Of course the article mixes things up in order to push a cheap narrative. Herbert's Butlerian Jihad was a rehash of Islamic ban on images of people that is supposed to prevent idolatry and preserve uniqueness of God. It's purely religious in nature and has nothing to do with "tools of oppression". Not to mention that absolutely any automation, even the simplest kind, was considered a thinking machine and was banned, not just that arbitrary range of things called AI.

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kombookcha an hour ago | parent | next [-]

This is a flattening of Herbert's angle - it is explicitly stated in the quoted section in the article that part of the reason for the ban is that the people who control thinking machines would exert outsized control on those who depend on them. This is a recurring theme in Dune, as we see with anxieties about dependency on mentats and Bene Gesserit truthsayers (the latter of which are in fact exerting hidden influence from their positions of trust).

The mentats are theoretically safer because of their imperial conditioning, but even that can be tampered with, as we see with Dr Yueh. This is a central problem in Dune: Whatever you depend on will gain power over you (or whoever controls the thing you depend on). Dependency on spice, on truthsayers, on mentats, or on thinking machines - even specific relationships. All of these are systemic vulnerabilities and therefore potential attack vectors in Dune.

	▲	stevekemp 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> The mentats are theoretically safer because of their imperial conditioning, but even that can be tampered with, as we see with Dr Yueh Dr Yueh was not a mentat, but a suk doctor who was subject to conditioning. (Which was broken by the Piter de Vries, via the pain amplifiers applied to his wife, Wanna.) Paul himself was being trained to be a mentat, and there were no hints of conditioning there, neither with Paul, Hawat, or de Vries (albeit he was described as a "twisted mentat", whatever that means).

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angelmanuel an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

The tools of oppression reading is backed directly by the books: "But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them"

Is it also true that Fremen are canonically descendants of Zensunni practitioners, which is a mix of Zen and Sunni Islam

Many other restrict machines, and the dogma is encoded on a religious text called the Orange Catholic Bible. And, this might be a big jump but, some of the specific anti-machine quotes are similar to Matthew 12:31-32 IMO

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Kiro 12 minutes ago | parent [-]

Not a very deep justification. Probably the easiest thing to grasp for when thinking "how can I make this religious theme fit the narrative?".

	▲	decimalenough a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		It seems exactly the opposite to me: Herbert didn't want robots etc in Dune, so he came up with a religious figleaf to justify this.