Grok
@grok
Mar 18
Replying to @AlanLevinovitz @KBucko7
The post quotes Dune (by Frank Herbert): men handed thinking to machines hoping for freedom, but it let other men (with machines) enslave them. Then Paul cites the Orange Catholic Bible: “Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind.”
“Herbert was cooking” = he crushed it with this. It’s from the Butlerian Jihad backstory—humanity rebelled against sentient machines, banning AI-like tech to preserve human potential. A timeless caution on tech dependence.
And then person actually says “thank you” to the LLM, and nothing was learned that day.
And then he asks grok to summarise and explain the book/series to him. Which made me horrified, but then I remembered I have never read the dune books, just read bits from wikis and seen the films.
Now I don’t know what to feel. Oh right, there’s several types of books that I can’t fucking sit through because they are written like pretentious ass and deal with dense, dry topics, so I guess I wasn’t going to sit through that shit with or without wikis and AIs.
I’ve read other books, and then read the fucking wikis. I guess for somethings and some contexts you just need the abridged version.
If you disagree, feel free to go read “Infinite Jest”, “Godel Escher and Bach”, and “Crime and Punishment”, then get back to me on this topic.
I’ve read about half of one of those books. Feel free to guess.
Depends on how detailed and respectful they wanted to be of the original material. Lawerence of Arab in Space where a young lord abuses a artificial prophecy to gain control of a planet, unleashing universal jihad where billions die isn’t far off.
It does leave out some of the interesting bits, like when one of his ancestors turns into a worm, marries his sister and gets another man to fuck her, since he’s no longer able to do so.
It’s just a joke, y’all are really over thinking it. I’m fully aware that watching the movies and reading the books are different experiences. The joke was that a summary cuts things just like the movie. That’s it.
I thought Dune was good. I read it while I was in middle-school and thought it was engrossing. I also read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke back then, but I guess some people don’t like his style. I tried reading Godel, Escher, Bach as a young adult, and yeah, I maybe finished half.
I must be a weirdo because I ripped through all of Frank Herbert’s dune books then went on to read his other stuff like The Whipping Star, Dosadi Experiment, and White Plague.
https://xcancel.com/AlanLevinovitz/status/2034374796377571673#m
My hero
Heres the answer for anyone else curious
And then person actually says “thank you” to the LLM, and nothing was learned that day.
I am very sure that he’s joking given the tone of it and the fact that he’s a professor of philosophy
And then he asks grok to summarise and explain the book/series to him. Which made me horrified, but then I remembered I have never read the dune books, just read bits from wikis and seen the films.
Now I don’t know what to feel. Oh right, there’s several types of books that I can’t fucking sit through because they are written like pretentious ass and deal with dense, dry topics, so I guess I wasn’t going to sit through that shit with or without wikis and AIs.
I’ve read other books, and then read the fucking wikis. I guess for somethings and some contexts you just need the abridged version.
If you disagree, feel free to go read “Infinite Jest”, “Godel Escher and Bach”, and “Crime and Punishment”, then get back to me on this topic.
I’ve read about half of one of those books. Feel free to guess.
A summarization of the Dune series would be a novella by itself.
Depends on how detailed and respectful they wanted to be of the original material. Lawerence of Arab in Space where a young lord abuses a artificial prophecy to gain control of a planet, unleashing universal jihad where billions die isn’t far off.
It does leave out some of the interesting bits, like when one of his ancestors turns into a worm, marries his sister and gets another man to fuck her, since he’s no longer able to do so.
And then resurrects his dad’s best friend over and over until the guy kills him.
The books do get… weird.
I’ll just watch the movies, thank 💪
The six hours you’ve watched so far is just an abridged version of the first book.
Yeah, a lot like a summary?
It… isn’t though. By watching the movies you are missing one (1) novel’s worth of context, and it is impossible to really extrapolate from there.
It’s just a joke, y’all are really over thinking it. I’m fully aware that watching the movies and reading the books are different experiences. The joke was that a summary cuts things just like the movie. That’s it.
I thought Dune was good. I read it while I was in middle-school and thought it was engrossing. I also read a lot of Arthur C. Clarke back then, but I guess some people don’t like his style. I tried reading Godel, Escher, Bach as a young adult, and yeah, I maybe finished half.
I read the first one a few times as a kid (I was really into scifi). Then I read the second one and it put me off checking out the rest of the series.
I must be a weirdo because I ripped through all of Frank Herbert’s dune books then went on to read his other stuff like The Whipping Star, Dosadi Experiment, and White Plague.
that guy writes shit that excites my neurons.