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"Butlerian Jihad" that was the most surprising for me reading Dune that they had a limit on how smart computers could be. The movie was very vague on the subjec
by emj 4y ago
"Butlerian Jihad" that was the most surprising for me reading Dune that they had a limit on how smart computers could be. The movie was very vague on the subject, and was more of a Star Wars like lo-fi.
- jhbadger 4y agoIt was even more surprising if you realize that "Butlerian" is referring to the 19th century writer Samuel Butler (although, yes, Herbert later invented a character to explain the name in-universe). Samuel Butler wrote an 1863 essay "Darwin Among the Machines" which predicted that machines would improve in a way analogous to natural selection and would so so faster than humans could evolve, and therefore they might eventually surpass humanity.
- LesZedCB 4y agoindeed, and selection pressure is not on the domain of physical bodies like for us fleshy species, but profitability for digital computational species in the domain of capital.