They had advanced computing, a whole region was full of it: IX.
The rest of the empire was too feudal and too religious to dabble into advanced technology. And the other players (the BG, the Tleilalxu, the Guild) were against it as well.
What good are drones, except as weapons of assassination? Can't use them in an conventional war, there are shields. And they're very expensive, remember, the Great Houses don't have advanced manufacturing capabilities (that's IX). And, finally, there are no great wars in the empire, most houses keep to their planetary fief; the Baron's attack on the Atreides' forces on Dune was an exception. It was also mindbogglingly expensive, 80 years of spice profit.
>What good are drones, except as weapons of assassination? Can't use them in an conventional war, there are shields.
Presumably a drone could get close enough to push a blade through the shield (maybe use a rocket booster or some other advanced "suspensor" tech) at low-ish speed (a knife would have to travel through the shield on the order of a human reaction time, otherwise even knives wouldn't work. That's about 0.1s/0.1 m, so 1 m/s - ish.)
if it moves slow enough to pass a shield, it moves slow enough to be easily dispatched. And remember, no autonomous behaviour, there has to be human operator. And it's very expensive. It just doesn't scale.
OK we are really nerding out here but I just can't resist :)
The propelled blade weapon doesn't need a control system in the "shape of a human mind" to be effective. A very simple control system would work. If they have ornithopters, then they have control systems. The blades could even work like hawk talons (so an ornithopter drone falling on a shielded fighter, then springing what is effectively a pointed metal trap.)
But more importantly, you are right that if the weapon moves too slowly, then you could just get out of the way. That's true of any weapon, no matter how it is propelled. That's why I said above you have to be able to penetrate a shield faster than a human reaction time, otherwise no weapon would be effective.
>Doesn't it seem implausible that in the world of Dune they reached their level of technology without AGI?
This implies their technology is unfathomably complex, too complex for the human mind to understand. Doesn't seem to be the case.
>Seems like if it was adopted as a policy, there would have to be many gray areas where people pretend that they aren't really using AI - the ship's computer is just a domain specific finetuned version, after all, etc.
Ships are using Navigators, who are trained in "higher mathematics" and are also prescient. They have no need for AIs, nor do they wish to court destruction if they are found out (I can only imagine the BG will have the Spacing Guild by the balls if they knew).
> Why would the dangers of an incomprehensible machine mind be worse than the dangers of a transhuman being that was bred and optimized for generations? Who solved the alignment problem for these superhumans?
The books address these questions, especially the one about a certain God-Emperor...
I haven't read the book since I was 13 / 14 (ish) and that was some decades ago and not so long after it was first published, by my recollection there was a strong parallel between Spice (must flow) and Oil in a not so subtle way.
Via the Navigators, who lived in dense clouds of spice, transport across the Dune universe was possible - spice was as fundamental to trade and commerce as oil has been here on earth for the past century.
If that recollection was correct, it seems odd to overlook one of the key layers of the original work (as I recall it, of course).
The Bene Gesserit do have prescience, what are you talking about? It's why the god emperor later tries to breed humans who's actions cannot be foreseen and can therefore escape the oppression of the future-seeing Bene Gesserit.
I'm sorry, you must be mistaken. The Bene Gesserit do not have prescience. Further more, the God Emperor plan had two part: first, to encourage the Scattering and second to make sure humans are not visible to any and all prescients.
A model can 'analyze' the intent of a patch, 'understand' it, and then correctly merge it in a derived codebase, going further than merely resolving conflicts.
For the tulip mania, as well as other manias, I very strongly recommend: "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" by Charles Mackay[1]
It is you that is spreading misinformation. I suggest everyone thinking Aurornis is right, to read the article below, from the smithsonian.
>But the Luddites themselves “were totally fine with machines,” says Kevin Binfield, editor of the 2004 collection Writings of the Luddites. They confined their attacks to manufacturers who used machines in what they called “a fraudulent and deceitful manner” to get around standard labor practices.
>“They just wanted machines that made high-quality goods,” says Binfield, “and they wanted these machines to be run by workers who had gone through an apprenticeship and got paid decent wages. Those were their only concerns.”[1]
OP: They were demanding protections from exploitation by the capital class: abolishment of child labour, fair wages, social protection from job loss, etc. [...] Destroying the machines was a way to gain leverage, nothing more.
You: They were also very clearly on the wrong side of history.We would not be better off if the Luddites had won and forced us all to be doing manual labor all day without the help of those evil machines they were destroying.
HN sophistry of the highest level. It's shit like this that made the sophists deeply hated back in the days (today too, i would add)
You completely ignored the point of my post, the factual inaccuracies in the post I was responding to, and used the cheap trick of attacking words I didn’t say (literally the strawman fallacy)
Ironic that you’re waxing philosophically about the quality of comments on HN while doing all of this.
reply