Is Herbert's stance on AI ('Butlerian Jihad') really ambiguous?
(books)According to
this Brit and his sophisticated sarcasm Herbert ridiculed restrictions on AI by presenting the Butlerian Jihad as some retarded Bene Gesserit old wife's tale meant to scare peasants.
Now don't get me wrong. Walter generally knows what he's talking about and is largely just
citing Herbert himself but reducing Dune to
Beware of false prophets! or
Do as you like! is retarded. He might have been vaguely anti authoritarian but he was clearly no starry eyed flower power believer either. Half the book is spent glorifying the fremen's culture of violence and rigid social boundaries. The most tech-friendly factions' plotlines (the Guild, Ixians) are thinly veiled allegories of losing one's humanity in the pursuit of power...
I just don't understand how after reading Dune you can come away with the notion 'well since Paul and his son were tragic rulers you can do away with rules'. Herbert probably didn't think there should be no restrictions on AI. And no, you can't just assume the Butlerian Jihad didn't happen just because it's only expanded upon in the later apocryphal novels. I think what Herbert intended to show with the series is how fragile humanity is and fucked we all would be without some morality (be it imposed by some übermensch or coming from within us).
But maybe he really was nothing but a trippy libby hippy and am just too retardedly conservative to understand his point.
