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As companies destroy the world in pursuit of profits that will never come, I welcome our Butlerian Jihad (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by cannedtuna@lemmy.world to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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For those unfamiliar the Dune series, the Butlerian Jihad was a crusade against “thinking machines”. Ultimately computers, and intelligent or thinking machines, even down to calculators are destroyed and banned. Humans who are trained in complex mental maths become known as Mentats, a sort of human computer. Just, uhh, leave all that shit on Bene Tleilax, with their Axalotl Tanks out of it.

Edit: had wrong planet name. IX -> Bene Tleilax

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[-] pipe01@programming.dev 133 points 2 months ago

The torment nexus

[-] Hackworth@piefed.ca 61 points 2 months ago

They then proceeded with the enslaving, sans computer.

[-] balthazarsnakewizard@lemmy.world 60 points 2 months ago

It’s kind of crazy how prescient the original novels were about AI, and how much that was undone by Brian Herbert - the Butlerian Jihad was such a consequential event that even ten thousand years later, the theocratic feudal oligarchy that runs the universe still refuses the break the taboo that it set across countless religions and capital interests, and the best reasoning Brian Herbert could come up with for why this was such a huge taboo was “a giant robot enslaved humanity ten thousand years ago.”

[-] thunderfist@lemmy.world 27 points 2 months ago
[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I’d say pretty spot on opinions

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I think a better opinion is "they are fucking his corpse and not giving him the courtesy of a reacharound."

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[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

Right? I just couldn’t with his novels, they come no where close to Frank’s writing expertise.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

They felt stilted, directionless, and shallow. I really wanted them to be decent, but gave up after two.

[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

… crazy how prescient the original novels were …

ftfy

[-] huppakee@piefed.social 31 points 2 months ago

I deduct that grok wasn't funny since the reply is not in the screenshot, too bad though.

[-] qarbone@lemmy.world 31 points 2 months ago

*deduce, in case you're not a native English speaker. "Deduct" is like "subtract".

I can't think a response from Grok that would add to the tableau. Whether Grok gets the answer right or wrong, the joke is that someone follows a post decrying the surrender of thought to machines by immediately surrendering thought to a (racist) machine. It's complete.

[-] huppakee@piefed.social 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

*deduce, in case you're not a native English speaker. "Deduct" is like "subtract".

Somehow deduce to me sounds like some rich French lady, but merci mon ami, that is the word i meant. And i do agree, the meme is not incomplete this way.

[-] lefaucet@slrpnk.net 6 points 2 months ago

This French lady does her scrolling while droppin deduce

[-] nwtreeoctopus@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

Like a "dilettante" or "debutante" or "demoiselle"?

[-] joenforcer@midwest.social 8 points 2 months ago

On Xitter, replies get threaded. If you were to click into that comment to see grok's reply, that then makes the comment the parent, which would then omit the original post from view.

That reply is satire. Alan is a professor who abhors AI.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago

No Child Left Behind destroyed this country far more effectively than I ever would have suspected.

[-] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 16 points 2 months ago

The culture was fucked long before no child left behind to be fair. Anti intellectualism was rampant, since before most of us were born, gangster culture and drug prohibition and The Fear made a solid percent of the population criminals and authorized a police state.

City schools are better now than they were in the 80s and 90s, things got real bad in the crime waves.

[-] logi@lemmy.world 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Since we're talking sci-fi, this is Asimov in 1980:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

[-] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

While there may be some truth in that, I don't think it's accurate to say it's always been there as such, in fact I believe it didn't really start in it's current form until 1971 or so, by design, although it existed before as it does elsewhere, that was the turning point, where big business huddled up and made a long game to seize power, project 2025 is just the recent iteration of that game plan, formed initially by the Business Roundtable.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

I mean we burned witches in the dark ages right, so the behavior dates back at least as far as that.

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[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah I mean a ~~casual~~ causal chain can be traced back to the big bang. But looking at the entirety of history, you tend to look for certain inflection points.

So in my mind, traveling from Present backwards in time, the journey looks like this in my mind:

Present :: Idiocracy 1st :: No Child Left Behind 2nd :: Bush elected 3rd :: Clinton Glass Steagle 4th :: Reagan 5th :: Nixon

I can zoom in anywhere along that timeline to talk about how each event impacted this topic.

Lemme know if you want to explore any of that like for example what did Reagan do to impact education today long after his death.

[-] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 months ago

As I was saying on another thread, this current fuckery dates back to the Business Roundtable of 1971, big business huddled up and made a game plan to seize control. They got their asses kicked out of power from FDR and kept losing. Project 2025 is just the newer iteration of that game plan. Part of that plan clearly is to keep us disunited and destroy any competing organizations, and or take control of them secretly like with our opposition political party, not much of a secret to many of us I know.

The only answer is to organize, and to do that we need new social media, that we control. Like the fediverse, but set up better. But we needed it 20 years ago. Next best time is now.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Fascinating, I never heard about that, so my causality chain only accounts for starting at:

Repeal of Fairness Doctrine

Water Gate

Frost / Nixon

Reaganomics

Clinton

Glass Steagle

Clinton Impeachment

Bush

NCLB

Plenty of details in between, I definitely want to fill out the timeline with as much detail as possible.

[-] rozodru@piefed.world 20 points 2 months ago

and then you have Warhammer 40K where Big E said that AI is heresy cause it practically wiped out mankind. buuuuut "machine spirits" and all that? yeah that's fine as long as a competent human or semi-human is at the wheel. except very few of them actually know how anything works. I mean hell they have these walker things that they can't turn off cause no one knows how to turn them back on.

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[-] TachyonTele@piefed.social 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Is Alan anyone note worthy, or is he just a random moron?

EDIT: He's daring grok to explain it. Looks like im the moron here!

[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

No clue. Checkmarks mean fuck all on that platform.

[-] knightly@pawb.social 5 points 2 months ago

Professor of Religion at James Madison University, published in a few journals and had an article in Wired about Go (the board game) ten-ish years ago.

[-] balthazarsnakewizard@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

So is he just joking, or very stupid?

[-] knightly@pawb.social 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It reads like a joke to me, and his published works suggest he's not one to meekly take things at face value: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&citation_for_view=EEdRH98AAAAJ%3A0EnyYjriUFMC

[-] slothrop@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 months ago

methinks folk are missing that he's tweeting at grok, asking it to disseminate the quote....

[-] Triumph@fedia.io 4 points 2 months ago

I totally missed that, thank you. Changes everything.

[-] Manjushri@piefed.social 15 points 2 months ago

I read it as a joke, and a good one, in my opinion. He's asking a supposedly thinking machine to explain a passage about thinking machines being used to enslave people.

[-] logi@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

For once I'd like to see grok's response. But not enough to actually go on there...

[-] TachyonTele@piefed.social 3 points 2 months ago

Yup, I see that now. Lol most of us completely missed it

[-] abfarid@startrek.website 8 points 2 months ago

That response tweet is clearly too on the nose to not be ironic.

[-] menas@lemmy.wtf 15 points 2 months ago

You may have heard of the Luddites; maybe you even heard of the Canuts. The truth is that the destruction of the machines by the workers is a very common thing among history. Sabotage and revolutionary syndicalism is a way. It will turn our inner eye to see our path. Where the bourgeoisie has gone there will be nothing. Only us will remain.

[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 15 points 2 months ago

Instead of machines that think like men, they simply fed drugs to men until they thought like a machine. 🤷‍♂️

[-] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Well, they had to fight long and hard to break from enslavement first. That kind of memory lives for a long time

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

THEY FUCKING LEFT OUT THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!!!!!!

The Reverend Mother responds and says that it really should state:

"Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind."

THATS THE KEY PART!!!!! LLMs CANT THINK!!!!

They ONLY APPEAR to think.

[-] StopTech@lemmy.today 6 points 2 months ago

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

That was just the agricultural revolution kicking into a higher gear, like 4 or 5 gears ago.

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[-] Aganim@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Just, uhh, leave all that shit on IX, with their Axalotl Tanks out of it.

Axlotl tanks aren't Ixian though, that's Bene Tleilax tech. It's basically what's left of their women.

[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Whoops. Thanks. Fixed.

[-] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Cooking his favorite beef swellington, perhaps

[-] GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

It has begun

[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This one also seems relevant:

"Quite the experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave." - Blade Runner (Roy Batty)

[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

That's a fun way to have the mirror turned back on the bot.

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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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