> "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there's the real danger" - Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

I always preferred this take:

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” ― Alfred North Whitehead

It's both opposite and complementary to your Frank Herbert quote.

I think it's important that we recognize and understand how those operations are being done, and ignorance of the complexity of all the parts of our lives leads to the death of expertise. People who would learn a lot just from reading the course description of a 100 level class in a field are assuming their lack of knowledge means there's no complexity there.

> “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.” ― Isaac Asimov

The easier society makes it to be unaware of the complexity of everything around us, the easier it becomes to assume everything is actually as simple as their surface-level understanding.

It's very clear to me that many people have achieved peak civilization -- no evidence of thought remains.

I guess it hinges on your definition of "civilization".