collaborators, Jehanna Butler organised and led the Butlerian Jihad because she had been forced into an abortion by the computers concluding that her unborn child had no social utility. In short, she was fighting to avenge a child who the computers had concluded was useless, would never contribute to society according to the computational metrics they were required to uphold, and so her child was destroyed like a useless clump of tissue. She saw the soul, humanity, and value in her unborn, and had the magic charisma and brilliant sense of an insurgent that let her mobilise a vast uprising which undid the destruction of the human spirit.

To put this quite bluntly, since you're more or less comparing me to an evil monster, do you think you'd have any value in machine society?

I'm under no such illusion for several of my friends who cannot work, and so I am prepared to fight for their human dignity.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
In the original plan that Herbert discussed with his collaborators, Jehanna Butler organised and led the Butlerian Jihad because she had been forced into an abortion by the computers concluding that her unborn child had no social utility. In short, she was fighting to avenge a child who the computers had concluded was useless, would never contribute to society according to the computational metrics they were required to uphold, and so her child was destroyed like a useless clump of tissue. She saw the soul, humanity, and value in her unborn, and had the magic charisma and brilliant sense of an insurgent that let her mobilise a vast uprising which undid the destruction of the human spirit.

To put this quite bluntly, since you're more or less comparing me to an evil monster, do you think you'd have any value in machine society?

I'm under no such illusion for several of my friends who cannot work, and so I am prepared to fight for their human dignity.
Do you honestly think you'd have any value in post-machine society in the Dune setting? Most of the factions would have treated you no better, outside of House Atreides; and we both know what happens to them eventually.

Jehanna Butler fought for a world that held just as little regard for her and her unborn child as the one she destroyed; less even. Because at the very least, the machines weren't the Harkonnens; they didn't do what they did out of pure malice. I assert she did more to destroy the human spirit than to protect it; as the society that came after was objectively worse.
 
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Do you honestly think you'd have any value in post-machine society in the Dune setting? Most of the factions would have treated you no better, outside of House Atreides; and we both know what happens to them eventually.

Jehanna Butler fought for a world that held just as little regard for her and her unborn child as the one she destroyed; less even. Because at the very least, the machines weren't the Harkonnens; they didn't do what they did out of pure malice. I assert she did more to destroy the human spirit than to protect it; as the society that came after was objectively worse.

I think that's something of an assumption about the society of the Padishah Emperor and the Landsraad which is not well supported. The Harkonnen were evil, but they also rose as part of the end of thousands of years of rule by the Padishah Emperors; they were the corrupt decadence at the end of many centuries of glory.
 

Terthna

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I think that's something of an assumption about the society of the Padishah Emperor and the Landsraad which is not well supported. The Harkonnen were evil, but they also rose as part of the end of thousands of years of rule by the Padishah Emperors; they were the corrupt decadence at the end of many centuries of glory.
Yeah, those "centuries of glory" were probably built atop a mountain of corpses; as they have usually been throughout human history. It is an assumption on my part, but going off of what was in the books; I'd rather be aborted in the machine era, than suffer in the post-machine era.
 
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Yeah, those "centuries of glory" were probably built atop a mountain of corpses; as they have usually been throughout human history. It is an assumption on my part, but going off of what was in the books; I'd rather be aborted in the machine era, than suffer in the post-machine era.

Considering humanity has never existed without a wealthy elite controlling society, why do you choose one that is amoral over one that is at least contained by morality? I'm at a loss of how you can say being alive now is better than being alive during the Landsraad era, but clearly you think so since you're alive...
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
Considering humanity has never existed without a wealthy elite controlling society, why do you choose one that is amoral over one that is at least contained by morality? I'm at a loss of how you can say being alive now is better than being alive during the Landsraad era, but clearly you think so since you're alive...
Simple; because there has never been and never will be one contained by morality. The only thing that can is mutual self-interest.


In short, the Landsraad era is a third-world dictatorship by today's standards, because the incentives of those in charge are aligned with very few of their citizens. As long as the spice is flowing, your suffering does not matter to them; and heaven help you if it isn't.
 
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Simple; because there has never been and never will be one contained by morality. The only thing that can is mutual self-interest.


In short, the Landsraad era is a third-world dictatorship by today's standards, because the incentives of those in charge are aligned with very few of their citizens. As long as the spice is flowing, your suffering does not matter to them; and heaven help you if it isn't.

It is a feature of post-Eclipse Pit society to believe the absurdity that morality, religion and ethics have no real sway over the hearts of maids and that everyone acts according to self-interest... I simply don't believe in such atheism.
 

Terthna

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It is a feature of post-Eclipse Pit society to believe the absurdity that morality, religion and ethics have no real sway over the hearts of maids and that everyone acts according to self-interest... I simply don't believe in such atheism.
The heck is "post-Eclipse Pit"? Anyways; I don't really care what you believe. The facts just don't support your delusions.
 
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The heck is "post-Eclipse Pit"? Anyways; I don't really care what you believe. The facts just don't support your delusions.


The collapse into degeneracy of modern society after the mid/late-60s. I posted multiple articles in the Athenaeum. At any rate, your position is, to me, logically absurd and obviously non-factual, unsupported by history. Left-wing social science theorycrafting in the modern day and age is worse than useless.
 

Terthna

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The collapse into degeneracy of modern society after the mid/late-60s. I posted multiple articles in the Athenaeum. At any rate, your position is, to me, logically absurd and obviously non-factual, unsupported by history. Left-wing social science theorycrafting in the modern day and age is worse than useless.
To be honest, I feel the same way about you. I don't think we have a lot of ground in common, and I doubt we ever will. We're just too ideologically opposed to one another.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
I don't disagree with you, but I thank you for being civil.
You're welcome. For what it's worth, I don't think you're an "evil monster"; just incredibly misguided, from my perspective. That said, I suspect we'll be having arguments like this for as long as I'm a member of your forum.

Ah well; agree to disagree?
 
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