Philosophy Ethics of a real-life Butlerian Jihad

Scottty

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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.

Don't confuse your world with that of Frank Herbert. What you think possible isn't necessarily the same as what he and the other Dune authors did.

But getting back to Sweden: It's case of a country that had been safe and prosperous for too long, and so had a leadership that was living in a mental la-la land. Out of touch with reality.
And they are probably still insulated from the horror that their lunatic policies are imposing on their own people.
 
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@Scottty all right, all fair and good, but Herbert did intend a critique of modern society, and I don't think anyone can really saw that the abrogation of our human dignity to automation is a desirable end-state.
 
D

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the ideal as far as I'm concerned is people doing w/e the hell they want while robots do all the tedious, laborious, annoying stuff.

If you like doing that sort of thing feel free to do it for yourself.

Automation is great as long as it's serving humans. Humans serving automation makes no sense and is dumb on the face of it.

But it’s happening now in real life where human rights, like the right to work, are being displaced by machines for ideological reasons...
 

Scottty

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@Scottty all right, all fair and good, but Herbert did intend a critique of modern society, and I don't think anyone can really saw that the abrogation of our human dignity to automation is a desirable end-state.

If by "abrogation of human dignity" you mean people having major life decisions made for them by an impersonal state operating on a set of values alien to their own, that is oppressive regardless of whether it's being run by people or machines.

But it’s happening now in real life where human rights, like the right to work, are being displaced by machines for ideological reasons...

What do you mean by "right to work" here? I've seen that phrase used in more than one way.
 
D

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If by "abrogation of human dignity" you mean people having major life decisions made for them by an impersonal state operating on a set of values alien to their own, that is oppressive regardless of whether it's being run by people or machines.

Well, we certainly agree on that.

What do you mean by "right to work" here? I've seen that phrase used in more than one way.

I support one of the main objectives of economic policy being full employment because employment of any kind is morally redemptive and employed persons are brought in as contributors to society at a moral level. I believe we have a right to insist that the economy function less efficiently for the sake of employing humans instead of machines.
 

Bassoe

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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.
Even if you're willing to accept the consequences of deliberately regressing your technology, a prisoner's dilemma scenario comes into effect where any society, group or even individual who didn't is now more powerful than you. The only way that the "give up technology and lifestyle to save the planet" argument makes sense is if the arguer's actual goal is "convince everyone else to disarm themselves, then slaughter them with your technological advantage until there are enough resources per population numbers to go around for the comfortable sustenance of yourself and any other survivors."
@Scottty all right, all fair and good, but Herbert did intend a critique of modern society, and I don't think anyone can really saw that the abrogation of our human dignity to automation is a desirable end-state.
Which he objectively failed at. The Dune series are great books, but their politics are ridiculous. Not in the 'they're contrary to my politics' sense, but in the, 'this simply wouldn't work as described' one.

If you ban technological progress then the only result is that your enemies who don't ban it become stronger while you fade into irrelevance or are outright conquered. Logically, Dune should've had Lesser Houses and/or peasant uprisings fully willing to make use of the otherwise hated and feared AI technologies simply because they'd desperately need an Outside Context advantage against the Great Houses, said uprisings would win because they had better technologies/weapons than their opponents, then AI-using civilization would again become the default. That or chaos with laser-pointer-shield-and-timer explosives giving everyone with shields a nuclear arsenal.

And that's the other thing Dune does wrong, ludicrous claims that the barbarian whose sole weapon is 'their life was harsh so they had to be tough to survive' is somehow the military superior of the civilized with technologically sophisticated weaponry, a nonsensical notion only propagated by modern technological powers being unable to defeat barbarians using guerrilla warfare. When the objective of said 'wars' isn't to kill the enemy and end the war or even just to accurately declare the whole thing pointless and go home, but to continue indefinitely to justify transferring large sums of taxpayer money to politically connected military-industry complex corporations and Patriot Act-style domestic authoritarianism 'for the duration of the emergency'.

Compare that to the cold war, when MAD meant the elites faced an actual threat to themselves, not merely the lives of their pawns and their rules of engagement then, specifically, 'we are only being prevented from outright genociding you with WMDs because you also have WMDs so if we tried, we'd both die.'
What do you mean by "right to work" here? I've seen that phrase used in more than one way.
What's going to happen once automation technologies advance to the point where no matter how underpaid, overworked and generally mistreated, a human worker literally cannot be profitable compared to a robot?
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
@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.
@Scottty all right, all fair and good, but Herbert did intend a critique of modern society, and I don't think anyone can really saw that the abrogation of our human dignity to automation is a desirable end-state.
ideological reasons
Capitalism. There's nothing ideological about wanting to replace human labor with machines, assuming the machines can do it cheaper. Ideological reasons would be something like 'loyalty purges of the human military and law enforcement in favor of Commissar ED-209, who lacks the free will and sentience to consider rebellion'.

There are two threats here. Threat one is a world without a butlerian jihad and a society which essentially exists solely at the whim of the goverment and robotics company owners.
IXJac said:
Arbeitskraft by Nick Mamatas said:
As the autocarriage moved sluggishly toward the airship field, I brooded on the question of value. If value comes from labour, and capital is but dead labour, what are steam-workers? So long as they needed to be created by human hands, clearly steam-workers were just another capital good, albeit a complex one. But now, given the dexterity of the latest generation of steam-workers, they would clearly be put to work building their own descendents, and those that issue forth from that subsequent generation would also be improved, without a single quantum of labour-power expended. The bourgeoisie might have problems of their own; with no incomes at all, the working-class could not even afford the basic necessities of life. Steam-workers don’t buy bread or cloth, nor do they drop farthings into the alms box at church on Sunday. How would bourgeois society survive without workers who also must be driven to consume the very products they made?

The petit-bourgeoisie, I realized, the landed gentry, perhaps they could be catered to exclusively, and the empire would continue to expand and open new markets down to the tips of the Americas and through to the end of the Orient—foreign money and resources would be enough for capital, for the time being. But what of the proletariat? If the bourgeoisie no longer need the labour of the workers, and with the immense power in their hands, wouldn’t they simply rid themselves of the toiling classes the way the lord of a manor might rid a stable of vermin? They could kill us all from the air—firebombing the slums and industrial districts. Send whole troupes of steam-workers to tear men apart till the cobblestones ran red with the blood of the proletariat. Gears would be greased, all right.
Threat two is the possibility of a world with a butlerian jihad and consequentially, without technology. Going with the original canon of Frank Herbert's Dune Encyclopedia where it was fought against humans using machines as tools rather than Brian Herbert's prequels where it was neoreactionary warlords turned brains-in-jars-in-robotic-bodies who then accidentally created space!skynet and had it hijack their empire, the butlerian jihad was a complete failure. The original objective of the jihad was to make individuals valued against an impersonal system and prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a few. What actually happened was that all that removing automation did was suddenly make human slavery or serfhood economically practical again, so people were still oppressed by tyrants, but rather than being oppressed while living in post-scarcity technological comfort, they were oppressed which living in early industrial revolution factory wageslave or medieval serfhood dystopia conditions at best. Worse, when the Harkonnens, who were motivated by deliberate sadism rather than merely uncaring practicality were involved.

"Hey guys, those machines sure oppressed us, lets ban them so the rich won't fuck us over!"
>1000 years later...
"Welcome to House Harkonnen where epsteinian decadence is the low bar and we use slaves instead of automation."
>100 years later
"Hey guys, the most holy worm god son of the guy who went completely Genghis Khan on the rest of civilization with an army of roid raging cultists wants to kill 99% of the galactic population..."

Morons were better off at the start, Leto was right to murder everyone.

And that's not even counting how much of the current human population is only kept fed by the capacities of modern technological agriculture and modern technological shipping technologies to transfer food around the world. Get rid of technology and even if you didn't start a world war as people fought for the rapidly decreasing available resources, you'd still see mass death on a scale unmatched in human history.
Death's End by Liu Cixin said:
“The Great Resettlement is over!” Sophon bowed again. “Thank you! I’m grateful to all of you. This is a tremendous accomplishment, comparable to the walk out of Africa by your ancestors tens of thousands of years ago. A new era for our two civilizations has begun!”

Everyone in the House of Representatives turned their head anxiously as something exploded outside. The four lighting beams hanging from the ceiling swayed, and all the shadows along with them, as though the building was about to collapse. But Sophon continued speaking: “Before the magnificent Trisolaran Fleet arrives to bring you a happy new life, everyone must endure a difficult period lasting three months. I hope humanity will perform as well as it did during the Great Resettlement.

“I proclaim now the complete severance of the Australian Reservation from the outside world. Seven strong-interaction space probes and the Earth Security Force will enforce an absolute blockade. Anyone attempting to leave Australia will be treated as an invader of Trisolaris and be exterminated without mercy!

“The defanging of Earth must proceed. During the next three months, the reservation must be kept in a state of subsistence agriculture. The use of any modern technology, including electricity, is strictly prohibited. As everyone present can see, the Earth Security Force is in the process of systematically eliminating all electricity-generating equipment in Australia.”

People around Cheng Xin looked at each other in disbelief, hoping that someone else could help explain what Sophon had just said.

“This is genocide!” someone in the House of Representatives cried out. The shadows continued to sway, like corpses dangling from nooses.

It was indeed genocide.

The prospect of keeping 4.2 billion people alive in Australia was difficult, but not unimaginable. Even after the Great Resettlement, the population density in Australia was only fifty people per square kilometer, lower than the population density of pre-Resettlement Japan.

But the plan had been premised on highly efficient agricultural factories. During the resettlement process, large numbers of agricultural factories had been relocated to Australia, and many of them had been reassembled and put in operation. In these factories, genetically modified crops grew at rates orders of magnitude above traditional crops, but natural lighting was insufficient to power such growth, so ultrabright artificial lights had to be used. This required massive amounts of electricity.

Without electricity, the crops in the growth tanks of the factories, dependent on ultraviolet or X-ray light for photosynthesis, would rot in a couple of days.

The existing food reserve was enough to maintain 4.2 billion people only for one month.

“I don’t understand your reaction,” Sophon said to the man who had yelled genocide. Her confusion appeared genuine.

“What about food? Where are we going to get food?” someone else shouted. They were no longer terrified of Sophon. All that was left was despair.

Sophon scanned the hall, meeting the eyes of everyone present. “Food? Everyone, look around: You are surrounded by food, living food.”

Her tone was serene, as though reminding humanity of a storehouse they had forgotten.

No one said anything. The long-planned process of annihilation had reached its final step. It was too late for words.

Sophon continued. “The coming struggle for survival will eliminate most of humanity. By the time the fleet arrives in three months, there should be about thirty to fifty million people left on this continent. These final victors will begin a free and civilized life in the reservation. The fire of Earth civilization will not go out, but it will continue in a reduced form, like the eternal flame at a tomb.”

The Australian House of Representatives was modeled on the British House of Commons. The high seats of the public galleries were to the sides, and the benches for the Members of Parliament—where the leaders of the world now sat—were down in the pit in the middle. Those sitting there now felt as if they were in a tomb that was about to be filled in.

“Mere existence is already the result of incredible luck. Such was the case on Earth in the past, and such has always been the case in this cruel universe. But at some point, humanity began to develop the illusion that they’re entitled to life, that life can be taken for granted. This is the fundamental reason for your defeat. The flag of evolution will be raised once again on this world, and you will now fight for your survival. I hope everyone present will be among the fifty million survivors at the end. I hope that you will eat food, and not be eaten by food.”
 

Scottty

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I think one thing people are overlooking is that it wasn't "a world" run by whatever - it was a bunch of worlds, that orbited different stars.
 

Bassoe

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I think one thing people are overlooking is that it wasn't "a world" run by whatever - it was a bunch of worlds, that orbited different stars.
The interstellar rather than planetary nature of civilization in Dune mattered little, so long as available territory was still kept limited by the accessibility of Melange. If it was possible to build starships without needing a supply of Melange, only available from Arrakis for the Navigators, then people could use said starships to escape the rule of the Technocrats, Harkonnens or Leto's Empire. Either become permanently nomadic, stopping in solar systems only to harvest raw materials to build more or expand preexisting starships whenever the onboard population grows sufficiently to require more room, while otherwise flying in a straight line away from colonized space, or doing so temporarily, then once a couple years, decades, centuries, really, the longer the better since it'll minimize the chances of being followed, of sustained spaceflight outside colonized space, settle down and build your own civilization.

Having your distant descendants return centuries later as a barbarian horde sacking civilized space optional.

Baughn said:
Mew said:
A Thousand Deaths by Orson Scott Card said:
But he thought this: That this starship and the others would be and had been sent out to colonize in prison worlds were not really what the Russians thought they were. True, the prisoners sent in the Gulag ships would be away from earth for centuries before they landed, and many or most of them would not survive. But some would survive.

I will survive, Jerry thought as the helmet picked up his brain pattern and transferred it to tape.

Out there the Russians are creating their own barbarians. I will be Attila the Hun. My child will be Mohammad. My grandchild will be Genghis Khan.

One of us, someday, will sack Rome.
A World Out Of Time by Larry Niven said:
“Corbell, I have no data on the nature of water-monopoly empires. I had to take your world entirely.”

“What are you talking about?” His answer came in Corbell’s recorded voice. “I think the State could last seventy or a hundred thousand. See, there water-monopoly empires, they don’t collapse. They rot from within, to the point where a single push from the barbarians outside can topple them. The levels of society lose touch with each other, and when it comes to the crunch, they can’t fight. But it takes that push from the outside. There’s no revolution in a water empire.”

Corbell said, “I didn’t–“

“A water empire can grow so feeble that a single barbarian horde can topple it. But, Peerssa, the State doesn’t have any outside.”

“–I don’t understand.”

“The State could last seventy or a hundred thousand years, because all of humanity was part of the State. There were no barbarians waiting hungrily for the State to show weakness. The State could have grown feeble beyond any precedent, feeble enough to fall before the hatred of a single barbarian. You, Corbell. You”

“Me?”

“Did you exaggerate the situation? I thought of that, but I couldn’t risk it. And I couldn’t ask.”

He’s a computer. Perfect memory, rigid logic, no judgment. I forgot. I talked to him like a human being, and now–“You have heroically saved the State from me. I’ll be damned.”

“Was the danger unreal? I couldn’t ask. You might have lied.”

“I never wanted to overthrow the damn government. All I wanted was a normal life. I was only forty-four years old! I didn’t want to die!”
But that's not an option, so long as starships require Navigators who require Melange which only comes from Arrakis and consequentially, can only fly as far from Arrakis as they can stretch their onboard supply of Melange.

Breaking this monopoly with Ixian Navigation Machines and artificially producing Melange via Axlotl Tanks, allowing humanity to scatter across the entire universe, making it impossible for anyone to ever be in a position to oppress everyone ever again was the whole point of Leto's Golden Path plan.

To compare that to real world parallel circumstances, the fact that despite having the technology for orion drive and nuclear thermal rockets since the cold war space race and the absolutely ridiculously profitable payoff-vs-startup-costs of asteroid mining, the corporatocracy isn't currently throwing military-industry complex levels of funding at conquering the solar system. They know what the creation of potential rivals with functionally unlimited resources and technology to move around asteroids, hence, MAD deterrence would mean for them.
 

Bassoe

Well-known member
“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.”
Anathem by Neal Stephenson said:
“I guess because I live in a place with almost zero praxis, it never occurs to me to think about such things,” I said. “But at times like this, the absurdity hits me between the eyes. There’s no reason to put up with junk like this. A stove with dangerous, unreliable chemical fuel. With orifices that clog. In four thousand years we could have made a better stove.”

“Would I be able to take that stove apart and fix it?”

“You wouldn’t have to, because it would never break.”

“But I want to know if I could understand such a stove.” “You’re the kind of person who could probably understand just about anything if you set your mind to it.”

“Nice flattery, Raz, but you keep dodging the question.”

“All right, I take your point. You’re really asking if the average person could understand the workings of such a thing . . .”
Anathem by Neal Stephenson said:
Anyway, it gave me an opening to carry forward the stove argument in a way that wouldn’t make Cord so irritated. When the conversation lapsed, I tried: “I see why you guys—or anyone—would feel more comfortable with a stove you could take apart and understand. And I’m fine with that—normally. But these are not normal times. If the Cousins turn out to be hostile, how can we oppose them? Because it looks like they came from a world that didn’t have anything like the Reconstitution.”

“A dictatorship of the theors,” Yul said.

“It doesn’t have to be a dictatorship! If you could see how theors behave in private, you’d know they could never be that organized.”

But Cord was of one mind with Yul on this. “Once they get to the point where they’re building ships like that one,” she said, “it is a dictatorship in effect. You said yourself it would take the resources of a whole planet. How do you think they got their hands on those resources?”
To elaborate;
Theors are essentially medieval monks, storing scientific knowledge in 'safe' low-tech means of writing and oral history. The society of which they're a part, at one point, prior to the Reconstitution, worked with sophisticated technology, but largely renounced it because it led to inequality, where those who knew how to build and use it could rule over those who didn't. What was left was the lowest common denominator of technology, gadgetry anyone could understand and build by themselves without further assistance or outside infrastructure. Everyone having the same machines meant equality, no tyrant could have a military more effective than a comparatively sized peasant army when both sides had garage-built guns and the fighting couldn't continue too long before they had to return home for harvest or planting season or starve. Then the Cousins showed up. In an orion-drive-powered interstellar generation ship, armed with their engine's fuel supply and the orbital high ground.
 

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