Mentat Wiki: exploring ways to become a better thinker
ludism.org
ludism.org
"It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion."
"It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains, the stains become a warning."
too on the nose?
- Joakim Garff on Søren Kierkegaard
Fittingly, I'd forgotten the name of this technique, though I still sometimes absentmindedly perform it on phone numbers and other digit strings in my environment when I'm walking around or whatever.
Basically, you map the digits 0 through 9 to specific consonants, then come up with vowels to build out phrases that are more memorable than a bunch of boring numbers. I think I stopped practicing the system around the time I started storing phone numbers in cellphones, but reading this has reminded me to pick it back up and see if I can find any practical uses.
"Thinking logically is something we all can do. We find ourselves so often taken in by fallacious arguments, though. How can we identify them in others' arguments and our own thought?"
Well, I'd start with "Thinking logically is something we all can do."
If considered as a low-dimensional binary, it's true: we all can think logically, in that each individual can probably get at least one answer correct on a logic test. However, stating that fact as "Thinking logically is something we all can do" seems like it might run the risk of people not taking the time to consider the importance (or existence) of the variable: [the degree to which we can consistently think logically], which I think should include the ability to detect when the premises one is working on top of have potential imperfections contained within (such as in this example).
Might theories like this offer some explanation for why the rationalist approach seems to not produce the outcomes that one would "logically" expect, or why it's not much harder to find incorrect assertions in rationalist communities than it is in less intellectually rigorous communities?
It seems to me that sayings like "It Ain’t What You Don’t Know That Gets You Into Trouble. It’s What You Know for Sure That Just Ain’t So." are not just clever, but they also contain a lot of wisdom.
It’s like with Nietzsche¹; most fans are not really fans of what the author actually intended.
The flaw of Mentats is that, early on, they are only Mentats, much as the flaw of Ginaz swordmasters was that they were only swordmasters or Reverend Mothers were only Reverend Mothers, etc. As humans grow and improve through the Dune saga, they gain more capabilities. Herbert was all about the Renaissance Man rugged individualist idea, and that was the goal of the Bene Gesserit: "Grow up, humans!...That's their [the BG's] dream. Start acting like adults and not like angry children in a schoolyard."
So he clearly had some interesting ideas to share. But yes it's a comic, so I don't expect it to do anything other than straw-man his views.
I got the impression that Paul saw many possible futures where there was certainty of a bad outcome, and some possible futures with an unknown outcome, and that the path to the unknown outcomes all involved jihad and death. So, at least in the first novel, Paul felt compelled to pursue jihad in order to provide an uncertain future, as avoiding jihad would be worse.
It's been quite some time since I read beyond the first novel though.
My interpretation is that Paul didn’t take the golden path. He felt trapped into taking it, but when twins were born, he was freed of that obligation because it opened up a future he hadn’t foreseen.
Imagine looking into your child's face and knowing the exact time and nature of his/her death. I think this is a big reason childhood diseases have the status of especially evil.
> The term "computer", in use from the early 17th century (the first known written reference dates from 1613),[1] meant "one who computes": a person performing mathematical calculations, before electronic computers became commercially available.
It think this is an oversimplification. Mentats still had agency--both Piter de Vries and Thufir Hawat have their mentat schemes to kill the Baron Harkonnen.
One of the big points of the Dune series is the indeterminacy of the universe. Computers, being deterministic, couldn't think properly to handle the full universe, so humanity's subjugation to computers (i.e., "machine thinking", both as rule by computer and as habits of thought for humans) was a dead end. Dependency on computers also meant people didn't develop human skills.
After the Butlerian Jihad, the Guild, the Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit all became schools of human development. Mentats aren't just human computers who perform calculations quickly. They cultivate almost zen-like mental states that allow them to sift patterns of data into conclusions, among other techniques. The later books go into much more detail, but part of the point is that they're not deterministic thinkers; they're practitioners of very advanced modes of consciousness.
I think there's a lot of people who wish they could remember more things, or math more effectively without tools or etc. Probably not a whole lot who want to go to the depths of the mentats. In universe, the training would have started before the trainee could consent, which makes it hard to make a choice to become a mentat, you can't choose to begin training, only to continue or abandon if you were in training since early childhood.
Is there a good resource that collates the research on nootropics in one place? I haven't looked in a long time, but the last time I looked everything seemed quite bullshitty. You can find articles like eg https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2854355/ or https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2690149/ or https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20166767/ but ideally I would like to have a resource that has done a literature review and describes the evidence (with any caveats like "this only has been demonstrated in rats that were adrenalectomized + have chemically-induced dementia" or "this has never been reproduced") in a way that doesn't seem like it is an advertisement for some shitty piracetam company. This hypothetical resource probably doesn't exist, but I figured I'd ask anyway.
And it has a list of citations, which is super useful: https://examine.com/supplements/piracetam/research/#citation...
Thank you for the pointer!
Read the first one. It's not for everyone, it's a little dry, POV is all over the place, and it's very political and thoughtful. It can be a slow read, but it's worth it.
Watch the Lynch movie. (Lament that this could have been Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune if so inclined.)
Watch the Sci-Fi Channel's Frank Herbert's Dune.
(Probably watch the Villeneuve Dune due out in December this year.)
If you happened to like it, read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune. You'll probably like these books as well. (If you didn't like Dune, it's okay to stop here.)
Watch the Sci-Fi Channel's Children of Dune.
If you happened to like those, try God Emperor of Dune. Be warned it is extremely different from the previous books. It's become my favorite book in the series after multiple re-readings of the entire series (previously was Dune Messiah), but it is certainly not for everyone. It's okay to quit here.
If you made it through God Emperor, read Heretics of Dune.
If you enjoyed it, read Chapterhouse: Dune. (If you didn't enjoy Heretics, don't bother).
Lament that it is over.
If you must, read Sandworms of Dune which is written by the son, but is supposedly based on the father's notes. It is the least bad of the books I've read by the son. Don't read anything else.
Edit: Formatting
It has influenced a lot of games, books and movies so it's a classic well worth reading. The first third of the first book is a bit of a slog but it becomes very good after.