Mentat logic had long been one of my favorite aspects of Dune. Its fascinating to contemplate. I wish they made mention of Paul having unknowingly become a fully realized Mentat in Denis’ first film.
Agreed! A lot of missed opportunities with his film, a great film but just missing a lot of the lore. If you didn’t know the books you wouldn’t even have known they are against thinking machines since the film show cases a lot of technology. I wish they would’ve at least dropped a hint to that in some dialogue.
I always found Mentats one of the more fascinating aspects of Dune. Obviously Herbert did too as they went on to be pivotal aspects of many of the characters as the booksl series progressed. Fantastic use of Midjourney by the way, I hope you continue to use it for future videos as it really gives a unique flavour that sets you apart from other lore videos.
Me too! Random thought and question but I'm going to propose it anyway because I love getting lost in the Dune Universe- what would happen if the Bene Jesserit bred the most powerful being they could, then that being was trained as a mentor, then that being was sent salusa secundas and trained as a saurdukar, then that being was sent to Arrakis and underwent forced spice evolution breathing spice gas and only eating spice as food?
Love all your stuff, but your Dune work is still TOP TIER, Lady! Really appreciate how much you pulled from the Encyclopedia in this one. It will always be canon to me, head canon at least. And the imagery in this one... Wow. Curious as to where some of those monastic images came from. They are truly compelling. As well as the image of what appeared to be a speaker on a raised dais in a crowd at the foot of some massive cathedral looking structure? As to the possibility of real mentats: That's one deep can of Shai-hulud. Some ppl and belief structures assert that humanity has already devolved from a similar state in our past, hence the remarkable feats of ancient architecture and evidence of calculation in the peripheral archaeological record. Then you have others who say that in order to compete and even survive the coming existential changes and threats to our world we will have to rise to some new level of un augmented performance if we are unwilling to undergo a more synthetic transhuman alteration. Ironically, this view is itself almost parallel to Herbert's own psycho history and the environmental pressures he described acting upon the social organism. Personally, I believe it is more than possible and have experienced flashes of similar states of cognition myself. And there are numerous examples of how humans in general have demonstrated such states. So yeah, I fully believe in the potential of our minds to achieve these hypothetical levels, but not given the current social political philosophical environment that forms the groundwork of our individual and group cognitive states. However, given the right crisis... 😏 Cheers! And well done!
Piter was the only calculator that came with an external reset function in the form of a knife that worked on anyone with a back. Until he got reset himself.
The Mentats were in my opinion, totally opposite of Vulcans. As they used their emotions and outside stimulus help sharpen their mental skills. Vulcans on other hand focused totally upon logic purging all emotions whenever become possible. They had to become violent uncontrolled emotions nearly destroyed their Society.
That's one of the things that is, I believe, unique to Dune that makes it so interesting: the idea that humans can, through lots of training (and several thousand years of evolution), basically achieve superpowers. Some of the highest-tier stuff requires natural predisposition and/or access to mind-expanding substances like Spice or the Truthsayer drug, but just in general, the average person can learn to read people and control themselves like Bene Gesserit or compute like mentat. It's a hugely idealistic part of the narrative, from my perspective, that humans are fundamentally awesome, and if we focus on honing that inherent awesomeness, we'll get even more awesome. Of course, we'll still be humans, so we need to find ways to make that awesome serve the benefit of all humanity, not just a select group of humans we happen to like.
Great work. Love your research and approach. I have been a fan of Dune since I read the serialized version in Analog in 1965 and then the full book. Sixty years later I am still a fan. Keep up your great work.
I believe that critical thinking and logic should be taught in school as a subject, thank Mr nimoy for my ability to think logically about the various things that I've succeeded in, the ability to see how situations can go in multiple ways is an effective tool,
I open Nerd Cookies’ videos and click Like. Before the intro. The reason: well-earned trust on the content’s value. Thank you for never letting me down!
When you mentioned organic data processers I couldn't help but imagine that there would be genetically modified humans with larger brains and computing power, maybe even a class of ghoula made to be mentats. Or even crazier, a mutated mass of neurons and synapses that funcions as a giant living brain/computer that is able to be connecting an individual via temporary surgery.
What about a bene Jesserit bred super human trained as a mentat then sent to salusa secundas and trained by the saurdukar then sent to Arrakis and undergone forced spice evolution like a guild navigator?
I think of mentats as a possible development of humanity's natural neurodiversity. Some traits of autism and ADHD are apparent to me, as a baseline at least, why some individuals are more fitting for the mentat training and not letting them know too soon what they were undergoing.
Thanks for posting, there is so much to explore in the Duniverse. My thought: In order to achieve the mental capabilities of mentats, one would have to remove certain hormones from the brains of the young prospects.
As a youth I used to be able to walk through a store and calculate the cost of the total at check out. It wasn't anything special it just took practice. We memorized addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables from 1 to 100. Again it was tedious and we all hated doing it but it wasn't hard. Now we are lazy and use calculators for everything. It is just like weight lifting, if you do it you get stronger if you don't you get weak.
Our mind is computing way more iterations per second as we register consciously. There are more possible connections between neurons than atoms in the universe. With proper training from childhood on, I am sure we can become mentats if we wish. Look at the tremendous feats of memory we are capable of... The problem is our educational system. Children are born as geniuses, being crippled down to "normal" cognitive functions.
When I grow up I want to be a Dune mentat ;) Was first introduced to them in dune 2 all those years ago on pc in the 90s when I started playing... ah memories
In Larry Niven’s Protector, he talks about the difficulties in writing about a protagonist who’s supposed to be vastly more intelligent than humans. Niven got around his writer’s dilemma and avoided Deus Ex Machina, for his super intelligent Brennan, the Protector, by making Protectors a species driven almost completely by instincts and genetic programming. Herbert seemed to focus more on Paul’s role as a Duke, and by focusing on the curious synergy of both prescience and mentat training. It may be that Paul was unable to take the Golden Path due to the sheer cost in human lives, which ran counter to his mentat training. Instead, he left it to his children, for one of them to sacrifice themselves for the future of humanity. A failure as a parent? Or awareness that his mentat training forever barred him from competently executing the Golden Path?
Interesting video! I think that human intelligence is very mysterious, and it`s possible for some people (like Einstein or John Nash) to be incredibly intelligent in extremely difficult analytical fields while not being notably smarter in other ways, like politics. It`s like intelligence is a beam that requires focus. Some people have brighter beams than others, and some wider beams, but no one illuminates everything around them in 360 degrees. Back in earlier centuries it was possible for people to be more well rounded and have expertise in many different fields, simply because there was less knowledge to learn. But now there's so much information we need to specialize. That's why I find the mentats (as shown in the first novel, anyway) to be a little unrealistic. I think to be true masters of any subject they'd need to have very narrow specialties , and numerous mentats would need to work together to provide a ruler with anything like comprehensive advice. But then, the time of Dune is an age where technology has stopped progressing. Maybe one reason why nobody invents anything new is because the mentats just don't talk to each other. "...This is further supported by the idea that a leader's focus should be on maintaining the proper temperament, while making decisions in the absence of complete data. Mentats are trained to avoid making such uninformed decisions. As such, their ability to act concisely would be inhibited." That's really interesting! It definitely fits with the way Paul initially has such difficulty choosing his path when he can see every possible alternative leading outwards far past his own lifetime.
I believe it is possible in the far future that humanity could achieve a level of mental awareness similar to these characters depicted in Dune. But the only catch is.............hopefully we don't blow ourselves up before then. 💥🧠💥 Thanks for sharing as always. Always love your work.❤💗Have a very happy analytical day. Stay safe.🤓👽🖖
Max Jones aka Starman Jones from Robert A. Heinlein's book of the same name was pretty much a mentat in his own right. I haven't read that book in over 40 years but I still remember all the dialog of Max doing multidigit computations in his head much faster than the ship's onboard computer. I'm pretty sure Frank Herbert read that book back in 1953 when he was 33 just a few years before he began researching Dune in 1959 and decided that would be an interesting character to have in a story.
Dune pt1 was really good, and pt2 is the only thing I'm looking forward to. Only disappointing thing is that so much will get left out from the movies.
Is it plausible? Yes. Is the movie or sorry, are the books a bit overblown? Yes. Is spice the culprit for such abilities, technically yes, that is plausible but. Until now we haven't seen it and this is why fantasy is so excellent, it kind of by ''default'' that is to say without any substances so to speak, opens and can expand your mind. I will forever appreciate this kind of thing, that does this to me and only if that all is just to make me dream away and fantasize, let alone ponder and analyze. Which youtube has such great opportunities for in regards to channels like yours , for instance.
The lore from latter books that the first mentats where a social experiment by a offshoot AI. Where a peaceful offshoot of the oppressive network AI enslaving humanity. Attempts to fuse the processing power & thought process of a AI with the creativity & adaptive ability of a human mind is a bold interesting concept. At the very least it was mind-blowing to think though at ten years old^_^
As an avid fan of HR Geigers artwork I firmly believe that biomechanism (The The generation and manipulation of organic matter from mechanical purposes) is capable of achieving a wide range of ends. I imagine the engineers of the alien universe would see mentats as a natural and necessary step for human evolution.
This is one of the many things in the Dune series that is brought up a lot, but was really just Frank Herbert making an assertion about something in-universe and not actually depicting it. The *only* mentats that we see who prove to truly live up to the hype are the ones who already also possessed prescience (i.e. Paul, Leto II and Miles Teg). All other characters identified as mentats seem consistently clueless, or at best on par with some of the smarter non-mentats that they worked with. Granted, this may have been because what real life computers could do during Herbert's lifetime was fairly limited.
Can you expand on your convoluted train of thought ? As described, Mentats were experts in various types of fields. A prescient Mentat is something else.
@@megatronjenkins2473It is an A.I that can create art based on what you describe, for example: a character you imagined in your head, you want to "see" it as an art in real life that can be shared online for everyone to see, so you describe it in whatever detail you want to tell and the A.I will try to create it as close as possible, if it was close enough, you can add more detail to it so it will be somewhat close to what you "saw" or imagined in your mind.
It is all about 'signal processing' - as you correctly describe it, mentats do what AI did - process what/if scenarios. We humble humans do this too - we can 'spot' patterns really well and this makes us apex predators here on Earth. But a normal human cannot possibly match the speed of digital computers and so we blithely go forth equipping AI function into our weapon systems until we get smacked badly by this approach. We already are seeing the folly of using computers in our voting systems. So many of us can intuitively recognize and anticipate the Butlerian Jihad and the need for special brainy people to fill the void. We will return to a feudal society - its just a matter of time - and the Mentats will hold a position of high power in the court. Props to Herbert for anticipating this future and crafting an interesting story.
The interesting irony, of course, is that the mentats posses minds that are (to some extent) "in the likeness" of a machine. In a similiar vein thematically, the Bene Gesserit can be seen to treat humanity and individual persons as cogs in a machine to further the end goal of their visions for the future. In fact, the various higher forms of human cognition and perception in the universe are not much less "artificial intelligence" than that possessed by the earlier machines.
It is really hard to capture Dune on to film. Maybe a 25 season 20 plus episode a season at about 54 minutes each. Might do it. Do all of the books! Such a great universe!!!!
My theory on how they achived these feats thru training "the naïve mind" i think there is a part of the mind that is always working the naive mind, it runs computations and scenarios constantly. It like ever been asked if yoy remeber a movie and at that moment you dont then you eventually go do do.something else and your mind is on something else completely but as fast as a lightning strike the name of the movie is there in the forefront of your mind and you werent even really thinking about it. It was the naive mind that found the name. The reason why it took time is due to the fact your not in control of it as if you were a trained mentat. The Naive Mind was actually busy running computations on thousands of other things until it actually got to the question. The Mentats would be able to directly access it and get results. I read Mentats of Dune and even Erasmus the thinking machine had mans potential in high regard. Mentats was the only book by Brian i did not find a disappointment.
It's probably possible for humans to compute far more than we currently can - I'd say it's a certainty, given what humans were able to do even hundreds of years ago, when most knowledge was still passed down orally, and even the most complex of tasks were mostly done with tools that were only meant to help humans do calculations in their own minds rather than doing the calculations for them. To the degree shown in Dune? Probably not. But most works of science fiction are about going beyond limits to tell a good story, and if the story is good enough we ignore the unreality of it. And Dune is 5 GREAT stories (with one story broken into two books).
Another entertaining video, thanks Cookie! FUN FACT I've never gotten past the first book, I dunno why. I've tried reading Dune 2 several times, but I just can't get into it. The first book I've read many many times.
Funny to mention, that almost every paint in your Dune video is generated with AI😁 Anyway, it is a great work, whicnh deserves like and comment) you asked, if human can achieve described level of computation and prediction abilities. As for me, that is absolutely possible and can be achieved in a society like Dune's. While the author adds some noticeable elements of fantasy, like that level of provision, full person transmitted as a genetic memory,or telepathy, he builds the base of his work on extension of normal human performance.
If the masses could overcome today's power elites who have stunted humanity through the poisoning of both the body and mind, it would be fascinating to see what wonders humanity could achieve, even perhaps Mentat abilities.
I can't help thinking that Herbert wrote about Mentat capabilities compared to computers of the 1960's. I wonder if he would still write them the same way today, when we carry computers in our pockets that are more powerful than all the computers on earth combined in 1965.
What do you think of the Brian Herbert Kevin j Anderson novel about the mentats where it was in fact an AI in a very human looking form who founded the school I believe it was the AI entity known as Erasmus. I found it difficult to believe but an interesting thought. He felt guilt for lack of a better word for how humanity had been mistreated and wanted to give them abilities that only the machines had previously.
I get the whole AI Bad thing (The Matrix, The Terminator & Colossus taught us that), but I'm confused as to why they don't use 'dumb' computers such as what we use today (even supercomputers aren't close to AI). Yes, Mentats can perform leaps of logic that a humble PC can't, but surely normal computers can be used for day-to-day things without pissing off the Butlerians?
Development of our natural mental facilities like the mentats of "Dune" is the way we should be going instead of linking ourselves to computers or creating GAIs, imo. We have fought to achieve our level of humanity for far too long just to throw it away.
The first Lawnmower Man movie toyed with the idea that psychotropics paired with exotic sensory stimulus could reprogram and restructure the brain. Given the permanent changes in nature and quality of thought that seem to go along with psilocybin experiences, I'm very inclined to think it's possible to unlock and artificially engineer superior computational function in the human brain, with enough research and experimentation. The big issue would inevitably be, what happens when the subject suffers an adverse reaction? Vegetables? Hebephreniacs? Clinical lycanthropes?
And what about plain negative emotions, hate, jealously, fear, and ambition. Indeed it was sense of ambition and superiority which made Lawn mower man so unstable. " I am God here!"
I think it's plausible for humans to be that logical... where we are right now, it still takes rooms of computers to even approach human capability, and building a bipedal robot that can walk up stairs, something humans can do without much thought, is still a tremendous achievement. the main issue is we don't understand the brain enough yet to safely alter it to such an extent.
Mmmmm...delicious nerd cookies, hot from the oven. As an elder nerd, I appreciate the time and effort this must take. How many work hours per minute do these usually require, considering reviewing background information for accuracy, script preparation, etc.?
Some of the Autistics i have worked with over the years in electronic and telecommunication engineering and IT have shown some Mentat type thought processes , even to a point where one could even fault find on large PCB boards and fix faults with out any use of meters and other testing devices once he was told what the fault was ( it was interesting watching him look at the boards and follow the tracks and componants ) , and in some ways i have seen them as a natural evoltionary first step to the Mentats of the Dune universe :)
i would be very curious te see you compile Isaac Asimov's foundation. i feel like a lot of people, even amongst science fiction enthusiast do not know about this master piece. perhaps because it is less shiny and warm than Dune. who knows.
This topic is on my short list of disappointments with the movie. Not enough about mentats. All we got was Thufir going into a glass-eyed trance to multiply some numbers. And now when we see him being forced to serve the Harkonnens, it just won't have the same impact because the audience doesn't know him.
Yup especially when Paul himself was trained to be a mentat in the book.. they definitely should have gave them more importance considering how relevant they are in the story. Hopefully pt 2 will be better in that aspect
@@cassiloca Definitely, but there will be a lot of backstory to pack into pt2. I'm actually hoping pt2 begins earlier than pt1 ended, so they overlap in time. It'd be unusual, but it would solve some storytelling problems. But I have to admit, as a writer, that I don't envy the task of breaking Dune up into 2 movies.
For those of you who have seen that horribly historically INACCURATE movie Hidden Figures, you should remember that previous to the computer age, humans who did laborious arithmetic computations were called “Computers”. It really does seem that Frank Herbert appreciated history, doesn’t it? 🤓
@@johnbrooks6243 Everything. For example, NASA had no segregated bathrooms. 😳🙄. Check the videos on historical inaccuracies in Hidden Figures. Like the fact that the three protagonists probably never met each other, because of widely separated departments. 🤯🫣
As for real life, I don’t think it is possible for one human’s mind to closely approach the sheer computational and total recall power of a modern computer, and not even close to a modern, scientific computer. We can train and become very quick and intelligent, but in the end, our ability to sense patterns, use language, and clearly recall things is born of an evolutionary change to give us a higher chance of reproduction and survival, not to compute equations or predict and analyze the minutiae of modern civilization. Even with the intelligence that we do have, it is very energy-intensive and our brains are quite sensitive; in that sense, in the wild, they can be a disadvantage to procreation compared to lower life forms. There really isn’t natural selection pressure for computation or analytical intelligence anymore. I think that machines specifically designed to compute, as opposed to our brain ‘designed’ to survive and have babies, will always have a significant power advantage. The Bene Gesserit and Mentats do make for good fiction and a thought provoking series though. They are one of the most fascinating parts of Dune, for me.
1:33 "...any mentat worth his water..."
I dig this. 😊
Mentat logic had long been one of my favorite aspects of Dune. Its fascinating to contemplate. I wish they made mention of Paul having unknowingly become a fully realized Mentat in Denis’ first film.
Agreed! A lot of missed opportunities with his film, a great film but just missing a lot of the lore. If you didn’t know the books you wouldn’t even have known they are against thinking machines since the film show cases a lot of technology. I wish they would’ve at least dropped a hint to that in some dialogue.
@@RetroExhibitCollectiveDude...Yeah! And Piter De Frieze is truly twisted and as epic as the movie was I miss him in it more
It is really hard to capture Dune on to film. Maybe a 25 season 20 plus episode a season at about 54 minutes each. Might do it.
Do all of the books!
@@brianstanton2721your spelling of his name is equally twisted
I always found Mentats one of the more fascinating aspects of Dune. Obviously Herbert did too as they went on to be pivotal aspects of many of the characters as the booksl series progressed.
Fantastic use of Midjourney by the way, I hope you continue to use it for future videos as it really gives a unique flavour that sets you apart from other lore videos.
Me too! Random thought and question but I'm going to propose it anyway because I love getting lost in the Dune Universe- what would happen if the Bene Jesserit bred the most powerful being they could, then that being was trained as a mentor, then that being was sent salusa secundas and trained as a saurdukar, then that being was sent to Arrakis and underwent forced spice evolution breathing spice gas and only eating spice as food?
Love all your stuff, but your Dune work is still TOP TIER, Lady! Really appreciate how much you pulled from the Encyclopedia in this one. It will always be canon to me, head canon at least.
And the imagery in this one... Wow. Curious as to where some of those monastic images came from. They are truly compelling. As well as the image of what appeared to be a speaker on a raised dais in a crowd at the foot of some massive cathedral looking structure?
As to the possibility of real mentats:
That's one deep can of Shai-hulud. Some ppl and belief structures assert that humanity has already devolved from a similar state in our past, hence the remarkable feats of ancient architecture and evidence of calculation in the peripheral archaeological record.
Then you have others who say that in order to compete and even survive the coming existential changes and threats to our world we will have to rise to some new level of un augmented performance if we are unwilling to undergo a more synthetic transhuman alteration. Ironically, this view is itself almost parallel to Herbert's own psycho history and the environmental pressures he described acting upon the social organism.
Personally, I believe it is more than possible and have experienced flashes of similar states of cognition myself. And there are numerous examples of how humans in general have demonstrated such states.
So yeah, I fully believe in the potential of our minds to achieve these hypothetical levels, but not given the current social political philosophical environment that forms the groundwork of our individual and group cognitive states.
However, given the right crisis...
😏
Cheers! And well done!
Images probably from ai generator
Midjourney AI mentioned in description
Piter was the only calculator that came with an external reset function in the form of a knife that worked on anyone with a back.
Until he got reset himself.
Reminds me of Ming's ring at the end of Flash Gordon.
I like the mentats. The remind me of Vulcans to some extent. The potential is there. And like everything else Frank Herbert explores the limits
The Mentats were in my opinion, totally opposite of Vulcans. As they used their emotions and outside stimulus help sharpen their mental skills. Vulcans on other hand focused totally upon logic purging all emotions whenever become possible. They had to become violent uncontrolled emotions nearly destroyed their Society.
That's one of the things that is, I believe, unique to Dune that makes it so interesting: the idea that humans can, through lots of training (and several thousand years of evolution), basically achieve superpowers.
Some of the highest-tier stuff requires natural predisposition and/or access to mind-expanding substances like Spice or the Truthsayer drug, but just in general, the average person can learn to read people and control themselves like Bene Gesserit or compute like mentat. It's a hugely idealistic part of the narrative, from my perspective, that humans are fundamentally awesome, and if we focus on honing that inherent awesomeness, we'll get even more awesome.
Of course, we'll still be humans, so we need to find ways to make that awesome serve the benefit of all humanity, not just a select group of humans we happen to like.
Great work. Love your research and approach. I have been a fan of Dune since I read the serialized version in Analog in 1965 and then the full book. Sixty years later I am still a fan. Keep up your great work.
"Any Mentat worth his water.." Ha, nice! 😆👌
I believe that critical thinking and logic should be taught in school as a subject, thank Mr nimoy for my ability to think logically about the various things that I've succeeded in, the ability to see how situations can go in multiple ways is an effective tool,
Very well put.
Before LOTR, I was into Dune. This is high quality work. Keep churning out great videos.
I open Nerd Cookies’ videos and click Like. Before the intro. The reason: well-earned trust on the content’s value. Thank you for never letting me down!
Absolutely 100% spot on mate me too!
When you mentioned organic data processers I couldn't help but imagine that there would be genetically modified humans with larger brains and computing power, maybe even a class of ghoula made to be mentats.
Or even crazier, a mutated mass of neurons and synapses that funcions as a giant living brain/computer that is able to be connecting an individual via temporary surgery.
ghola*
What about a bene Jesserit bred super human trained as a mentat then sent to salusa secundas and trained by the saurdukar then sent to Arrakis and undergone forced spice evolution like a guild navigator?
The most complicated and intricate structure in the known universe. The human brain.
I think of mentats as a possible development of humanity's natural neurodiversity. Some traits of autism and ADHD are apparent to me, as a baseline at least, why some individuals are more fitting for the mentat training and not letting them know too soon what they were undergoing.
Thanks for posting, there is so much to explore in the Duniverse.
My thought: In order to achieve the mental capabilities of mentats, one would have to remove certain hormones from the brains of the young prospects.
It’s been a pleasure to watch your channel grow. Keep the Dune videos coming.
It has hasn't it ? Btw lovely name ( alessia )
"worth his water" . clever clever! .
As a youth I used to be able to walk through a store and calculate the cost of the total at check out. It wasn't anything special it just took practice. We memorized addition, subtraction, multiplication and division tables from 1 to 100. Again it was tedious and we all hated doing it but it wasn't hard. Now we are lazy and use calculators for everything. It is just like weight lifting, if you do it you get stronger if you don't you get weak.
I still calculate most things in my head. Learned how to do it as a kid... You're right that it's very easy with training.
Our mind is computing way more iterations per second as we register consciously. There are more possible connections between neurons than atoms in the universe. With proper training from childhood on, I am sure we can become mentats if we wish. Look at the tremendous feats of memory we are capable of... The problem is our educational system. Children are born as geniuses, being crippled down to "normal" cognitive functions.
Great vid! Got to love the dune encyclopaedia
When I grow up I want to be a Dune mentat ;)
Was first introduced to them in dune 2 all those years ago on pc in the 90s when I started playing... ah memories
Mentat's really drew me into Dune. Wish they had more screen time in the latest Dune movie.
Great as always. Very much enjoy all of your in-depth analysis of the Dune universe.
Another top-notch production!! Excellent information. Thank You so much.
In Larry Niven’s Protector, he talks about the difficulties in writing about a protagonist who’s supposed to be vastly more intelligent than humans. Niven got around his writer’s dilemma and avoided Deus Ex Machina, for his super intelligent Brennan, the Protector, by making Protectors a species driven almost completely by instincts and genetic programming.
Herbert seemed to focus more on Paul’s role as a Duke, and by focusing on the curious synergy of both prescience and mentat training. It may be that Paul was unable to take the Golden Path due to the sheer cost in human lives, which ran counter to his mentat training. Instead, he left it to his children, for one of them to sacrifice themselves for the future of humanity. A failure as a parent? Or awareness that his mentat training forever barred him from competently executing the Golden Path?
Or maybe a moral dilemma.
Wonderful work, as always!
I would like to know what AI you are using for your images. These look great.
It is called Mid-journey, it is very beautiful tool to have with endless art possibilities
MidJourney! I'm loving it! (It was a "shut up and take my money" situation)
@@Jacob_64 Thanks!
@@NerdCookies Thank you for the infor!
@@Jacob_64 ok, but what is it?
Please make more videos on Mentats as nerds this is what we aspire to be.
I have a copy of The Mentat's Handbook. Of course it's fanfic but it's fascinating. Maybe it's time to revisit that gem. 🤓
Interesting video! I think that human intelligence is very mysterious, and it`s possible for some people (like Einstein or John Nash) to be incredibly intelligent in extremely difficult analytical fields while not being notably smarter in other ways, like politics. It`s like intelligence is a beam that requires focus. Some people have brighter beams than others, and some wider beams, but no one illuminates everything around them in 360 degrees. Back in earlier centuries it was possible for people to be more well rounded and have expertise in many different fields, simply because there was less knowledge to learn. But now there's so much information we need to specialize.
That's why I find the mentats (as shown in the first novel, anyway) to be a little unrealistic. I think to be true masters of any subject they'd need to have very narrow specialties , and numerous mentats would need to work together to provide a ruler with anything like comprehensive advice. But then, the time of Dune is an age where technology has stopped progressing. Maybe one reason why nobody invents anything new is because the mentats just don't talk to each other.
"...This is further supported by the idea that a leader's focus should be on maintaining the proper temperament, while making decisions in the absence of complete data. Mentats are trained to avoid making such uninformed decisions. As such, their ability to act concisely would be inhibited."
That's really interesting! It definitely fits with the way Paul initially has such difficulty choosing his path when he can see every possible alternative leading outwards far past his own lifetime.
I believe it is possible in the far future that humanity could achieve a level of mental awareness similar to these characters depicted in Dune. But the only catch is.............hopefully we don't blow ourselves up before then. 💥🧠💥 Thanks for sharing as always. Always love your work.❤💗Have a very happy analytical day. Stay safe.🤓👽🖖
Max Jones aka Starman Jones from Robert A. Heinlein's book of the same name was pretty much a mentat in his own right. I haven't read that book in over 40 years but I still remember all the dialog of Max doing multidigit computations in his head much faster than the ship's onboard computer. I'm pretty sure Frank Herbert read that book back in 1953 when he was 33 just a few years before he began researching Dune in 1959 and decided that would be an interesting character to have in a story.
Dune pt1 was really good, and pt2 is the only thing I'm looking forward to. Only disappointing thing is that so much will get left out from the movies.
i'm fairly new to the Duniverse..& you're by far the best channel with the most detailed contents!!
Is it plausible? Yes. Is the movie or sorry, are the books a bit overblown? Yes.
Is spice the culprit for such abilities, technically yes, that is plausible but.
Until now we haven't seen it and this is why fantasy is so excellent, it kind of by ''default'' that is to say without any substances so to speak, opens and can expand your mind. I will forever appreciate this kind of thing, that does this to me and only if that all is just to make me dream away and fantasize, let alone ponder and analyze. Which youtube has such great opportunities for in regards to channels like yours , for instance.
The lore from latter books that the first mentats where a social experiment by a offshoot AI. Where a peaceful offshoot of the oppressive network AI enslaving humanity. Attempts to fuse the processing power & thought process of a AI with the creativity & adaptive ability of a human mind is a bold interesting concept. At the very least it was mind-blowing to think though at ten years old^_^
As an avid fan of HR Geigers artwork I firmly believe that biomechanism (The The generation and manipulation of organic matter from mechanical purposes) is capable of achieving a wide range of ends. I imagine the engineers of the alien universe would see mentats as a natural and necessary step for human evolution.
It is most definitely possible, and it's what we did before computers, and still do even with them. Superb presentation.
"Any Mentat worth his water"..? You are Perfection 😊
This is one of the many things in the Dune series that is brought up a lot, but was really just Frank Herbert making an assertion about something in-universe and not actually depicting it. The *only* mentats that we see who prove to truly live up to the hype are the ones who already also possessed prescience (i.e. Paul, Leto II and Miles Teg). All other characters identified as mentats seem consistently clueless, or at best on par with some of the smarter non-mentats that they worked with. Granted, this may have been because what real life computers could do during Herbert's lifetime was fairly limited.
Can you expand on your convoluted train of thought ? As described, Mentats were experts in various types of fields. A prescient Mentat is something else.
Great work of using Mid-journey to its full capabilities, rather have an A.I than getting a copyright strike😅, keep it up 🔥🙌🏽
What's Midjourney?
@@megatronjenkins2473It is an A.I that can create art based on what you describe, for example: a character you imagined in your head, you want to "see" it as an art in real life that can be shared online for everyone to see, so you describe it in whatever detail you want to tell and the A.I will try to create it as close as possible, if it was close enough, you can add more detail to it so it will be somewhat close to what you "saw" or imagined in your mind.
@@Jacob_64 ooooooh, neat!!! Bears looking into! The mighty Decepticon Army thanks you for your service!!!
(raises phased-plasma cannon, fires)
@@megatronjenkins2473 This universe, no matter how vast, will never be big enough
for you and I to coexist! (Pulling an energon sword)
Nerd Cookie never fails to impress. So smart, knowledgeable, creative, articulate, and with wonderful taste to boot.
Keep it up, Champ.🏆
A true Renaissance man. Thanks for deep dive. And yes it is possible.
I got my milk and cookies... Now it's time for some fresh baked nerd cookies!
It is all about 'signal processing' - as you correctly describe it, mentats do what AI did - process what/if scenarios. We humble humans do this too - we can 'spot' patterns really well and this makes us apex predators here on Earth. But a normal human cannot possibly match the speed of digital computers and so we blithely go forth equipping AI function into our weapon systems until we get smacked badly by this approach. We already are seeing the folly of using computers in our voting systems. So many of us can intuitively recognize and anticipate the Butlerian Jihad and the need for special brainy people to fill the void. We will return to a feudal society - its just a matter of time - and the Mentats will hold a position of high power in the court. Props to Herbert for anticipating this future and crafting an interesting story.
Great commentary as always. I immediately think of how much farther from 'human' are the Guild Navigators
The interesting irony, of course, is that the mentats posses minds that are (to some extent) "in the likeness" of a machine. In a similiar vein thematically, the Bene Gesserit can be seen to treat humanity and individual persons as cogs in a machine to further the end goal of their visions for the future. In fact, the various higher forms of human cognition and perception in the universe are not much less "artificial intelligence" than that possessed by the earlier machines.
The human brain far surpasses any supercomputer we can even realistically theorize.
Say Nerd Cookies, your voice & thiS background chill house 🎶 is 😌
Where were these guys when I was in calculus, algebra, and trigonometry classes?!?
Loce the idea that their would be a reason that Paul would fail asside from his personal limitation.
It is really hard to capture Dune on to film. Maybe a 25 season 20 plus episode a season at about 54 minutes each. Might do it.
Do all of the books!
Such a great universe!!!!
Me: Oh hell yeah, Mentats could totally be a thing.
Also me: What's my damn password again?
Also also me: I have a password for that?
Frank Herbert saw vast potential in our species. I believe with strict provision and many many years time, human capabilities old be stretched wildly
Supreme accomplishments of logic. How can you not love those words? They were in the book.
My theory on how they achived these feats thru training "the naïve mind" i think there is a part of the mind that is always working the naive mind, it runs computations and scenarios constantly. It like ever been asked if yoy remeber a movie and at that moment you dont then you eventually go do do.something else and your mind is on something else completely but as fast as a lightning strike the name of the movie is there in the forefront of your mind and you werent even really thinking about it. It was the naive mind that found the name. The reason why it took time is due to the fact your not in control of it as if you were a trained mentat. The Naive Mind was actually busy running computations on thousands of other things until it actually got to the question. The Mentats would be able to directly access it and get results. I read Mentats of Dune and even Erasmus the thinking machine had mans potential in high regard. Mentats was the only book by Brian i did not find a disappointment.
Read Mentats of Dune, even tho it wasent Franks work but his son Brian i thought it was a rather great book delving into the Lore of the Mentats.
It's probably possible for humans to compute far more than we currently can - I'd say it's a certainty, given what humans were able to do even hundreds of years ago, when most knowledge was still passed down orally, and even the most complex of tasks were mostly done with tools that were only meant to help humans do calculations in their own minds rather than doing the calculations for them.
To the degree shown in Dune? Probably not. But most works of science fiction are about going beyond limits to tell a good story, and if the story is good enough we ignore the unreality of it. And Dune is 5 GREAT stories (with one story broken into two books).
Another entertaining video, thanks Cookie!
FUN FACT I've never gotten past the first book, I dunno why. I've tried reading Dune 2 several times, but I just can't get into it. The first book I've read many many times.
Wait until you can read the whole series, including the prequels and follow ons. :) .
I found the series got better after the first 2 books. It all falls into place & your mind is blown! Worth persevering.
Thank you. Well done as always.
Funny to mention, that almost every paint in your Dune video is generated with AI😁
Anyway, it is a great work, whicnh deserves like and comment)
you asked, if human can achieve described level of computation and prediction abilities.
As for me, that is absolutely possible and can be achieved in a society like Dune's. While the author adds some noticeable elements of fantasy, like that level of provision, full person transmitted as a genetic memory,or telepathy, he builds the base of his work on extension of normal human performance.
I really enjoy your videos and appreciate you. Please keep it up!
If the masses could overcome today's power elites who have stunted humanity through the poisoning of both the body and mind, it would be fascinating to see what wonders humanity could achieve, even perhaps Mentat abilities.
Great video. As always.
Are you going to make a video about embracer buying Tolkien's IP?
New video,instant like. Love your knowledge and content. Also, best voice on the net.
"Any mental worth his water" 😏nice
I can't help thinking that Herbert wrote about Mentat capabilities compared to computers of the 1960's. I wonder if he would still write them the same way today, when we carry computers in our pockets that are more powerful than all the computers on earth combined in 1965.
What do you think of the Brian Herbert Kevin j Anderson novel about the mentats where it was in fact an AI in a very human looking form who founded the school I believe it was the AI entity known as Erasmus. I found it difficult to believe but an interesting thought. He felt guilt for lack of a better word for how humanity had been mistreated and wanted to give them abilities that only the machines had previously.
Gilbertus Albans would be so proud 🥲
*i do not make mistakes...merely decisions based on inaccurate information*
Do the people in this universe use Non A.I. computers?
Surely you could have advanced computers that don't posses sentience
in the later books they start using machines that push the boundaries
I get the whole AI Bad thing (The Matrix, The Terminator & Colossus taught us that), but I'm confused as to why they don't use 'dumb' computers such as what we use today (even supercomputers aren't close to AI).
Yes, Mentats can perform leaps of logic that a humble PC can't, but surely normal computers can be used for day-to-day things without pissing off the Butlerians?
AI is much more than just Hardware - it's also the SOFTWARE that does the actual work. Anyone who has done work in computer science understands this.
@@scottcooper4391 Yeah but Windows 10 isn't spontaneously going to become self-aware.
Nerd cookies givn me goosebumps 🤭
Mentats sounds like the apergers club.
Your videos are awesome and so insightful, thanks! 🥰
Glad you're enjoying them! Thank you!
Development of our natural mental facilities like the mentats of "Dune" is the way we should be going instead of linking ourselves to computers or creating GAIs, imo. We have fought to achieve our level of humanity for far too long just to throw it away.
The first Lawnmower Man movie toyed with the idea that psychotropics paired with exotic sensory stimulus could reprogram and restructure the brain. Given the permanent changes in nature and quality of thought that seem to go along with psilocybin experiences, I'm very inclined to think it's possible to unlock and artificially engineer superior computational function in the human brain, with enough research and experimentation.
The big issue would inevitably be, what happens when the subject suffers an adverse reaction? Vegetables? Hebephreniacs? Clinical lycanthropes?
And what about plain negative emotions, hate, jealously, fear, and ambition. Indeed it was sense of ambition and superiority which made Lawn mower man so unstable. " I am God here!"
I never read the books so I didn't know what Mentat meant...except for in Fallout lore.
I think it's plausible for humans to be that logical... where we are right now, it still takes rooms of computers to even approach human capability, and building a bipedal robot that can walk up stairs, something humans can do without much thought, is still a tremendous achievement. the main issue is we don't understand the brain enough yet to safely alter it to such an extent.
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve
thanks again for all u do!
Same
Love this episode ❤️
Thx Elaine👌😎
I did enjoy the video, thank you
Mmmmm...delicious nerd cookies, hot from the oven. As an elder nerd, I appreciate the time and effort this must take. How many work hours per minute do these usually require, considering reviewing background information for accuracy, script preparation, etc.?
Post-ASCENSION- it is possible
- but not all are chosen
@needcookies do you record your voice, or does an ai read th script?
I wish you would have mentioned the Bashar
Some of the Autistics i have worked with over the years in electronic and telecommunication engineering and IT have shown some Mentat type thought processes , even to a point where one could even fault find on large PCB boards and fix faults with out any use of meters and other testing devices once he was told what the fault was ( it was interesting watching him look at the boards and follow the tracks and componants ) , and in some ways i have seen them as a natural evoltionary first step to the Mentats of the Dune universe :)
This is extraordinary. I'd love to read more your experiences with high functioning savants
They got a mentat to do the narration for this video. How about a little human emotion there, sweets!?
Thank you for the content
i would be very curious te see you compile Isaac Asimov's foundation. i feel like a lot of people, even amongst science fiction enthusiast do not know about this master piece. perhaps because it is less shiny and warm than Dune. who knows.
Foundation is a much different universe than Dune, as is Heinlein's universe .
This topic is on my short list of disappointments with the movie. Not enough about mentats. All we got was Thufir going into a glass-eyed trance to multiply some numbers. And now when we see him being forced to serve the Harkonnens, it just won't have the same impact because the audience doesn't know him.
Yup especially when Paul himself was trained to be a mentat in the book.. they definitely should have gave them more importance considering how relevant they are in the story. Hopefully pt 2 will be better in that aspect
@@cassiloca Definitely, but there will be a lot of backstory to pack into pt2. I'm actually hoping pt2 begins earlier than pt1 ended, so they overlap in time. It'd be unusual, but it would solve some storytelling problems. But I have to admit, as a writer, that I don't envy the task of breaking Dune up into 2 movies.
I just love this nerd stuff
did you give up on 'rings of power' videos? I don't blame you if so tbh
I really like your videos.
I was hoping for some more Rings of Power bashing but I'll take this xD
For those of you who have seen that horribly historically INACCURATE movie Hidden Figures, you should remember that previous to the computer age, humans who did laborious arithmetic computations were called “Computers”. It really does seem that Frank Herbert appreciated history, doesn’t it? 🤓
Oh damn, what was horribly inaccurate about it?
@@johnbrooks6243 Everything. For example, NASA had no segregated bathrooms. 😳🙄. Check the videos on historical inaccuracies in Hidden Figures. Like the fact that the three protagonists probably never met each other, because of widely separated departments. 🤯🫣
@@johnbrooks6243 No segregated bathrooms in NASA. High probability the three never met in the period covered by the movie. 🙈😑
As for real life, I don’t think it is possible for one human’s mind to closely approach the sheer computational and total recall power of a modern computer, and not even close to a modern, scientific computer. We can train and become very quick and intelligent, but in the end, our ability to sense patterns, use language, and clearly recall things is born of an evolutionary change to give us a higher chance of reproduction and survival, not to compute equations or predict and analyze the minutiae of modern civilization. Even with the intelligence that we do have, it is very energy-intensive and our brains are quite sensitive; in that sense, in the wild, they can be a disadvantage to procreation compared to lower life forms. There really isn’t natural selection pressure for computation or analytical intelligence anymore. I think that machines specifically designed to compute, as opposed to our brain ‘designed’ to survive and have babies, will always have a significant power advantage.
The Bene Gesserit and Mentats do make for good fiction and a thought provoking series though. They are one of the most fascinating parts of Dune, for me.
Mate, you are talking about the here and now. Dune is so far in the future that one would never know how mental capabilities would develop.
I'm having a NERDY day and I like it! Thank you! 🌚🤪