Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time for an episode from the Vault. This one originally
Speaker 1: aired on November eleven, and this was about the Spacing
Speaker 1: Guild of Dune, following up on the last week's Vault
Speaker 1: episode about the Benny Jesserit. That's right, more Done content.
Speaker 1: This one, of course, was a lot of fun to
Speaker 1: put together and these I should also point out this
Speaker 1: is also mentioned in these episodes, but there were a
Speaker 1: pair of older episodes that we've done many years before
Speaker 1: about the science of doone, where we talked about things
Speaker 1: like still suits and sand worms. So this was kind
Speaker 1: of a return to that series. And who knows when
Speaker 1: Done Part two comes out in theaters eventually, maybe we'll
Speaker 1: we'll find a good excuse to dive back into the
Speaker 1: Done universe. Hey, maybe your listeners out there have ideas
Speaker 1: about what we could tackle. Listen to these episodes and
Speaker 1: let us know. Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: the production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And on this podcast we never stopped doning,
Speaker 1: so it's done yet again. This is part two of
Speaker 1: the Dune series that we started earlier this week. So
Speaker 1: in the last episode we talked about the Bennie Jessert
Speaker 1: and a bit about the neuroscience of pain, and today
Speaker 1: we're here to talk about what more Bennie Jesser. Maybe
Speaker 1: some spacing Guild stuff. Yeah, that's right. We're going to
Speaker 1: pick up where we left off with the Bennie Jesser
Speaker 1: and then we're going to move on to the Spacing
Speaker 1: Guild um. And I think the place I'd like to
Speaker 1: start is to come back to something we touched on
Speaker 1: in last episode, and that is the idea that the
Speaker 1: Bennie Jesser are chiefly concerned with politics right now. We
Speaker 1: offered some caveats about that in the last episode, and
Speaker 1: that we often hear the word politics and think of
Speaker 1: like electoral democratic politics. Uh. The political situation in the
Speaker 1: Done universe is is not so lucky to have democratic
Speaker 1: electoral politics. They've got some kind of weird um hybrid
Speaker 1: uh technological feudalism that has like an an emperor on top,
Speaker 1: and then there are there's like an aristocracy of of
Speaker 1: landed nobles, essentially houses who control planets as their fiefdoms.
Speaker 1: And then there's also a pretty large input from trade guilds,
Speaker 1: primarily the Spacing Guild, which controls the monopoly over the
Speaker 1: the economy of interstellar travel. Yeah. So, um, yeah, if
Speaker 1: you need a if you need a refresh. Uh, certainly
Speaker 1: we went over the world of Doune in the last episode. Uh,
Speaker 1: so go back and listen to that one if you
Speaker 1: you didn't have a chance to. So. One of the
Speaker 1: books that I was looking at for this was that
Speaker 1: was another fun um collection of done essays. Uh. The
Speaker 1: book titled Dune in Philosophy, and in it philosophy professor
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Nicholas who also edited the book. He examines the
Speaker 1: topic of the benegessriate in facing the gom Jabbar test.
Speaker 1: He touches, you know, on the point that they that
Speaker 1: they make in this you know conversation between Paul and
Speaker 1: the Reverend mother that the Benigessa are concerned with politics.
Speaker 1: But uh, Nicholas points out that that what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here with politics is politics in Aristotle's sense of
Speaker 1: the world. Word um. Political science one of the three
Speaker 1: sciences he outlined alongside contemplative science, which would have included
Speaker 1: both physics and metaphysics and practical science. So there's a
Speaker 1: lot of talk about tripods uh in you know, in
Speaker 1: the the order of things in Dune um and and
Speaker 1: so in a way that kind of matches up, I
Speaker 1: guess very loosely with with Aristotle's three prompt approach to
Speaker 1: understanding the universe. Man, I have not looked at that
Speaker 1: philosophy of Dune book, but that sounds interesting. So does
Speaker 1: it get into like the what is the philosophic fickle
Speaker 1: outlook of Baron Harconan and stuff? You know, And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun stuff, and there's definitely some hobbs.
Speaker 1: I know, I'll touch on some hobs here in a bit,
Speaker 1: but there's also, um, there's also one let's see what
Speaker 1: is it? Uh? I think it's something like, you know,
Speaker 1: basically like one article walks through the various houses and
Speaker 1: factions and talks about how they would have been thought
Speaker 1: off by uh, say Socrates or whoever. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a fun read. So, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: about Aristotle is is that there is a there's a
Speaker 1: quote that's often attributed to him, uh, pretty famous to
Speaker 1: the Aristotle quote man is by nature a political animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think this is an interesting quote, partially in
Speaker 1: how I think it is often misunderstood because I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times people take that quote to mean
Speaker 1: that that Aristotle was saying that man is the only
Speaker 1: political animal, which he does not mean. He actually mentions
Speaker 1: other animals as political animals as well. Yeah. He he
Speaker 1: also refers to, you know, use social insects and so
Speaker 1: forth as as being political animals. Again, one of the
Speaker 1: reasons this is interesting to come back to this is
Speaker 1: because the benegestent that are big about talking about the
Speaker 1: difference between humans and animals, and given their focus on politics,
Speaker 1: we can't help it go in this direction. Okay, But
Speaker 1: so what did he mean by saying this? Then? Well,
Speaker 1: I was reading a little bit more about this, and
Speaker 1: apparently this is this is an area where you can
Speaker 1: get into some amount of debate and we're not going
Speaker 1: to go, uh, there's this a certain amount of philosophical
Speaker 1: back and forth on this. But I was looking at
Speaker 1: a paper from Cheryl E. A Body, Uh, And it
Speaker 1: was the article Higher and Lower Political Animals published in
Speaker 1: the Journal of Animal Ethics in two six and she
Speaker 1: writes that that Aristotle considered man's impulse towards partnership with
Speaker 1: others to be the most important, and that it is
Speaker 1: only through these partnerships that happiness is possible. Uh So,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds to me like, you know, that
Speaker 1: means that the benegestion are all about happiness obviously, um
Speaker 1: right right right right up there out And uh Aristotle
Speaker 1: broke this down across the different dimensions um of of
Speaker 1: our interactions with other people, at the household level, at
Speaker 1: the village level, and then at the what he considered
Speaker 1: kind of the ultimate level. The Polish a collection of
Speaker 1: human beings who lived together through the creation of laws
Speaker 1: allowing them all to survive and flourish. And this is
Speaker 1: where we get politics. As the word politics. I think
Speaker 1: there's a pretty good case to be made that the
Speaker 1: Aristotle is onto something here about the fundamental nature of humankind,
Speaker 1: that sort of um that what makes us really special
Speaker 1: is our ability to cooperate with one another. And it's
Speaker 1: not that other animals lack the ability to cooperate with
Speaker 1: one another. I mean you might say that is say,
Speaker 1: like a youth social insect colony coordinates their activities even
Speaker 1: better than humans can. But humans have have much richer
Speaker 1: ways of cooperating with one another than even say, you
Speaker 1: social insects do, because we have things like language, which
Speaker 1: allows us to very very minutely coordinate our behaviors and
Speaker 1: cooperate in ways that are have levels of complexity you
Speaker 1: couldn't really imagine without something like language. Yeah. So, Nick Nicholas,
Speaker 1: coming back to his paper, rights that Aristotle considered politics
Speaker 1: a place for human practical reason to flourish. So it
Speaker 1: is the ideal place, not for everyone, but for the
Speaker 1: best minds to busy themselves. And um, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: thinking again to the Done universe. It's easy to to
Speaker 1: focus on all the uh at times dystopian aspects of it,
Speaker 1: and the war and the intrigue, but you know, it
Speaker 1: is a pretty cooperative interplanetary empire when you look at
Speaker 1: it from a certain perspective. You know, I mean, they
Speaker 1: have managed to not annihilate each other with atomic weapons.
Speaker 1: They have this uh this, you know, this this, um,
Speaker 1: this treaty in place. Um. Even though there's a great
Speaker 1: deal of inequality in the Dune universe. Um, they're all
Speaker 1: all these factions are working more or less together. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think you can see those dualities all throughout
Speaker 1: real history as well. I mean, look at any number
Speaker 1: of empires you can think of the Roman Empire or
Speaker 1: the British Empire. I mean, all of these are at
Speaker 1: the same time kind of marvelous achievements of cooperation and
Speaker 1: coordination at the same time that they are brutal engines
Speaker 1: of oppression. Yeah. Now, a body discusses the same thing
Speaker 1: that you mentioned that you know, some that we've discussed
Speaker 1: just a second ago. That you know, some take Aristotle
Speaker 1: to mean that non human animals cannot be political. Others
Speaker 1: see it as the view that humans are merely more
Speaker 1: political than any non human animal. But again, Aristotle puts
Speaker 1: a great deal that emphasis on language. Um and uh
Speaker 1: yeah it is. Language is key to the human realm
Speaker 1: of politics. Um in in good ways and bad ways. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: a language allows for a complexity of coordination. That is,
Speaker 1: uh that that of course can serve both good and
Speaker 1: bad end. So it allows for extremely complex coordination to
Speaker 1: service of the greater good and helping one another, but
Speaker 1: also to uh, you know, ever richer layers of deception
Speaker 1: than than could be imagined by any other kind of animal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I've seen him pointed out that one of
Speaker 1: the things that our language does is it allows us
Speaker 1: to share uh particular points of view with others, perceptions
Speaker 1: of of of what's working, what's not working, of what's
Speaker 1: bringing us pleasure and what's bringing us pain. Now, I
Speaker 1: want to come back to the Benigested distinction of humans
Speaker 1: and animals again. This is you know, they're very much
Speaker 1: of of the mindset. Don't be an animal, be a human? Uh.
Speaker 1: And the reverend mother tells Uh Paul that the test
Speaker 1: is about seeing if he is human or not UM
Speaker 1: and the Beniegestor training seems to a larger degree revolve
Speaker 1: around the high application of reason in a way that
Speaker 1: overpowers animal instincts. Again that the example that has thrown
Speaker 1: out as the animal choose its leg off if it's
Speaker 1: cotton a trap, but the human, the political animal par excellence,
Speaker 1: plots and practices politics over the fact of it's entrapment. Well,
Speaker 1: in fact, the very example she gives is one of deception.
Speaker 1: Remember that he would feign death in order to attract
Speaker 1: the trapper and then and then strike out and kill him. Yes,
Speaker 1: and of course this is uh in a way this
Speaker 1: foreshadows what is to come. Uh. In the novel Dune,
Speaker 1: because the trades acquisition of Aracus is widely seen as
Speaker 1: a trap, and and Paul's father um to To as
Speaker 1: not not entirely by his own choice, ends up in
Speaker 1: the position of the animal that must strike out from
Speaker 1: the trap in an attempt to punish his oppressor. Uh.
Speaker 1: It ends up not quite working, but it's it's again
Speaker 1: one of the great scenes in the book. And and
Speaker 1: I thought a wonderfully um recreated scene in the recent
Speaker 1: film adaptation. Now coming back to the philosophy of of
Speaker 1: Dune book, Nicholas uses the com Jabar awareness test to
Speaker 1: make a point about the current state of humanity in
Speaker 1: our world, the real world, in particular the environmental pair
Speaker 1: al we face. Um. He says, you know this, this
Speaker 1: is the trap. We are the trap, but we are
Speaker 1: arguably not actually human enough, not aware of our place
Speaker 1: in the world and our connections to one another. Uh
Speaker 1: to act in the best interests of the city. Uh. Quote.
Speaker 1: Herbert's philosophy of the human warns against two things, being
Speaker 1: animal and being a slave. As animals, we may be
Speaker 1: enslaved by our animal desires, but there is a different
Speaker 1: slavery being a slave to the machine. The Butalerrian Jahad
Speaker 1: freed humanity. It freed beings from enslavement to machines, and
Speaker 1: it freed us to develop our human talents. Herbert isn't
Speaker 1: asking to abandon our favorite playthings iPod, computer and game systems.
Speaker 1: He's challenging us to find out how to use those
Speaker 1: toys to live a human life. The warning is not
Speaker 1: to stagnate. Now, if we're thinking about environmental catastrophe, you
Speaker 1: know it. It may also seem counterintuitive to think of
Speaker 1: politics as the answer, obviously, but but you know, there
Speaker 1: are more than enough examples in our modern world of
Speaker 1: political barriers to environmental action. But of course it is
Speaker 1: through politics, certainly in the Aristotle sense of the word,
Speaker 1: that anything has done for the greater good of humanity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and a very crude since I think this analogy works.
Speaker 1: Doing something about, say, environmental problems which will eventually cause
Speaker 1: harm to do lots of people or to everyone may
Speaker 1: require some kind of initial investment. It's it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the marshmallow test, but for you know, but for
Speaker 1: people as a whole, like, can can you actually do
Speaker 1: the thing that's going to get you a better outcome
Speaker 1: in the long run? If it hurts you a little
Speaker 1: bit in the short run, A lot of times the
Speaker 1: answer is no. Now, right after I UM was looking
Speaker 1: at this material, I just happened to be watching a
Speaker 1: ted X talk for for other reasons, UM, and it's
Speaker 1: one from Jill Bolt Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight,
Speaker 1: a brain scientists personal journey. UM. I think we've mentioned
Speaker 1: her on the show before. She had this UM this
Speaker 1: journey to recover from a stroke and wrote about it
Speaker 1: quite interesting. But this particular talk was the nero and
Speaker 1: anatomical Transformation of the teenage brain from and Taylor's main
Speaker 1: points in this concern what happens to the teenage brain,
Speaker 1: but also just the development of the brain in general,
Speaker 1: and I thought some of her points lined up with
Speaker 1: a lot of this Benedjester at thinking in the concept
Speaker 1: of Aristotle's politics. She points out that we are feeling
Speaker 1: animals that think, not thinking animals that feel uh, and
Speaker 1: we are we are all neuro circuitry. That's something that
Speaker 1: she drives home. And as such, we think thoughts, we
Speaker 1: then feel emotions based on those thoughts, and then we
Speaker 1: run physiological responses to those emotions and for sustained or
Speaker 1: recurring psychological responses such as anger. We wind up running
Speaker 1: the same thoughts over and over again to reproduce those
Speaker 1: same results. And she drives something that you know, we
Speaker 1: have we have an ability to pick and choose what's
Speaker 1: going on inside of our heads. Uh. And she sums
Speaker 1: it up by saying, you know, again, we are we
Speaker 1: are feeling creatures who think, uh, we tend to be
Speaker 1: more concerned with the me rather than the we. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and in this we fall short of the idea
Speaker 1: of that polus of the of the city uh that
Speaker 1: Aristotle writes about. So I think it's interesting to think
Speaker 1: about like political action coming together, communal responses, planning towards um,
Speaker 1: you know, future problems. Is that these are things that
Speaker 1: on one hand, they're difficult for individuals to do at times,
Speaker 1: but on the other hand, like this is this is
Speaker 1: something that humans do excel at. I mean, we're not
Speaker 1: we're not, you know, we don't have the same level
Speaker 1: of efficiency compared to you social insects certainly, but um.
Speaker 1: But it is one of the strengths of humanity that
Speaker 1: that you know, virtually anything that we consider great in
Speaker 1: in human culture, uh, you know, and and um and
Speaker 1: in the history of our civilizations, it has been is
Speaker 1: due to people working together and bringing things out of that.
Speaker 1: But it's also interesting the way that um, the use
Speaker 1: of politics and the Benny Jesser it since I guess
Speaker 1: reflects both types of both ways of thinking about the words.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, you have them sort of
Speaker 1: executing long term plans through massive cooperation of they're they're
Speaker 1: they're coordinating activities on a galactic scale, uh, to try
Speaker 1: to serve some goal in the end. But you could
Speaker 1: also see them as I think quite accurately, ruthless power
Speaker 1: seekers within a ruthless system, and that those are both
Speaker 1: true at the same time. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: they're definitely you know, engaging in shadow government conspiracies. They
Speaker 1: are they're manipulating uh, pretty much anyone they come into
Speaker 1: contact with to certain degrees. But then then they also
Speaker 1: have these goals of creating some sort of a human
Speaker 1: supercomputer that will you know, bring about some sort of balance,
Speaker 1: uh and if you know, long term success for the
Speaker 1: human species. But then again, I guess that's that is
Speaker 1: often if you if you if you look at at
Speaker 1: today's politics, I mean that is often the case, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, there's you'll see politics who yeah, have some
Speaker 1: sort of a particular aim or goal that they talk
Speaker 1: about that lines up with other people's estimations of what
Speaker 1: could make the world a better place. Um, but then
Speaker 1: they've also got to play that political game. Uh. And
Speaker 1: you can, I can, you know, you can argue, well,
Speaker 1: they have to play that political game in order to
Speaker 1: to do this thing or to attempt to do this thing.
Speaker 1: But then you also wonder, like, what is the actual
Speaker 1: driving force is it? Is it the the good thing
Speaker 1: you want to do for the world, the change you
Speaker 1: want to you want to enact, or is it that
Speaker 1: game and that that's that continual you know grasp for power. Well,
Speaker 1: you know. On on on one hand, I uh, I
Speaker 1: feel a draw towards optimism, you know, I want to
Speaker 1: be optimistic about that kind of project. But I also
Speaker 1: think that people's real motivating priorities are often determined largely
Speaker 1: by their habits, by what they do day after day.
Speaker 1: And so if you get in the mindset of well,
Speaker 1: I gotta play the game in order to achieve some
Speaker 1: lofty goal that would be for the good of humankind
Speaker 1: or something. I mean, in a way, I guess that
Speaker 1: is what people must do if they want to achieve
Speaker 1: those goals through say, mass action, which has to be
Speaker 1: coordinated through politics probably, But there I think there's always
Speaker 1: a risk of by playing the game, your real values
Speaker 1: become the playing of the game. What is in furtherance
Speaker 1: of playing the game, because that is what you have
Speaker 1: to do day in and day out, right, right, And
Speaker 1: so like in the doone University, you're a member of
Speaker 1: a great house. You you you don't want to just be
Speaker 1: trying to assassinate your rivals just for the sake of assassination.
Speaker 1: It's just because it's just this is the way politics works.
Speaker 1: But if that is what you spend day after day
Speaker 1: doing all the time, I think that ultimately will end
Speaker 1: up defining your main priorities. You know, when when you're
Speaker 1: forced to choose between one thing and another, you'll probably
Speaker 1: choose what's in service of the projects you pursue day
Speaker 1: after day all the time. All right, well, why don't
Speaker 1: we move along to the Spacing Guild and to uh
Speaker 1: to set the stage, I thought we might do uh
Speaker 1: one of these little readings here. Perhaps we can drop
Speaker 1: a little ambience into the audio bed here, and uh
Speaker 1: we'll hear from the Spacing Guild Handbook. Any path that
Speaker 1: narrows future possibilities may become a lethal trap. Humans are
Speaker 1: not threading their way through a maze. They scan a
Speaker 1: vast horizon filled with unique opportunities. The narrowing viewpoint of
Speaker 1: the maze should appeal only to creatures with their noses
Speaker 1: buried in the sand. A point of order, wouldn't burying
Speaker 1: your nose in the sand actually be a good way
Speaker 1: to inhale significant amount of spice and thus proud horizons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I thought this is a great quote to
Speaker 1: start with, because on one hand, that's the sand, that's
Speaker 1: where all that spices, and uh, you know, that's that's
Speaker 1: what the Guild is all about. And then on the
Speaker 1: other hand, the thing they're saying don't do is the
Speaker 1: main thing that Paul accuses the Spacing Guild of doing
Speaker 1: of you know, of of not considering the vast horizon,
Speaker 1: but but considering the narrow viewpoint of how to avoid
Speaker 1: catastrophes in the near future, and of course, how to
Speaker 1: maintain that spice. You know, this quote actually reminds me
Speaker 1: of something that's brought up in in an essay I'm
Speaker 1: going to get into in a bit by by a
Speaker 1: NASA JPL navigator who has written about the Guild navigators
Speaker 1: in UH in Dune, and one of the concepts he
Speaker 1: talks about in his essay is the difference between UH
Speaker 1: calculating a solution to a problem in a best fit
Speaker 1: fashion or in a first fit fashion. UH. You know,
Speaker 1: these are very different approaches you can have. So one
Speaker 1: says you you keep trying to solve the problem until
Speaker 1: you find the first solution that actually works, and the
Speaker 1: other is you keep trying to solve the problem, going
Speaker 1: through all possible solutions until you have identified the optimal one.
Speaker 1: And of course people think, well, you know, going for
Speaker 1: the best fit path has got to be better, right,
Speaker 1: because some even some successful paths are better than other
Speaker 1: successful paths. But he outlines the fact that for a
Speaker 1: lot of real world type scenarios, even if you have
Speaker 1: supercomputers involved, calculator best fit pathways is sometimes such a
Speaker 1: monumental calculation task that it's functionally impossible. So you know,
Speaker 1: they're saying, we'll be aware of all possibilities, but there's
Speaker 1: also the possibility that being aware of all possibilities puts
Speaker 1: you in a paralyzing state of inaction and in decision,
Speaker 1: because you can never finish doing all the calculations, and
Speaker 1: maybe you would be better to just sort of bury
Speaker 1: your nose whenever you figure out one path that works,
Speaker 1: just do that. Anyway, I guess we can keep that
Speaker 1: in mind as we talked about the Spacing Guild. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's refresh though in the Space and Guild, um
Speaker 1: be because certainly you haven't read the book in a while,
Speaker 1: you might have forgotten some of this and the Spacing
Speaker 1: Guild that they are present in Dune Part one, the
Speaker 1: movie that that just came out last month, but they're
Speaker 1: not maybe not in the forefront of things. So first
Speaker 1: of all, as we mentioned earlier, um, this is one
Speaker 1: of the great mental physical training schools, uh, the Spacing Guild,
Speaker 1: and we're told in Dune that they constituted one leg
Speaker 1: of the political tripod, maintaining the Great Convention. This is
Speaker 1: the truth among all the great Houses and the Imperium
Speaker 1: that banns atomic weaponry and permits these kind of formal
Speaker 1: wars of assassination against rulers and key figures. So that way,
Speaker 1: you know, it's members of great Houses that get strategically
Speaker 1: murdered as opposed to whole populations and planets due to
Speaker 1: you know, a catastrophic use of weapons of mass destruction.
Speaker 1: The other legs of the tripod are the Imperial House
Speaker 1: and the Landstrade. The Landstrade is the body representing all
Speaker 1: of the great houses. Now, by the time of the
Speaker 1: of the events in the novel Dune, the Spacing Guild
Speaker 1: is immensely powerful. They control a monopoly on space travel
Speaker 1: and transport, as well as interplanetary banking and so some
Speaker 1: elements you know, you know, like everything and doing. You
Speaker 1: can easily think of parallels in history. Uh for instance,
Speaker 1: the non military aspects of the Night Templars is there,
Speaker 1: as well as of course that the East India Company,
Speaker 1: the Dutch East India Company, um and and various other
Speaker 1: monopolies you can you can turn to like what happens
Speaker 1: when one group controlled something absolutely or near absolutely. So
Speaker 1: there's something interesting about the fact that the Spacing Guild
Speaker 1: has this monopoly on interstellar travel in the Dune universe,
Speaker 1: which is that, if I understand it correctly, this monopoly
Speaker 1: is handled in a way that that's different than a
Speaker 1: lot of real world monopolies which are maintained in some
Speaker 1: cases by by force, you know, by by like military
Speaker 1: or paramilitary force, saying like no one else may may
Speaker 1: try to compete with with us, or sometimes by just
Speaker 1: like wealth inequality, by saying like, you know, we're the
Speaker 1: only kind of company that that can afford the infrastructure
Speaker 1: to do this. But in the Done universe, it seems
Speaker 1: to be that the monopoly is maintained not by any
Speaker 1: of these conventional methods, but by having a monopoly on
Speaker 1: the Navigators themselves, a monopoly on expertise, right and uh,
Speaker 1: and I guess the depending on how you look at
Speaker 1: the like the nature of the Guild Navigators the Steersman, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the secrets and the knowledge of their creation, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to whatever extent they are engineered, or to
Speaker 1: whatever extent they are like a product of mass spice consumption.
Speaker 1: And then of course there are there are you know,
Speaker 1: elements there as well as like it's it's about access
Speaker 1: to the spice, um, and the Guild definitely values its
Speaker 1: access to the spice. But one thing I was really
Speaker 1: thinking about when putting together notes for this episode is
Speaker 1: the power of the Guild is um, you know, just
Speaker 1: as everything in a sci fi futuristic world is kind
Speaker 1: of uh you know, blown into into into greater proportions
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, and all like the basically, their
Speaker 1: power is such that if a great house chooses to
Speaker 1: surrender their planet in one of these these squabbles and
Speaker 1: wars of assassins, um they and they want to flee
Speaker 1: beyond the imperium, the Spacing Guild will supply that house
Speaker 1: with just such a far flung planet or you know,
Speaker 1: some territory on a far flung planet that's called a
Speaker 1: two pile. And this is actually referenced in the novel
Speaker 1: when the Trades are trying to figure out what to
Speaker 1: do about this hearkening trap that they've found themselves caught in,
Speaker 1: and one of the options, which they don't really entertain,
Speaker 1: is oh, yeah, we could buy the you know, do
Speaker 1: the rules of uh you know, of of these various treaties.
Speaker 1: We can just go to the Spacing Guild and they
Speaker 1: will take us away to a planet that no one
Speaker 1: else can get to. Um And and I love that
Speaker 1: love this because it reminds us that for the Guild,
Speaker 1: this is a true monopoly. And they're also that their
Speaker 1: space beyond the imperium. But since the Guild are the
Speaker 1: ones who control movement and mapping. They kind of have
Speaker 1: control over the shape of the physical universe for human beings, uh,
Speaker 1: their access to secret worlds and outside space. It almost mirrors,
Speaker 1: you know, theological concepts. That's really interesting and and I
Speaker 1: mean this would essentially be a an unprecedented state of
Speaker 1: affairs in the history of human politics because normally, you know,
Speaker 1: if you get exiled, you have to go somewhere where
Speaker 1: you could be found, and there are probably already going
Speaker 1: to be some people there anyway. But in this case,
Speaker 1: you can get exiled to a place where there's nobody
Speaker 1: there to begin with, and nobody's nobody can ever find you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's weird how in this case it's like a
Speaker 1: place is not real unless the Guild permits you to
Speaker 1: go there. And and in having this two pile option,
Speaker 1: it allows people to to basically pass out of the
Speaker 1: world of human beings in the imperium and UH and
Speaker 1: exist in in another state, almost like they've entered into
Speaker 1: an afterlife or something. That. Yeah, that's fascinating. So how
Speaker 1: did the Guild come to learn of the use of
Speaker 1: spice and navigation? Well, I was reading about this in
Speaker 1: the Dune Encyclopedia, of course, and they outline a few
Speaker 1: different possibilities, but the basics seems seemed to be that
Speaker 1: they were perhaps just casting around in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Great Revolt in the Great in the wake of
Speaker 1: the Balarian Jahad, looking for just anything that could aid
Speaker 1: them in navigation. You know, what can we do to
Speaker 1: enhance human mental capacity in order to help us handle this?
Speaker 1: And then they discovered the spice or it's also suggested
Speaker 1: that perhaps the Benegester it has something to do with
Speaker 1: this and introduced the spice to them. Um, now, how
Speaker 1: do they use the spice? Well? As we come to
Speaker 1: learn in the Dune series, the steersman or Guild Navigators
Speaker 1: consumed just massive amounts of milange, so much that they
Speaker 1: have been altered into a kind of aquatic mammal that
Speaker 1: breathes and drinks milange. Now, we in the first novel
Speaker 1: don't really get a lot of insight into the Guild navigators,
Speaker 1: Like we don't really see them up close or get
Speaker 1: their perspective. But that's not true in the sequels, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think in the second book, one of the
Speaker 1: main characters is a is a guild navigator am I
Speaker 1: right right right, the the Guild Navigator that we we
Speaker 1: actually see in David lynch Um adaptation, they basically pulled
Speaker 1: the Yeah yeah, they Edric, they pull him out of
Speaker 1: the sequel um and uh, you know, that's probably one
Speaker 1: of the most memorable sequences in that entire film, with
Speaker 1: these very very mutinty um gothy spacing Guild members bringing
Speaker 1: out this great tank in which floats this creature that
Speaker 1: is actually just a human being, but a very exotic
Speaker 1: form of human being brought on by this intense relationship
Speaker 1: with the Spice. Yeah. I love I've always thought that
Speaker 1: was a great choice by Lynch. So he's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm adapting one of the weirdest novels ever into a
Speaker 1: big mainstream motion picture, and uh, I think the thing
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do is insert a scene that's even weirder
Speaker 1: than anything in the book, that is not in the book,
Speaker 1: and put that right at the beginning. As I love it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's really clear here in the latest adaptation
Speaker 1: that uh that the director old d V there he um,
Speaker 1: he really likes the weird uh and he he he
Speaker 1: likes to linger on on these beautiful weird moments just
Speaker 1: in the first half of the first novel. I really
Speaker 1: hope he gets to make Dune Messiah as well. Um,
Speaker 1: which he has said he would like to do. Is
Speaker 1: sort of a way to round out the trilogy because
Speaker 1: there's so much weird stuff and in Messiah, because that's
Speaker 1: where you start seeing things like like a guild steersman,
Speaker 1: and um, there's also a face dancer. Uh. There, there's
Speaker 1: wonderful stuff in there. Now. I was reading about the
Speaker 1: Steersman in Um, the Dune Encyclopedia, and I wanted to
Speaker 1: read this wonderful quote. Whatever faults the Spacing Guild may
Speaker 1: have had when the day of the Steersman ended, a
Speaker 1: real beauty passed from the universe. The experience of the Steersman,
Speaker 1: breathing and drinking milange, rocking to the beat of space
Speaker 1: and time, swaying with the music of the spheres, lad
Speaker 1: in their dance by the pulse of life around them,
Speaker 1: alive to every note in the pivan, both composed and
Speaker 1: played by their quartet, is beyond the power of words
Speaker 1: to describe or the imagination to conceive. And so the
Speaker 1: Dune Encyclopedia I think is pretty pro space and Guild
Speaker 1: they take a side in the factional struggles. Well and
Speaker 1: this this, I mean, they're really like, look, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever you have to say about the Space and Guild.
Speaker 1: Those Steersman they were they were doing great. They they
Speaker 1: were just uh And I guess I like the idea
Speaker 1: that it you know it It kind of answers the question, well,
Speaker 1: why would why would it would you want to be this? Like,
Speaker 1: why would uh would this be an okay state? Because
Speaker 1: certainly in the Lynch film, you know, it looks kind
Speaker 1: of like a nightmare. It looks like some sort of
Speaker 1: like well, just this horrible state. But if you imagine uh,
Speaker 1: the Guild navigator just you know, feeling so alive on
Speaker 1: the spice in that tank, then I guess it makes sense.
Speaker 1: But in the uh, the New Dune movie, the Villeneuve
Speaker 1: when so, I wasn't aware when I was watching it
Speaker 1: that there was a scene where we saw the Guild steersman,
Speaker 1: but you you identified that actually they do show up.
Speaker 1: They're the guys towards the beginning of the movie that
Speaker 1: are dressed in what looks like a combination of papal
Speaker 1: vestments and e v A suits. Yeah, and one of
Speaker 1: the big Tail Tale signs, of course, is that they
Speaker 1: have these orange domes over their head, orange, you know,
Speaker 1: implying the spice UM. But yeah, it's easy to miss.
Speaker 1: In fact, I I had noticed that there were, you know,
Speaker 1: some people online responding to the film and they were like,
Speaker 1: where was the Space and Guild um and and yeah
Speaker 1: you can. You can watch it and think that they
Speaker 1: don't show up at all, but they they are here
Speaker 1: and uh and I think they'll they'll have a bigger
Speaker 1: role in part two. Thank thank thank All Right, well,
Speaker 1: I thought we should talk maybe a bit about the
Speaker 1: science of deep space now vacation and how that would
Speaker 1: apply to the Spacing Guild. And as one of my
Speaker 1: sources here, I was looking at another essay in that book,
Speaker 1: the Science of Dune we mentioned in the last episode.
Speaker 1: This one is called the Spacing Guild, and it's by
Speaker 1: a guy named John C. Smith who worked in spaceflight
Speaker 1: navigation at NASA JPL the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his
Speaker 1: bio says that he worked on missions too. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what to make of this to Venus, Mars and
Speaker 1: Earth um and that he was part of the Cassini
Speaker 1: Huygens mission to Saturn and its Moon Titan. I guess
Speaker 1: you could argue that that, like the various satellites that
Speaker 1: help us study Earth science, our missions to Earth, that
Speaker 1: we have to we have to go into orbit to
Speaker 1: gain that kind of perspective to study our own world.
Speaker 1: I wonder it might mean return missions like attempted probe
Speaker 1: is coming back. That's true, because that that too is
Speaker 1: a navigational feat. Sure. Now there's one thing that Smith
Speaker 1: actually mentions right at the end of his essay that
Speaker 1: I thought was really interesting. I'd never consider heard this,
Speaker 1: but it's a piece of historical context that might help
Speaker 1: us understand a little bit better what was going through
Speaker 1: Frank Herbert's head when he framed deep space navigation in
Speaker 1: the way that he did in these novels. So remember
Speaker 1: that Doune was originally published in nineteen sixty five, which
Speaker 1: again is kind of it's hard to believe, like it
Speaker 1: always feels further in the future than that. Yeah, to
Speaker 1: imagine that this this novel came out before with stock
Speaker 1: you know, h yeah, Yeah, it's strange. But Smith writes quote,
Speaker 1: during the time period Dune was written, humanity's exploration of
Speaker 1: the moon and planets was in its infancy The first
Speaker 1: successful fly by ever of another planet was NASA's Mariner
Speaker 1: too craft, which encountered Venus in late nineteen sixty two.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, Mariner four became the first craft
Speaker 1: successfully navigated to encounter Mars. But here's the thing to realize,
Speaker 1: these were not the only two missions launched at this time.
Speaker 1: Smith discount is that these two probes, the Mariner two
Speaker 1: arriving at Venus in nineteen sixty two and Mariner four
Speaker 1: reaching Mars in sixty five, were up to this point
Speaker 1: the only two fully successful interplanetary missions out of twenty
Speaker 1: that had been attempted. Wow, so that's that's that's impressive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So because you also have to we also remind ourselves
Speaker 1: of like, why do we have Mariner one and Mariner two.
Speaker 1: It was because it was considered so risky that you
Speaker 1: we better just make two of them and send them
Speaker 1: both out because there's a high probability we're going to
Speaker 1: lose at least one of them. Right. So, so, at
Speaker 1: the point Herbert was writing, even navigating simply between the
Speaker 1: planets within our own Solar system was a venture characterized
Speaker 1: mostly by failure. And so we today, you know, being
Speaker 1: able to look back on many decades now of of
Speaker 1: successful missions. I think in a kind of uh, in
Speaker 1: a kind of shortsighted way, take interplanetary travel at least
Speaker 1: of of unscrewed probes kind of for granted, and in
Speaker 1: a way that we really shouldn't like, not realizing how
Speaker 1: difficult this technology was to develop and how much intricate
Speaker 1: calculation has to go into uh missions like this to
Speaker 1: make them possible. So all that to say, basically, I
Speaker 1: think there's a reason that in nineteen sixty five this
Speaker 1: would have seemed like something you know, in interstellar navigation,
Speaker 1: would have seemed like something that required an almost supernatural
Speaker 1: mechanism to explain that. Once again, that the interesting thing
Speaker 1: being that in most cases science fiction that you know
Speaker 1: that mechanism is the is the is the thrust generation
Speaker 1: or the travel technology on the ship that allows it
Speaker 1: to go so fast. I think that's sort of taken
Speaker 1: for granted in Dune, and instead the real magic seems
Speaker 1: to come in and the question of navigation. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a situation where the spacing Guild and the
Speaker 1: steersman they don't you know, it's it's just that they
Speaker 1: can you know, travel through hyperspaces, that they can come
Speaker 1: out the other side, that they can do so successfully. Now,
Speaker 1: this might the the idea and the dune novels is
Speaker 1: that they travel through what they call fold space or
Speaker 1: folded space, which I think introduces its own hypothetical dangers.
Speaker 1: But even if we just stick to the problems we
Speaker 1: would expect to encounter traveling through real space. The the
Speaker 1: the problem of navigating deep space is is more complex
Speaker 1: and interesting, maybe than a lot of people would have imagined,
Speaker 1: because um, it's it's fundamentally different and much more difficult
Speaker 1: a problem than navigation and say a car. Right, some
Speaker 1: of the differences are obvious. For example, if you're driving
Speaker 1: on a road, you don't really have to plot a
Speaker 1: course at all, right, the course is already determined by
Speaker 1: the road that has been built. You just have to
Speaker 1: know which roads to follow and how far to follow them.
Speaker 1: But even if there were no roads where you were going,
Speaker 1: so you were just driving a dune buggy over over
Speaker 1: desert wilderness, you would still have a much easier time
Speaker 1: because you'd be able to note the direction of your
Speaker 1: destination and more or less just drive straight to it.
Speaker 1: I guess circumnavigating any obstacles you encounter along the way.
Speaker 1: You know, you might hit a mountain or ravine or
Speaker 1: something and you have to go find a way around it.
Speaker 1: But basically you're just traveling in a across a fixed map.
Speaker 1: And this is really a blessing with travel, right the
Speaker 1: fact that you know, if you're if you're driving from
Speaker 1: one place to another, your car is the only thing
Speaker 1: that is moving in that scenario relative to the reference
Speaker 1: frame of the surface of the Earth. It's not like
Speaker 1: your starting position and your destination are usually also moving.
Speaker 1: But when you're when you're navigating in space, everything is
Speaker 1: moving and moving within their own reference frames. So to
Speaker 1: travel to one planet or another, you can't just aim
Speaker 1: at the planet and then turn on the thrusters. Right,
Speaker 1: if we're trying to fly to Mars, you can't say
Speaker 1: where is Mars now, Okay, I'm gonna aim dead center
Speaker 1: at that and and I'm going to burn the rockets.
Speaker 1: You can't do that, of course, because by the time
Speaker 1: you got there, Mars would be gone. Mars is moving
Speaker 1: really fast, it's an orbit around the Sun, and it
Speaker 1: would be somewhere else. So instead you essentially have to
Speaker 1: plot an intercept course it's not like sailing into a port,
Speaker 1: but like sailing to intercept another ship that is also moving. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not a journey to where the target planet is.
Speaker 1: It's a journey to where the target planet will be. Now, Fortunately,
Speaker 1: the paths of objects like planets are strongly predictable that
Speaker 1: they follow an orbital course established mostly by gravity and inertia.
Speaker 1: And we've got good enough information about the orbital pathways
Speaker 1: of planets that we can predict with pretty high accuracy
Speaker 1: where they're going to be too arbitrary points out in
Speaker 1: the future. Though, of course, the farther you try to
Speaker 1: predict the motion of anything into the future, the the
Speaker 1: more inaccurate your predictions will get because of the you know,
Speaker 1: the the cruel of of tiny, tiny inaccuracies building up
Speaker 1: over time. But then there's a second problem. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you can mostly predict where a planet's going to be
Speaker 1: in the future, so you can plot a course to
Speaker 1: intercept it. You know where it's going to be, you
Speaker 1: go to where it's going to be instead of where
Speaker 1: it is now. But but there comes in a second problem.
Speaker 1: Given the vast distances involved in space travel, even tiny
Speaker 1: inaccuracies in the initial calculation of a baseline trajectory can
Speaker 1: end up sending you off course. Uh. And for a
Speaker 1: crude analogy to understand this, imagine you are shooting an
Speaker 1: arrow at a target three feet away. If you're off
Speaker 1: by like one degree of difference, when you're trying to
Speaker 1: hit the target dead center, that's not going to matter
Speaker 1: very much if it's three feet away, But if you're
Speaker 1: trying to hit a target two hundred feet away, being
Speaker 1: off by a little bit is going to make a
Speaker 1: big difference. And so this is one reason that when
Speaker 1: we we send out uncrewed space probes to do a
Speaker 1: you know, inner the orbit of another planet or intercept
Speaker 1: a comet or something like that, you can't just aim
Speaker 1: them at where that planet or object is going to
Speaker 1: be and then shoot them off and let them go.
Speaker 1: You will have to perform repeated course corrections. You'll have
Speaker 1: to check the position of the probe periodically while it's
Speaker 1: on the way to the destination, figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: figure out it's it's updated course heading based on the
Speaker 1: new information you have about where it is, and probably
Speaker 1: perform a new burn to correct the course heading because
Speaker 1: it will be slightly off just because there's always going
Speaker 1: to be some level of inaccuracy that will build up
Speaker 1: over time, and uh and and there there's no way
Speaker 1: to be perfectly accurate when you're charting a course through space. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one other thing worth noting, which is that while
Speaker 1: real world space agencies now have plenty of experience with
Speaker 1: deep space navigation, basically all of that experience is found
Speaker 1: not in piloting ships from inside the ships, but in
Speaker 1: programming navigational instructions for uncrude probes. So all of the
Speaker 1: space missions with with onboard human pilots have been really
Speaker 1: close to home, you know, a few trips to the
Speaker 1: Moon in the sixties and seventies, and then a bunch
Speaker 1: of runs between the surface of Earth and low Earth orbit.
Speaker 1: And as far as crude ships go, that's it, you know.
Speaker 1: We we haven't had a somebody pilot a ship from
Speaker 1: inside that ship to Mars or anywhere else. And there
Speaker 1: are some differences in this regard. The steering of uncrewed
Speaker 1: robotic probes introduces additional difficulties. For example, the distance between
Speaker 1: Earth and the probe will always create time delays. These
Speaker 1: would be you know, limited by the fact that radio
Speaker 1: signals can only travel at the speed of light. So
Speaker 1: if you're trying to land a probe on the Martian
Speaker 1: moon Phobos, it's going to take some number of minutes
Speaker 1: for the information to travel each way. So you send
Speaker 1: an instruction to the probe and it might take who knows,
Speaker 1: you know, ten minutes for it to get there, and
Speaker 1: then you gotta wait another ten minutes for it to
Speaker 1: send you feedback and for you to find out if
Speaker 1: your maneuver worked or not. But then there's another problem,
Speaker 1: which is that Smith has a section of his essay
Speaker 1: in in the Science of Dune about the process of
Speaker 1: determining where a spacecraft actually is, which is crucial because
Speaker 1: to know how to steer, you have to calculate a trajectory,
Speaker 1: and you can't calculate an accurate to trajectory if you
Speaker 1: don't know where you are. So to establish the position
Speaker 1: of a spaceship with accuracy, you need some kind of
Speaker 1: external landmark to reference, kind of similar to how you
Speaker 1: would use landmarks to recognize where you are on a
Speaker 1: journey by car, except of course, this is over vastly
Speaker 1: greater distances without roads, and with need for much greater
Speaker 1: precision because of the distances that will be covered on
Speaker 1: the journey. So Smith writes that we usually calculate the
Speaker 1: position of space probes in our solar system with reference
Speaker 1: to landmarks such as the Earth's north pole or He
Speaker 1: also mentions a reference point that is the intersection of
Speaker 1: Earth's equatorial and orbital planes on January first, two thousand,
Speaker 1: which is of course everybody's favorite landmark. Um. But then
Speaker 1: you know, uh, so what you've got, You've got places
Speaker 1: like that, and you can determine uh, the probe's position
Speaker 1: by say, checking the time delay on a radio transmission.
Speaker 1: Uh and especially if you can triangulate that with multiple
Speaker 1: receiver dishes, so you've got different dishes around the world,
Speaker 1: and they can check how long it takes a radio
Speaker 1: signal to reach them. You calculate the difference between the
Speaker 1: different dishes on the Earth's surface, and you can get
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea with with a pretty high level
Speaker 1: of accuracy, where the probe is. And then you can
Speaker 1: also calculate its velocity by measuring the Doppler shift in
Speaker 1: the in the radio transmissions as they as as they
Speaker 1: are received back on Earth. So again the Doppler shift
Speaker 1: is you know. The common example is how the the
Speaker 1: pitch of an ambulance siren changes as the ambulance is
Speaker 1: moving towards you or away from you. Wave lengths of
Speaker 1: different types of waves tend to get higher pitched and
Speaker 1: become more compressed if the sources moving towards you, and
Speaker 1: then they tend to stretch out and get lower pitch
Speaker 1: as the as the sources moving away from you. And
Speaker 1: by measuring the amount of Doppler shift in the signal,
Speaker 1: you can actually tell how fast something is moving away
Speaker 1: from you. But then, so here's another thing I thought
Speaker 1: was interesting. So again, in order to calculate a spacecraft's
Speaker 1: current position and path, you need to know the last
Speaker 1: best guess of where it actually was, and then from
Speaker 1: there you need to predict forward in time using mathematical
Speaker 1: models of all the different forces acting on it. And
Speaker 1: in a way, it's a kind of dead reckoning you
Speaker 1: need to do. You say, Okay, at this time, I
Speaker 1: know the ship was here, and it's been traveling in
Speaker 1: this direction this fast with these forces acting on it.
Speaker 1: And so when I read that, I was like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the forces acting on it? Would that include
Speaker 1: something other than inertia, other than the ship's initial velocity
Speaker 1: and the answer is yes, absolutely. It includes other forces
Speaker 1: much the same way that if you're trying to predict
Speaker 1: the path of a bullet you imagine, you know, somebody
Speaker 1: shooting at a target. You can't predict the path of
Speaker 1: the bullet if you just imagine it travels forever in
Speaker 1: a perfectly straight line out of the gun barrel. You
Speaker 1: need to take into account other things like gravity pulling
Speaker 1: the bullet toward the ground, and atmospheric drags slowing the
Speaker 1: bullet down over time. Something very similar is true of spacecraft.
Speaker 1: So to get a spacecraft's position and to calculate its
Speaker 1: future trajectory, you need to know not just where it
Speaker 1: started and its initial velocity, but other forces acting on it,
Speaker 1: including things like gravity. Uh. Gravity is Smith says the
Speaker 1: most important of these forces in the familiar interplanetary missions
Speaker 1: that we have experience with, and this would be gravitational
Speaker 1: attraction exerted the objects in our solar system, the Sun,
Speaker 1: the planets, moons, and other objects um. But actually it
Speaker 1: doesn't even stop at the influence of gravity. The course
Speaker 1: of a spacecraft is diverted by other things, including well,
Speaker 1: one would just be variations in the way gravity is
Speaker 1: exerted even by known objects. So the the example Smith
Speaker 1: gives is that gravity is not perfectly symmetrical in the
Speaker 1: way it's exerted by objects like planets and moons, because
Speaker 1: these objects sometimes are kind of lumpy and so they're
Speaker 1: gravitational influence is slightly asymmetrical. There might be more gravitational
Speaker 1: influence in one part of the object or in a
Speaker 1: certain direction than in other parts or in other directions.
Speaker 1: But then on top of that, you've got radiation pressure
Speaker 1: from the sun, you know, so the solar wind might
Speaker 1: be at the back of a of a probe that's
Speaker 1: traveling and that's actually throwing off its trajectory from what
Speaker 1: you would imagine just if you calculated, you know, it's
Speaker 1: initial velocity from from the rocket burn and then uh,
Speaker 1: and then maybe the gravitational influence of nearby objects. You've
Speaker 1: got to take radiation pressure into account. Uh, if an
Speaker 1: atmosphere is nearby, Smith says, you need to note drag
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere and so forth. And Smith even gives
Speaker 1: a very strange and interesting example of a trajectory input
Speaker 1: that was once considered a real mystery. It was the
Speaker 1: so called Pioneer anomaly. I don't think I was familiar
Speaker 1: with this before, Rob, have you ever read about this?
Speaker 1: I don't remember. So this concerned the Pioneer probes, which
Speaker 1: you know, traveling off into deep space there, you know,
Speaker 1: on on a long interstellar trajectory now, but navigators kept
Speaker 1: finding that their predictions for the course of these Pioneer
Speaker 1: probes was a little bit off, even after accounting for
Speaker 1: all the known forces that that they could think of.
Speaker 1: So the question is could this be an indication of
Speaker 1: something unknown, some some unknown force or unknown property of
Speaker 1: physics that hadn't yet been discovered. And the solution to
Speaker 1: the mystery was was not that tantalizing, but but it
Speaker 1: was kind of interesting. Nonetheless, it turns out it's probably
Speaker 1: not anything spooky about physics. The deviation from expected acceleration
Speaker 1: was probably due to radiation pressure exerted by the power
Speaker 1: source on board the Pioneer probe. So inside, yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got they've got a little internal power plant, a radioisotope
Speaker 1: thermoelectric generator or RTG, and this was creating anisotropic radiation
Speaker 1: pressure that was sort of meaning So I think the
Speaker 1: pressure generated by the waist heat from this thermoelectric generator
Speaker 1: was actually exerting a pressure that changed the course of
Speaker 1: the probe as it flew through space and changed it.
Speaker 1: It didn't you know, the radiation didn't just go out
Speaker 1: in all directions. It was sort of uh, it was anisotropic,
Speaker 1: so it was going in one direction more than the
Speaker 1: other directions. And this was creating an accelerating force. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and like like you said, when you're dealing with
Speaker 1: with long distances like this, uh, just that little nudge,
Speaker 1: especially if it's unaccounted for and unexplained, is enough to
Speaker 1: send you completely off course. Right, And then Smith writes,
Speaker 1: and as I say that interstellar travel would probably involve
Speaker 1: even more forces acting on a spaceship to cause it
Speaker 1: to deviate from its course. And these influences would have
Speaker 1: to be understood and modeled mathematically if you were going
Speaker 1: to navigate accurately. But another question would be again, you remember,
Speaker 1: you need those reference points within the environment to calculate
Speaker 1: your position. If you're traveling through space, you need to
Speaker 1: know where you are in order to calculate a trajectory.
Speaker 1: So what would those external landmarks be if you are
Speaker 1: traveling between stars, if you're an interstellar space well Smith
Speaker 1: suggests the possibility of using pulsar um. Pulsars are highly
Speaker 1: magnetized stars that spin around very fast, shooting out beams
Speaker 1: of electromagnetic radiation out of their magnetic poles. And because
Speaker 1: they rotate so fast, and because they shoot these beams
Speaker 1: in selective directions, you know, it's not omnidirectional beaming. It's like, uh,
Speaker 1: beams just coming out of the magnetic poles. They appear
Speaker 1: from the at the external observer's perspective to pulse or
Speaker 1: blink at these regular intervals, sort of like the you know,
Speaker 1: the spinning light in the lighthouse, and the intervals of
Speaker 1: these pulses can be used to identify what pulsar you're
Speaker 1: looking at. In fact, the pioneer plaques, remember those, uh,
Speaker 1: those plaques that were designed to go on board the
Speaker 1: probes in case an alien ever looks at this and says, hey,
Speaker 1: who made this? Um? They used triangulation by pulsars of
Speaker 1: specified intervals to show the galactic location of our solar system.
Speaker 1: They're like, here's where Earth is. Though, I think to
Speaker 1: be fair, I recall reading at some point that the
Speaker 1: pulsar map on the plaque will no longer be accurate
Speaker 1: in the future. I'm not sure about that one though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to read the fine print at about on
Speaker 1: the plaque limited time offer. But pulsars are not the
Speaker 1: only option. I was actually reading a piece about this
Speaker 1: question in space dot com from one by an astrophysicist
Speaker 1: named Paul Sutter who is at UH Sunny Stony Brook
Speaker 1: and the Flat Iron Institute in New York, and he
Speaker 1: was talking in this UH piece about about a paper
Speaker 1: showing that you could use pairs of stars to establish
Speaker 1: position in interstellar travel. So I think in theory it
Speaker 1: could be done. But uh, there there are a lot
Speaker 1: of challenges probably ahead if we actually do become an
Speaker 1: interstellar traveling species. Uh, you know, there's a lot we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to figure out, and we may not have
Speaker 1: spice to aid us by by creating pressunts that allows
Speaker 1: us to predict the future, but there is going to
Speaker 1: be an awful lot of of highly precise calculation involved.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we're gonna have to We're gonna have turn
Speaker 1: to computers until you know, we decided we should. We
Speaker 1: can't use computers anymore right than now. I'd like to
Speaker 1: come back to the philosophy and outlook of the space
Speaker 1: and Guild. UM. I was reading in the Philosophy of
Speaker 1: doone and there's a there's an article titled A Universe
Speaker 1: of Bastards by Matthew A. Bkas and Um. In it,
Speaker 1: Budkas describes the Guild as um as having quote a
Speaker 1: parasitic relationship with political power. So in this what he's driving,
Speaker 1: what he's pointing out, is that the Guild wields tremendous power,
Speaker 1: even power over the emperor, but they never actually rule.
Speaker 1: They can't actually rule, they can't risk disrupting the flow
Speaker 1: of spice. They depend on it absolutely. You take the
Speaker 1: spice away and the Guild cannot do the thing that
Speaker 1: gives them the power. And he yeah, he points out
Speaker 1: again that the Guild has no armies, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: need to because it absolutely controls transport and trade between worlds.
Speaker 1: And I found this quite interesting because it made me
Speaker 1: think about, you know, historically, what's what's one of the
Speaker 1: things that armies do. Um. You know, one huge role
Speaker 1: is disrupting trade. Um. To besiege a walled city is
Speaker 1: to cut off its trade and travel and starve it
Speaker 1: into submission. UM. I was treading about sieges a while back,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a you know, in the cinematic sense,
Speaker 1: we often think, well, the siege is about like breaking
Speaker 1: down walls, getting in there and then taking over the city,
Speaker 1: But generally it's it's more about strangling the city until
Speaker 1: the people who live there, or the and or the
Speaker 1: people who rule there give in and open the doors themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think a lot of the same could be
Speaker 1: said about navies. A lot of the history of navies
Speaker 1: is also about interrupting trade, you know, trying to block
Speaker 1: access to ports or trying to intercept trade vessels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the interesting thing about the Guild here is
Speaker 1: whether you're talking about blockades or besiegement, they have this
Speaker 1: power already, like it's they don't need an army to
Speaker 1: do it all that because they they are the only
Speaker 1: ones who can operate movement between worlds. Um So by
Speaker 1: its very nature, the Guild is in a constant state
Speaker 1: of besiegement or potential besiegement with every planet in the imperium. Now,
Speaker 1: Buckus goes on to compare the politics of Dune to
Speaker 1: Thomas Hobbs work Leviathan, in which the author quote establishes
Speaker 1: a theoretical state of existence in which there is no
Speaker 1: centralized authority, but rather a collection of individuals looking out
Speaker 1: for their own interests. Now, um, you know, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: isn't there an emperor in Dune. Well, yes, there is
Speaker 1: an emperor in Dune. But again the Emperor's in the
Speaker 1: Emperor's house is part of that tripod and it's all
Speaker 1: in this this uh, this political balance. So it's not
Speaker 1: like the emperor actually does have absolute control over everything.
Speaker 1: Again talking about the the emperor that is present during
Speaker 1: during the first Dune book. Um, So when Dune, it's
Speaker 1: not individuals but factions uh that are that are the
Speaker 1: ones looking after their own interests. Uh, their fights, their feuds,
Speaker 1: and these fights and feuds ultimately can threaten the stability
Speaker 1: of everything. And that comes back to the way that
Speaker 1: the Guild operates itself again, because the Guild very much
Speaker 1: wants stability, at least so far as its spice goes,
Speaker 1: they don't want to do anything to threaten that supply.
Speaker 1: So another interesting aspect of the Space and Guild is
Speaker 1: to is to come back to the way it makes decisions. Um. Again,
Speaker 1: we're envisioning the Steersman, these augmented and or mutated humans
Speaker 1: who literally breathe spice in order to generate the sort
Speaker 1: of of limited uh UM precedents necessary to travel through
Speaker 1: space and hyperspace, and a big part of this entails
Speaker 1: seeing what the most immediate dangers are and dodging them
Speaker 1: and so subsequently, one of Paul's biggest insights is that
Speaker 1: the Guild commands you know, such power over everything and
Speaker 1: their dependence on They depend on spice for their power,
Speaker 1: so they end up making all of their decisions in
Speaker 1: a similar fashion. They always choose the safe immediate path.
Speaker 1: And while this ensures survival in the short term and
Speaker 1: it keeps keeps the spice flowing for them, it will
Speaker 1: eventually in the long term lead to stagnation for you know,
Speaker 1: the entire human endeavor. Oh, this is back to the
Speaker 1: first fit versus best fit uh time. So it's interesting
Speaker 1: to think about this in terms of cognitive bias to
Speaker 1: sort of reverse the Leviathan scenario and go back from
Speaker 1: the faction to the individual um. As pointed out by
Speaker 1: Lauren and Grishma in the safety bias published in Behavior
Speaker 1: Change in Risk Avoidance, is one possible mechanism by which
Speaker 1: personality characteristics may be linked to anxiety pathology. And we
Speaker 1: see risk perceptions factor into a number of cognitive biases,
Speaker 1: including zero risk bias, in which there's a tendency to
Speaker 1: try do eliminate eliminate a particular risk while other options
Speaker 1: would produce a greater overall risk reduction. Okay, So in
Speaker 1: a sci fi scenario, if I understand that, right, that
Speaker 1: would be saying like, Okay, we're going to design a
Speaker 1: spaceship that cannot possibly be destroyed by the biplasma canons
Speaker 1: from from another spaceship, but in fact that spaceship is
Speaker 1: very prone to uh to like toxic build up of
Speaker 1: of c O two in the you know, atmosphere processors
Speaker 1: or whatever. That you're just like overly focusing on one
Speaker 1: type of risk while ignoring others, right. Um. I think
Speaker 1: things like you know, the War on Terror are sometimes
Speaker 1: brought up as an example of this too, like laser
Speaker 1: focusing on one particular threat, when some might argue that
Speaker 1: if that same amount of energy went into other things,
Speaker 1: then you would have you know, it would it would
Speaker 1: result in greater safety. Um, and perhaps in a more
Speaker 1: meaningful sense. Right. There's also risk compensation theory, which holds
Speaker 1: that people adjust their behavior your in response to perceived
Speaker 1: risk levels. If they feel protected, they tend to be
Speaker 1: less careful. The more risks they perceive, the more careful
Speaker 1: they become. Um, And I was I was reading that,
Speaker 1: like one interpretation of this has to do with um,
Speaker 1: you know, like like safety gear and things like skydiving
Speaker 1: where uh like skydiving from a methods and material since
Speaker 1: it has become increasingly safer to do. But that means
Speaker 1: people feel safer skydiving and they're more likely to take
Speaker 1: certain risks that sort of thing. It also reminds me
Speaker 1: of insights that I've read about climbing, where like, like
Speaker 1: you know, mountain climbing, where the danger is not the
Speaker 1: part where you're you're hyper focused on every little thing
Speaker 1: you do. It's when certain actions become kind of automatic
Speaker 1: and you kind of I guess to a certain extent
Speaker 1: you feel safe. Um, you know you're going to be
Speaker 1: more careful if you feel the danger. But but coming
Speaker 1: back to this, this idea of a risk compensation theory,
Speaker 1: I was wondering how it might equate to the guild.
Speaker 1: So via their abilities, they're constantly not only confronting simulations
Speaker 1: of possible doom, which of course us normal humans do
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, we engage in in um
Speaker 1: in simulating possible outcomes uh that are positive, but also
Speaker 1: ones that are negative, and that can lead into a
Speaker 1: sort of fantasizing about potential doom. But the Guild they
Speaker 1: seem to go beyond that. They have actual visions of
Speaker 1: dooms that they have to cleverly dodge as they navigate um,
Speaker 1: either you know, through space travel or politically. So do
Speaker 1: they end up giving into these visions of doom and
Speaker 1: grow increasingly careful, or at least in some cases, do
Speaker 1: they feel safe and protected by their use of the spice?
Speaker 1: I think I think probably with the Space and Guild,
Speaker 1: we're talking about the overly careful side of things here.
Speaker 1: That seems to be in keeping with the safest path
Speaker 1: of the Guild and so forth in the way they're characterized.
Speaker 1: But perhaps the comfort afforded by the spice allows them
Speaker 1: to engage in some bolder maneuvers, at least so far
Speaker 1: as it doesn't threaten the supply of spice um. It
Speaker 1: seems to be a constant. Anything that threatens the spice,
Speaker 1: that's just a no go, like like almost zero zero
Speaker 1: risk can be taken when it comes to that supply chain. Right.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting with the Beni Jester in the Space
Speaker 1: and Guild um because on a very basic level, and
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the great things about done
Speaker 1: is that you can look at it at different levels.
Speaker 1: On one level, it's like these are just the sci
Speaker 1: fi magic versus sci fi science, right, it's which is
Speaker 1: versus um techno wizards of a sort you know, um.
Speaker 1: But then it also it goes a lot deeper than that.
Speaker 1: It gets into like the ways they think, um, you know,
Speaker 1: short term and long term thinking and how they engage
Speaker 1: in risk, etcetera. Yeah, I didn't think about that. So
Speaker 1: you're setting up the contrast that the Beni Jess being
Speaker 1: concerned with politics, are very they're very much engaged in
Speaker 1: long term strategic thinking, whereas the Spacing Guild being very
Speaker 1: immediate task oriented or just like they're thinking one step
Speaker 1: ahead always. Yeah, like the Been Adjustment, for instance, we're told,
Speaker 1: you know that they will actually make sure that things
Speaker 1: are inserted into native religions on various worlds. Uh. That
Speaker 1: give them an out that like like oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: in our in our traditions, it does say that if
Speaker 1: a um, if a strange woman from another planet shows up,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to give her a spaceship. You know, um
Speaker 1: come in handy a thousand years from now. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: might come in handy a thousand years from now. So
Speaker 1: we're going to do it. Um. Whereas the Guild, they
Speaker 1: would be asking different questions. They're like, well does that
Speaker 1: what does it mean for our survival one minute from now?
Speaker 1: And what does it mean regarding our supply of the spice?
Speaker 1: And I saw some papers online. I didn't really get
Speaker 1: into these so much, but there was one I noticed
Speaker 1: that was looking at themes of addiction in Dune and
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. Um. You know, because they both
Speaker 1: deal with I guess addiction to some extent. You say
Speaker 1: that that the Ring is an addiction, the power that
Speaker 1: comes with the Ring as an addiction. And of course
Speaker 1: the Guild is in a very real sense addicted to
Speaker 1: the spice. Um but um and and and makes its
Speaker 1: its choices in the way that I guess could be
Speaker 1: comparable to some sort of personal addiction level. Uh. Any rate,
Speaker 1: there's just another example of all the different levels at
Speaker 1: which you might engage with Dune. Got to engage them all,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, we're gonna go ahead and close it
Speaker 1: out there. I think this will be it for for
Speaker 1: this journey into the Done universe. But hey, when Dune
Speaker 1: Part two comes out, maybe we'll dive back in. Maybe
Speaker 1: it'll be something else we get a hanker in to discuss. Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will be more, and of course we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from everyone out there. You have insight
Speaker 1: into any of this based on your own experience with
Speaker 1: the the Done universe, no matter which path that ends
Speaker 1: up taking. You know, the original novels, the sequels and prequels,
Speaker 1: the movies, the video games. It didn't even into the
Speaker 1: video games. Oh yeah, there's like a Commanding Conqueror style game,
Speaker 1: but it was Dune. Yeah, various real time strategy type things.
Speaker 1: I never actually played any of them, but but I've
Speaker 1: remember looking at stuff about them and they look cool. Um.
Speaker 1: There's also a big board game presence. There's, of course,
Speaker 1: the classic Done board game, which I I Um, I
Speaker 1: got a copy of Man and I got it during
Speaker 1: the pandemic, so it's it's never been played, and they're
Speaker 1: they're a couple of of newer Doune board games that
Speaker 1: also look very exciting, especially since they both have a
Speaker 1: single player modes, which you know is certainly a little
Speaker 1: easier to achieve, if maybe not as socially engaging. Anyway,
Speaker 1: whatever your experience, if you have thoughts right in, we'd
Speaker 1: love to hear from you. In the meantimes. You'd like
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: you can find them in the Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed You'll get that wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: We have core episodes on two season, Thursday's Listener, Mail
Speaker 1: on Monday's Artifact on Wednesday, and on Friday we do
Speaker 1: a little weird house cinema. That's our time to set
Speaker 1: aside most of the serious concerns and just talk about
Speaker 1: a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our excellent
Speaker 1: audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or
Speaker 1: just to say ooh, you can email us at contact.
Speaker 1: That's Stuff to Blow your Mind podcasts. Stuff to Blow
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