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It's interesting you say that I've recently started reading Dune, and one point that I found interesting was that the Butlerian Jihad was not a revolution where

It's interesting you say that I've recently started reading Dune, and one point that I found interesting was that the Butlerian Jihad was not a revolution where they swore of the machines who had become malicious against them but rather that some humans were using the machines to oppress other humans and that is what led to the Jihad. I find it interesting that all these technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier really just end up transferring power from one group of people to another. So what I am saying is a Butlerian Jihad is always a solution.

lmilcin 5y ago
> I find it interesting that all these technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier really just end up transferring power from one group of people to another. But that's what affluent people have always been doing whenever given unrestricted freedom. That's because they are better at using technology and finances and everything else. Bitcoin was supposed to free money from financial institutions. But that's naive -- financial institutions have way more firepower and experience at subverting markets to their will. The same goes for anything else. The larger the company the easier time it has to influence lawmaking, judicial, executive. Maybe what we need is an equivalent of Butlerian Jihad but against organisations that are too big to be controlled.
philipkglass 5y ago
I don't think that Butlerian Jihad is a solution because, apart from authorial fiat in fiction, groups willing to use intelligent machines will not be ruled over by forces unwilling to use intelligent machines. It's like positing a future where a coalition of crossbow-using armies defeats armies that use rifles and then imposes a comprehensive ban on rifles.
- tokai 5y ago
  Tell that to the Taliban.
  - philipkglass 5y ago
    Resisting foreign occupation is much easier than imposing a foreign occupation of one's own. The Taliban never had a chance of imposing its rule in the United States. The Butlerian Jihad of the Dune universe eliminated intelligent machines everywhere.

lmilcin 5y ago

> I find it interesting that all these technologies that are supposed to make our lives easier really just end up transferring power from one group of people to another. But that's what affluent people have always been doing whenever given unrestricted freedom. That's because they are better at using technology and finances and everything else. Bitcoin was supposed to free money from financial institutions. But that's naive -- financial institutions have way more firepower and experience at subverting markets to their will. The same goes for anything else. The larger the company the easier time it has to influence lawmaking, judicial, executive. Maybe what we need is an equivalent of Butlerian Jihad but against organisations that are too big to be controlled.

philipkglass 5y ago

I don't think that Butlerian Jihad is a solution because, apart from authorial fiat in fiction, groups willing to use intelligent machines will not be ruled over by forces unwilling to use intelligent machines. It's like positing a future where a coalition of crossbow-using armies defeats armies that use rifles and then imposes a comprehensive ban on rifles.

tokai 5y ago
Tell that to the Taliban.
- philipkglass 5y ago
  Resisting foreign occupation is much easier than imposing a foreign occupation of one's own. The Taliban never had a chance of imposing its rule in the United States. The Butlerian Jihad of the Dune universe eliminated intelligent machines everywhere.