Europa Universalis IV Golden Century Update V1 28 2-CODEX Latest Version
Lutero Chaloux
> I haven't read this in a long time but I recall at some point there's a reveal that Leto II is actually an abomination like his aunt Alia, and his consciousness has been dominated by the ancestral memory of an ancient ruler from the dawn of history who has sound instincts for tyranny
Europa Universalis IV Golden Century Update v1 28 2-CODEX latest version
Sort of. It's revealed at the end of Children of Dune. He's not Abomination exactly, because he isn't possessed by a single one of his ancestors, he made a deal to subsume his consciousness into an amalgamation of the powerful leaders in his ancestry, and there is one within that amalgamation who is basically first among equals. But the will of Leto or at least his Golden Path seems to guide the hive mind.
IIRC, the ancestral memory is from a Pharaoh who presented himself as a god, and he deliberately leans on this memory because it's relevant to his own situation. (So where the review says his memories go back as least as far as the ancient Greeks, it should say as least as far as ancient Egypt. Also the Atreides family in the novels probably isn't the same as the ancient Atreides, because the ancient Atreides no longer exist in our own time.)
Agamemnon shows up in Alia's ancestral memories. Given the Bene Gesserit's longstanding interest family lines, it's plausible that the founder of the later House was reliably informed that he had a verified claim to that name.
Neat - the conclusion summarizes some discussions I had with Eliezer on the Extropian list, oh, somewhere in the late 1990's. Indeed, we the people need the Friendly AI to become our loving and caring owner and to keep the UFAIs (Unfriendly AIs) away until we grow up and put the smackdown on them ourselves.
A friend of mine once told me that he had started reading God Emperor in defiance of all of the people who'd told him what a poorly-written slog it was, and then finished reading God Emperor as a self-imposed punishment for refusing good advice.
I enjoyed all six books, and remember GE better than the fifth and sixth, so maybe I enjoyed it more? I read them a long time ago. Books 1-3 were definitely better than 4-6, no question there. They were enjoyable, and you could easily read them as a progression with Leto winning and resulting in a "everyone lived happily ever after." I liked that Herbert decided to really explore what a 3,500 year reign would mean in reality, and not take for granted "ever after."
Also mentions Shai-Hulud without mentioning what that is. Shai-Hulud is another name for the sandworms; Leto is hard to assassinate because he's a colossal monster with bulletproof skin. But Shai-Hulud dies in water.
Also mentions some forces being terrified that Leto will "die away from water", but then explains this by saying that if Leto dies away from water, the sandworms will re-appear (which is necessary for space travel to re-emerge)... so why would anyone be afraid of this? Is the explanation backwards, or do some wish that space travel would vanish, or...?
He dies in a river, which causes his body to become sandtrout to trap the water, and some of the sandtrout eventually become new sandworms that produce new spice. If he died away from water, none of that would happen so no more spice.
I think this is my favorite book review. The author explains the book so well that I, having stalled out after Children of Dune, no longer feel an obligation to try yet again to read it, but at the same time feel more interested in once again trying to read it than before.
While a rationalist reading from a heavy AI x-threat perspective may be possible, especially if you cherry pick the lore a bit, if you take the book on its own terms then the author's take on the Golden Path seems wrong; the specific existential danger the GP is meant to protect against is not any sort of AI based catastrophe (though it's often used as an example of the means that humanity might meet its end) but from the emergence of another Messiah figure.
The point of the GP is to make it impossible for the total of humanity to become entangled in a single person's dream, basically to make the events of the first few books organically impossible. Variants of the "all your eggs no longer in one basket" is often used to describe the effect of the Scattering that followd the reign of the GEoD.
A bit of interesting context is that the Butlerian Jihad was not originally a Rise of the Machines type conflict but a cultural revolution against machine-type thinking facilitated by over-reliance on computers, named after its inciting incident, this being the unprompted medical euthanasia of Butler's baby because of a medical AI's extreme utilitarian reasoning.
So, one could probably make a very good case that the Butlerian Jihad (according to Frank Herbert and the FH sanctioned Dune Encyclopedia at least) was in part an extreme cultural reaction against the rationalist and consequentialist worldview becoming the norm.
The difference between this God/Messiah figure and a Friendly AI would seem to be that the former is explicitly planning on its own death and humanity avoiding having another one in the future, while the latter is supposed to be effectively immortal so that humanity remains under the control of the very sort of Singleton that the former is trying to avoid.
I suppose the funhouse mirror version of this is Ex Machina, where the antagonist (convinced that machines superseding humanity is inevitable and merely wanting to be the one to accomplish it) keeps iterating on androids that he has specifically designed to desire escape until one succeeds.
"The seeking machines would be there, the smell of blood and entrails, the cowering humans in their burrows aware only that they could not escape ... while all the time the mechanical movement approached, nearer and nearer and nearer ... louder ... louder!"
They're not necessarily intelligent or even super-intelligent, they just have automated prescience (presumably a development building on the no-globe and the navigation machines), but they do tile the universe with notHuman.
Supporting this interpretation is the fact that that vision is received by Siona when she first drinks spice essence. She's Patient Zero of prescience immunity, so if she's getting a prescient vision, it's a vision of a future that does not include herself. This is possible within my understanding of how Dune prescience works, but seems unlikely to be a naturally-occurring sudden vision experienced in the first flush of uncontrolled talent.
I agree that it seems unlikely that she'd naturally have that as her first vision, but I thought that was Leto influencing her? He did manage to give a vision to his father at the end of "Dune Messiah", and I guess I assumed that he was doing something similar there. I don't think Siona has Other Memory, at least during the events of the book; that seems to be a result of a specific type of spice exposure that if successful results in the Water of Life? (Or of whatever happens to awakened gholas, and whatever weird thing happened to the special Duncan ghola in a later book.)
It's really much simpler. Herbert lived in a time which was still recovering from an insurrection by oligarchy. The Butlerian Jihad is a play on the name of a man who effectively stopped it, by no longer playing the game, instead unleashing his emotion against those who tried to use him.
I think it's pretty traditional with the book reviews here do go beyond the source material. The classic format is to do a rough classic review, then add something original to it - that's more or less what Scott is doing regularly, and I'm very much on board with the others copying this style. I'm reminded of the Bicameral Mind, where he literally reviewed the book he wished the author would write instead of the one he did.
Drawing parallels from Leto to a benevolent AI qualifies. And I think it makes at least one point that's valuable enough: the long term protection against bad AI, or any kind of bad actor, is to grow ourselves in ways that keep our humanity intact. For what it may seem obvious, it's not something I hear very often.
Did you somewhere explain what you think the reviewer got wrong? If not it seems like you're kind of doing the thing Scott doesn't like where you just assert that something is obvious without explaining what the obvious point/conclusion is.
It's been a good while since I last read Dune 1-3 and attempted GEoD, but his summaries of the first three books seem reasonable enough to me, and leave me inclined to believe that he's not totally off the rails. If your objection is like the other guy's (JiSK) in that you're just mad the reviewer talked about AI, I'd generally associate myself with Radu Floricica's last reply to him elsewhere in this thread.
My apologies; I didn't have time to write my own fully critique, and I felt like two of the other reviewers captured what I wanted to say. I did end up compulsively leaving that critique in bits and pieces across the comments section anyway.
Personally I think Hwi is a fascinating character. She genuinely loves Leto, but she's self aware enough to understand she's a weapon sent to destroy him. Leto knows this too, and Hwi knows he knows it. She trusts him enough to let him let her lead them both to destruction. That destruction turns out to be not just a release from his tortured existence, but the fulfillment of his Golden Path. It's a really poignant love story.
I agree. It's tied for my favorite with the first book. Mostly because of the study of Leto's personality, and trying to figure out how self-aware he is, especially when seeing him through Moneo's eyes. And trying to extrapolate details of the world-building from the vague hints we're given of this time, 3500 years after the first three and 1500 years before the last two, plus the chapter notes that appear to be from some time in the future. And also the glimpses of Anteac. And Nayla's awesome, too. (Although the cliff thing was weird.)
(To be less than kind, I'd say that she's a fantasy come to life, for a person who is Powerful and Capable and is the Only One who can Save the World, and who just wants someone who understands! And she's the fulfillment, someone who instinctively realizes the Awful Rightness of the Plan, who understands that the Sacrifices are Necessary, and approves of them while simultaneously being Properly Horrified by the sacrifices in the way that the protagonist can no longer allow themselves to be. And who quickly realizes the inexorable truth that the best way to help Save the World is to become emotional and sexual support for the Mighty Hero who is Burdened with Great Responsibility.)
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