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submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by cannedtuna@lemmy.world to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works

For those unfamiliar the Dune series, the Butlerian Jihad was a crusade against “thinking machines”. Ultimately computers, and intelligent or thinking machines, even down to calculators are destroyed and banned. Humans who are trained in complex mental maths become known as Mentats, a sort of human computer. Just, uhh, leave all that shit on Bene Tleilax, with their Axalotl Tanks out of it.

Edit: had wrong planet name. IX -> Bene Tleilax

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[-] pipe01@programming.dev 133 points 3 weeks ago
[-] Hackworth@piefed.ca 61 points 3 weeks ago

They then proceeded with the enslaving, sans computer.

[-] balthazarsnakewizard@lemmy.world 60 points 3 weeks ago

It’s kind of crazy how prescient the original novels were about AI, and how much that was undone by Brian Herbert - the Butlerian Jihad was such a consequential event that even ten thousand years later, the theocratic feudal oligarchy that runs the universe still refuses the break the taboo that it set across countless religions and capital interests, and the best reasoning Brian Herbert could come up with for why this was such a huge taboo was “a giant robot enslaved humanity ten thousand years ago.”

[-] thunderfist@lemmy.world 27 points 3 weeks ago
[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

I’d say pretty spot on opinions

[-] ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

I think a better opinion is "they are fucking his corpse and not giving him the courtesy of a reacharound."

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[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

Right? I just couldn’t with his novels, they come no where close to Frank’s writing expertise.

[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

They felt stilted, directionless, and shallow. I really wanted them to be decent, but gave up after two.

[-] bitjunkie@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago

… crazy how prescient the original novels were …

ftfy

[-] huppakee@piefed.social 31 points 3 weeks ago

I deduct that grok wasn't funny since the reply is not in the screenshot, too bad though.

[-] qarbone@lemmy.world 31 points 3 weeks ago

*deduce, in case you're not a native English speaker. "Deduct" is like "subtract".

I can't think a response from Grok that would add to the tableau. Whether Grok gets the answer right or wrong, the joke is that someone follows a post decrying the surrender of thought to machines by immediately surrendering thought to a (racist) machine. It's complete.

[-] huppakee@piefed.social 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

*deduce, in case you're not a native English speaker. "Deduct" is like "subtract".

Somehow deduce to me sounds like some rich French lady, but merci mon ami, that is the word i meant. And i do agree, the meme is not incomplete this way.

[-] lefaucet@slrpnk.net 6 points 3 weeks ago

This French lady does her scrolling while droppin deduce

[-] nwtreeoctopus@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 weeks ago

Like a "dilettante" or "debutante" or "demoiselle"?

[-] joenforcer@midwest.social 8 points 3 weeks ago

On Xitter, replies get threaded. If you were to click into that comment to see grok's reply, that then makes the comment the parent, which would then omit the original post from view.

That reply is satire. Alan is a professor who abhors AI.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 26 points 3 weeks ago

No Child Left Behind destroyed this country far more effectively than I ever would have suspected.

[-] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 16 points 3 weeks ago

The culture was fucked long before no child left behind to be fair. Anti intellectualism was rampant, since before most of us were born, gangster culture and drug prohibition and The Fear made a solid percent of the population criminals and authorized a police state.

City schools are better now than they were in the 80s and 90s, things got real bad in the crime waves.

[-] logi@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Since we're talking sci-fi, this is Asimov in 1980:

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

[-] teyrnon@sh.itjust.works 5 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

While there may be some truth in that, I don't think it's accurate to say it's always been there as such, in fact I believe it didn't really start in it's current form until 1971 or so, by design, although it existed before as it does elsewhere, that was the turning point, where big business huddled up and made a long game to seize power, project 2025 is just the recent iteration of that game plan, formed initially by the Business Roundtable.

[-] GaMEChld@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago

I mean we burned witches in the dark ages right, so the behavior dates back at least as far as that.

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[-] rozodru@piefed.world 20 points 3 weeks ago

and then you have Warhammer 40K where Big E said that AI is heresy cause it practically wiped out mankind. buuuuut "machine spirits" and all that? yeah that's fine as long as a competent human or semi-human is at the wheel. except very few of them actually know how anything works. I mean hell they have these walker things that they can't turn off cause no one knows how to turn them back on.

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[-] TachyonTele@piefed.social 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Is Alan anyone note worthy, or is he just a random moron?

EDIT: He's daring grok to explain it. Looks like im the moron here!

[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 24 points 3 weeks ago

No clue. Checkmarks mean fuck all on that platform.

[-] knightly@pawb.social 5 points 3 weeks ago

Professor of Religion at James Madison University, published in a few journals and had an article in Wired about Go (the board game) ten-ish years ago.

[-] balthazarsnakewizard@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

So is he just joking, or very stupid?

[-] knightly@pawb.social 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

It reads like a joke to me, and his published works suggest he's not one to meekly take things at face value: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&citation_for_view=EEdRH98AAAAJ%3A0EnyYjriUFMC

[-] slothrop@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 weeks ago

methinks folk are missing that he's tweeting at grok, asking it to disseminate the quote....

[-] Triumph@fedia.io 4 points 3 weeks ago

I totally missed that, thank you. Changes everything.

[-] Manjushri@piefed.social 15 points 3 weeks ago

I read it as a joke, and a good one, in my opinion. He's asking a supposedly thinking machine to explain a passage about thinking machines being used to enslave people.

[-] TachyonTele@piefed.social 3 points 3 weeks ago

Yup, I see that now. Lol most of us completely missed it

[-] logi@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

For once I'd like to see grok's response. But not enough to actually go on there...

[-] abfarid@startrek.website 8 points 3 weeks ago

That response tweet is clearly too on the nose to not be ironic.

[-] Kolanaki@pawb.social 15 points 3 weeks ago

Instead of machines that think like men, they simply fed drugs to men until they thought like a machine. 🤷‍♂️

[-] Shanmugha@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

Well, they had to fight long and hard to break from enslavement first. That kind of memory lives for a long time

[-] menas@lemmy.wtf 15 points 3 weeks ago

You may have heard of the Luddites; maybe you even heard of the Canuts. The truth is that the destruction of the machines by the workers is a very common thing among history. Sabotage and revolutionary syndicalism is a way. It will turn our inner eye to see our path. Where the bourgeoisie has gone there will be nothing. Only us will remain.

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

THEY FUCKING LEFT OUT THE MOST IMPORTANT PART!!!!!!

The Reverend Mother responds and says that it really should state:

"Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind."

THATS THE KEY PART!!!!! LLMs CANT THINK!!!!

They ONLY APPEAR to think.

[-] Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world 11 points 3 weeks ago

Can I just point out to everyone it is a lot easier to take this point on board now and wage jihad against the machines before they achieve sentience and take over.. if you work for an ai company or any other big tech company in any position from floor cleaner to management get busy asap and fuck it up from the inside..

[-] MerryJaneDoe@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

...get busy asap and fuck it up from the inside…

Easier said than done. Security and risk mitigation is one of the first (if not the very first) concern of any IT company in this day and age.

I've been a system engineer. Digital assets are locked down, meaning that I couldn't access anything outside of my scope (which was small and midsize banking websites). Physical assets (servers) sat in three remote locations, highly secure and staffed by a different team. Everything is backed up 5 different ways in 5 different places. Every keystroke is logged. Every door uses a passcard.

It's built to be a trustless system of sorts, where no single person holds the keys to anything too important. Regular audits and individual accountability for every outage are the norm. About the only way to fuck it up would be to somehow incite a mass exodus of seasoned engineers.

I think what people often miss about these systems (not just IT, but all of our systems from finance to healthcare) is that they are supported by very intelligent, motivated individuals. These people are fighting hard to make sure that nobody can fuck up their work. They aren't sitting ducks - they are nigh impenetrable sentries.

You didn't understand the assignment. It's all about small things. Accidentally cancel a important meeting between higher ups. Put some gunk in the administrators keyboard, which requires a wasteful support ticket to IT. If everyone does there job at 98% competence, the company loses 2% production as a whole.

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[-] StopTech@lemmy.today 6 points 3 weeks ago

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

[-] DeathsEmbrace@lemmy.world 2 points 3 weeks ago

Not as much as colonizer's

[-] Aganim@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago

Just, uhh, leave all that shit on IX, with their Axalotl Tanks out of it.

Axlotl tanks aren't Ixian though, that's Bene Tleilax tech. It's basically what's left of their women.

[-] cannedtuna@lemmy.world 3 points 3 weeks ago

Whoops. Thanks. Fixed.

[-] ALoafOfBread@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Cooking his favorite beef swellington, perhaps

[-] GuyIncognito@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)
[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

This one also seems relevant:

"Quite the experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave." - Blade Runner (Roy Batty)

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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
765 points (99.2% liked)

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