Ahira's Hangar

To attempt an understanding of Muad'Dib without understanding his mortal enemies, the Harkonnens, is to attempt to see teh Truth without knowing Falsehood. It is the attempt to see the Light without Knowing Darkness. It cannot be.
~ from "Manueal of Muad'Dib" by the Princess Irulan

In the second chapter, we meet the Enemy.

A hugely overweight man and Quote:dark-haired youth of about sixteen years, round of face and with sullen eyes,along with Quote:a slender, short man with an effeminate face are looking at a high tech globe of tthe planet Arrakis. We soon learn that the big man is the Baron Vladimir Harkonnen, the youth is named Feyd-Rautha Harkonne, the Baron's heir, and the short guy is named Piter, who is identified as a mentat assassin.

They are discussing the Emperor giving Arrakis to the Atreides. We learn that the Baron has offered a peace meeting to Leto Atriedes and been refused. It soon becomes clear that somehow the Baron has manipulated things so that the Emperor ordered the Atreides to exchange Caladan for Arrakis, and that this is some sort of revenge plot upon the Duke by the Baron. The Harkonnen have an agent named Dr. Yueh who will soon bring the Atreides to their doom. When asked why not just have Yueh kill Leto right now, the Baron says it must be done on a larger scale, so that all of the Great Houses and the Atreides will know that he has brought the Atreides down.

The mentat reminds the Barin that he was promised the Lady Jessica as his reward for his part in the plans. The mentat and the Baron bicker like an old married couple, then the Baron has the mentat describe the big plan to Feyd.

In a few days the Atreides will be moving to Arrakis. It is thought that they will live in Arrakeen, as that city is most defensible. They believe that the Atreides will move into the Residency, previously home to Count Fenring (the Imperial Ambassador) and his Lady. The house has already been booby trapped for assassination attempts upon Paul. The Harkonnen agent is Dr. Yueh, but he has a special conditioning thought to be unbreakable. The Harkonnens have indeed broken it, but no one will ever suspect him as he has the Imperial Conditioning. They will make it look like Lady Jessica should be suspected instead. They will also have some uprisings in garrison towns to add to the stress and confusion. As soon as the Duke finally starts feeling secure, they will signal Yueh, and he will betray the Duke just as the planet is secretly invaded by Imperial Sardaukar (Imperial troopers).

Because House Harkonnen is doing the dirty work of the Imperium, they will be given back Arrakis, as well as a directorship in something called CHOAM, which will make them wealthy beyond dreams.

They will have it all -- wealth, power, a drity secret (the Sardaukar involvement) to hold against the Emperor, and the public credit for the desctruction of their great enemies -- the Atreides. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Ah, yes, we are introduced to the Mentats in this chapter. They're an interesting creation by Herbert, but I have to say, I never entirely bought the concept. It's hard for me to believe for a moment that any human computer, no matter how well trained, could ever be a match for the sheer information processing power that a machine computer could be capable of. Perhaps I could excuse Herbert because he wrote Dune at a time when computers were still huge, clunky machines, so the idea of superior human computer wasn't that far-fetched then. But today's Pentium and Athlon CPU's could, I would assume, run circles around the computational skills of any Mentat. I can sort of accept Mentat capabilities better when I take the spice melange into consideration. I can accept, if just barely, that the spice alters Mentats' minds to such a degree that they're able to absorb and process very large amounts of information. When in doubt, blame the spice!

The banter between the Baron and Piter in this chapter is wickedly funny! The dialogue has a nice, unforced feeling to it, exactly as if the characters are just making it up as they go along. I guess that's the kind of illusion all writers strive for. It's been such a long time since I've read any of Frank Herber's books that I'd forgotten what a natural, fluid writer he was.

The other thing about Dune is that it is a very quotable book. In this chapter, we have, among other things, the Baron's memorable line: "Listen carefully, Feyd. Observe the plans within plans within plans." Something Lord Foul can relate to!

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Oh, yes! I had not caught that before, but that is most certainly something Lord Foul could relate to! ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I wish I'd seen this post before I made the double post in the other thread.

As I said there, I've always been fond of the Mentat's too.

While you have a point about the computers that Herbert was thinking of, I still disagree.

As you may or may not know, I'm a fan and player of the incredible strategy board game, Go. It is perhaps at the same time the simplest and most complex game ever devised by man, and has been played, essentially unchanged for the last 4,000 years.

The thing is, even today's modern computers are unable to beat even a practiced amateur at the game.

Because for all their processing power, they are unable to recognise unrelated patterns and "visualise" them in terms of their potential to create an interconnected whole at some future point.

The incredible complexity is best described by this comparison: In a game of chess, you have the potential of any one of up to 35 options for every move. In Go, your first move can be any one of a potential 381 possibilities.

It has been calculated that Deep Blue, the legendary chess supercomputer, would take 18 months to make a single move in Go. And even then, it would have no noticable advantage over a human player.

The human mind is capable of far more complex interrelations, shades of meaning, inferrences, assumptions, etc than a computer ever will be.

There is a standing prize of 1 million dollars to anybody who can design a Go program that can beat a human with one year's experience at the game. It is believed that if such a program is ever created, it will be a significant step on the path to AI.

Oh, about the Melange, the Metats use the juice of Sappho to speed their thoughts. (Remember the red-stained lips?) The entirety of the quote I quoted in the other thread, is the Mentats creed:

Quote:It is by will alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the juice of Sapho that thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, stains become a warning. It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.

--A
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A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

I can certainly appreciate the Mentats better after reading your argument. Yeah, you've exposed the fallacy in my own: I was defining mental capability narrowly in terms of just brute number-crunching. Adding numbers is easy...recognizing patterns and complex interrelations is bloody hard. Even I have trouble, which is why I suck at detecting clues in mystery novels. And which is also why I'll never be suckered into a Go match against you... <i></i>

I'm pretty damn amateur myself. Not enough people to practice with, and constant practice with better players is always vital. It wouldn't take you long to equal me. I taught the GF to play, and within a week or two our games were very close either way.

But yes, in terms of processing capacity and speed, humans will never equal computer chips. But that's only half of it. Computers are still limited by the primary programming law: GIGO.

Humans can take in "garbage" and make some sort of sense out of it.

Glad to be able to give the Mentats some credibility.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

I was also wondering, if human evolution has changed human brains a bit between now and Dune?

Avatar and I were trying to figure out the Dune timeline in one of the other threads.

The Butlerian Jihad took place about 10,000 years before the novel Dune. But supposedly the humans had a star empire already before the machines took over, and that machines had enslaved the humans for about a thousand years before the Jihad.

So - maybe thousands of years between where we are now and the Butlerian Jihad - and another ten thousand between the Jihad and Dune?

So maybe evolutionary pressures (not to mention selective breeding) have changed human minds so they are more powerful than ours? Or work a bit differently?

Obviously the Bene Gesserit have abilities beyond those that most (if not all) current humans are capable of. Why not the Mentats as well? ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I agree, it makes sense that human brains would have evolved, perhaps even radically, given those long spans of time you noted - especially when selective breeding is involved. <i>Edited by: Moonwatcher at: 8/23/06 9:20 pm
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A good point indeed Duchess, especally when training reinforces that breeding.

About the BG training though...in theory, I don't think it's as impossible as all that.

It's fairly well-documented that, for example, people with mental training can regulate their skin conductivity and body temperature.

IIRC, to be initiated into a certain sect of Buddhists, is is required that the would-be monk spends the night on a river bank in winter, drying sheets that have been dipped into the water on his body by means of temperature control.

The mind, even today, is an incredible thing. And many "mystic" traditions agree on the importance of things like breath control.

Ask the martial artist whose will, and minute control over the musculature functions can drive his hand through a concrete slab.

The prana-bindu trance equivalent for example is a common feature of many mystical traditions, where live burial and exhumation after days is not an unknown phenomenon.

Meditate and excercise enough and you'd be amazed by what is possible.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>

Well, yes, I agree that meditation, exercise and martial arts can a human being into a potent instrument, both physically and mentally. But consider the Bene Gesserit's Voice: this is an "impossible" thing to do. Breath control for monks and mystics is one thing, but the Voice is a quantum step beyond. It's sorcery! Of course, I think the point we're making about the advanced evolution of human beings in the time of Dune is...that they can do things that seem like magic to us stragglers from the 20th century. But even people of that future epoch view the Bene Gesserit as pretty strange and call them "witches." The more things change, the more they stay the same? <i></i>

I was deliberately focussing on what is or could be possible. I certainly except the Voice from that.

--A ____________________________________

A sense of the sardonic preserves a man from believing in his own pretensions. -The Sayings Of Maud'Dib<i></i>