The State of Human(/Machine?) Space on the Eve of the Jihad

[SandChigger]

I started a thread like this over on the DN BBS a long time ago. There, IIRC, we veered off into a discussion of AI, its possibility and plausibility.

Here, let's first list what we know from the ORIGINAL books about the "Ancients" and their world....


(Edit: forgot that ORIGINAL there the first time.)

[Freakzilla]

The best description is from the "Religion of Dune" appendix, I think.

[SandChigger]

Right.

I was hoping for a little bit more analysis/summation, though.

Maybe I should start off.

• After 11,000 years, humankind has colonized only a little over 13,000 planets to the point of having populations worthy of political representation.
• There is a governing body known as (or which later becomes known as) the Landsraad, which has existed for nearly 2,000 years.
• There is (probably?) a periphery of more recently settled or less developed worlds not yet represented in the Landsraad.
• There are computers, "thinking machines" (AIs in "mainframes"?), and conscious robots (AIs in robot bodies?).
• Religion has not died out after 11,000 years of expansion beyond Earth; space travel has had an effect on religion (more mysticism?); and various syncretic faiths have arisen over the millennia.

What else?

(I'll look later for Teg's thoughts on Ancient tech in connection with the T-probe.)

[Freakzilla]

Sorry, it was late here. I started to but drifted off...

[SandChigger]

No probs...happens to the best of us.

This is one of the Teg references I was thinking about (from Heretics):

• [There are] "machines that [can] copy out the essence of a human's thoughts and memories."

I think there are a few others I'll try to dig up....

[Freakzilla]

Here's a good one from DM:

"Somewhere," Paul said, "there's a plastic something which remembers the
shape of Duncan Idaho. It's said the ancients probed this region before the
Butlerian Jihad. What's the extent of this memory, Hayt? What did it learn from
the original?"

Paul and Hayt were discussing restoring his original memories.

[SandChigger]

Good one...but what does it mean?!



Some sort of non-physical data store, outside the body? Oooh-weee-oooh, mysticism!? (What do the New Agers like Starseed-Planter over on DN call it? The Akashic Records?) Would FH have used something like that, at that time (when writing DM)?

(NB. Dan Simmons has something similar in the Hyperion books, "The Void That Binds" or something like that.)

[Freakzilla]

Good one...but what does it mean?!



Some sort of non-physical data store, outside the body? Oooh-weee-oooh, mysticism!? (What do the New Agers like Starseed-Planter over on DN call it? The Akashic Records?) Would FH have used something like that, at that time (when writing DM)?

(NB. Dan Simmons has something similar in the Hyperion books, "The Void That Binds" or something like that.)

If I knew that...

How else do you explain Duncan remembering his cellular gaps?

[Omphalos]

Good one...but what does it mean?!



Some sort of non-physical data store, outside the body? Oooh-weee-oooh, mysticism!? (What do the New Agers like Starseed-Planter over on DN call it? The Akashic Records?) Would FH have used something like that, at that time (when writing DM)?

(NB. Dan Simmons has something similar in the Hyperion books, "The Void That Binds" or something like that.)

You mean like a metaphysical realm where memories of all are stored? Bullshit.

I read a book by Charles Sheffield several years ago called Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which I hear is a lot like the film The Fountain, which I have not seen yet. Its about this weird and totally compulsive guy whose wife died of cancer, so he had her head frozen and did the same to himself so they could be together again. To make a long and mostly boring story short, he eventually decided to wait until the end of the universe, which Sheffield posited was closed, for the moment right before the collapse of reality called the estacion. At that point, it wasn't that entropy was reversed, but all the energy that was every in existence would be present in virtually one spot, so this guy would be able to parse it all and find his wife. Sound fruity? It was. Its a buncha bullshit. FH was talking about a RAM drive.

If I knew that...

How else do you explain Duncan remembering his cellular gaps?

But you know what else? Damned if I can explain it any other way. I have to admit that many times I have pondered this question, was left with the notion that FH was saying either that there was some Duncanness out there that the gholas and clones and all of them were able to access, or the "soul" put back into each body each time was the same, just in a new jar, as it were.

Not that I'm buying either one of those at all.

[SandChigger]

You mean like a metaphysical realm where memories of all are stored? Bullshit.

Basically what I hoped I had conveyed with "Oooh-weee-oooh, mysticism!?"

I think at least Simmons gave it a quantum mechanics/zero-point energy continuum kinda explanation, so it wasn't complete hocus-pocus.

The thing with the Duncan ghola memories is a puzzler. To be completely non-PC:

Lesser minds will posit a "soul" to fill in the gaps, just as in the real world they cling to belief in one in hopes of post-mortem survival.

I don't have an answer (just a mediocre mind here), but I would prefer something involving resonances or reverberations in the fabric of the universe to disincarnate spooks.

Boo!

[Phaedrus]

Maybe the information is stored in that tag of DNA that no one quite understands that grows as you age? I've heard this kind of idea before, and it's somewhat plausible.

As to how Duncan would access DNA that isn't part of his body...maybe it's a Mentat thing? There's a pattern there somewhere, so fill in the gaps?

Oh, I know! The answer's in the tachyons!

[SandChigger]

Ugh, tachyons again?!

But wait a minute, what DNA tag are you talking about? I haven't heard anything like that?!

Just the opposite, in fact, that the ends (what are they called...telomeres?) lose a little with each reproduction and eventually the strand unravels.

Please clarify!

[Phaedrus]

D'oh. I had it backwards, you're right. My memory of biology stuff is really bad...

[SandChigger]

That's OK, you do QUITE well enough in other subjects.



Actually, though, you did point out the problem with a genetic mechanism for OM, which came up a long time ago on DN as well IIRC: eventually all that other memory locked in DNA would exceed the available space inside cells (not to mention nuclei) and rupture them. (Plus there's the whole problem of the physiological recording mechanism, etc., etc., etc.)

[SandChigger]

Anyone thought any more about this since the last post (in mid-February)?

Any reason to think FH was proposing some sort of soul in connection with Duncan's memories of all his lives/incarnations?

(IMHO, if you're going to admit souls and such to the Duniverse, you may as well just let in all the paraNorma silliness and embrace the New Canon. IN WHICH CASE Dune becomes a lot less interesting.)

[A Thing of Eternity]

Anyone thought any more about this since the last post (in mid-February)?

Any reason to think FH was proposing some sort of soul in connection with Duncan's memories of all his lives/incarnations?

(IMHO, if you're going to admit souls and such to the Duniverse, you may as well just let in all the paraNorma silliness and embrace the New Canon. IN WHICH CASE Dune becomes a lot less interesting.)

I doubt that's what he was going for. He probably (don't hit me for this) just needed it as part of the story, and went for it figuring that there was so much cryptic stuff in the Dune series that no one would ever call BS on him. Everyone would just assume that there was some explanation for it.