Dune and the Lindy effect

This is a definition of The Lindy effect. Nassim Taleb has extensively talked about it in Antifragile:

"If a book has been in print for forty years, I can expect it to be in print for another forty years. But, and that is the main difference, if it survives another decade, then it will be expected to be in print another fifty years. This, simply, as a rule, tells you why things that have been around for a long time are not “aging” like persons, but “aging” in reverse. Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy. This is an indicator of some robustness. The robustness of an item is proportional to its life!"

This concept is connected to the concept of Antifragile, (from the same book):

Antifragile is not simply robustness or strength, it is a concept to define the opposite of fragility (ANTI-fragile): it defines things that get stronger after a shock, instead of getting weaker or breaking up like fragile things do. Antifragile obviously doesn’t have the same meaning as robustness.

There is a link between Antifragility and the Lindy effect: things that are Lindy tend to be Antifragile because their antifragility is what aided those in their survival for such a long time. Things that are Antifragile have a bigger chance of becoming Lindy than things that aren’t.

I bet you know about the Dune movies. Unfortunately, they will not include all the Dune saga but just the first books. (In my opinion the level of quality and deepness of Frank Herbert’s Dune books is parabolic: the first is not so good, it gets better and better until the fourth, then the next ones are worse and worse.) Anyways, you have noticed that the setting seems strange: there is this mix between the past and the future and that’s what makes it fascinating. Star Wars setting has lots of concepts from the past too, in fact it is because it was inspired by Dune. The official reason for this past-future mix is because Frank Herbert is describing a post-apocalyptic world: where the humanity has banned AI and all types of intelligent machines because of the destruction brought by the Butlerian Wars: human – AI wars (humans won and survived).

The unofficial reason is that it is very difficult to envision psychological, sociological and political novel structures in a sci-fi setting. We all easily imagine strange futuristic cities and gadgets based on our wishes and imagination but we find it hard to imagine a humanity that is essentially very different from our current humanity, if we were able to imagine such things the world would already be a different place. But to imagine new ways of thinking, doing, living and believing is something not every sci-fi writer is able to do.

But still, there are some interesting insights you can find in the Dune sociological and political setting.

I believe Herbert tried to envision what aspects of humanity would change in a very distant future and what will not. What aspects from the past and the present are likely to perish in the future and what other aspects are likely to survive. 

The Dune setting is in my opinion a result of a reflection: a reflection about human nature, culture and traditions, politics and diplomacy, and mostly, about human relationship with nature and climate and the consequences of this relationship in our way of living and our political structure.

I will not give many definite truths in this short essay. I’m unsure about what the truth is. This short essay is about questions, not answers. I’m using Dune as an example to open the reader to a reflection: a reflection about what is antifragile and/or Lindy and what it isn’t.

Let’s use Dune to pick some examples:

Power

First, In Dune there is a lot of inequality, hierarchy and violence. The political setting is far less democratic than our actual setting and the Universe is even more unequal and hierarchical than our actual world.

Are inequality, hierarchy and violence Antifragile and/or Lindy? I think hierarchy and violence are Lindy, those are not just historic, those are pre-historic. Never has existed a human tribe or society without those. Are they Antifragile?

In my opinion, yes, violence is antifragile: to defeat violence you need to use violence. For the same reason, hierarchy is antifragile too: how can you destroy a hierarchical structure without using the instrument that has generated hierarchy from the start: power. Since there is this law about power that power leaves no empty spaces, hierarchy becomes antifragile because of this rule: trying to break hierarchy or violence becomes paradoxical. In Dune there is a lot of power plays, all politics in the story is about power plays, is this true in real life too? If hierarchy is antifragile, can there really exist a truly democratic political setting where each person’s preference (vote) counts equally? In our actual reality for the majority of people one preference equals one vote, but for a powerful minority one preference equals a lot of influence on other people: therefore, it counts as more than one vote. Democracy is not Lindy and probably it neither is antifragile (does breaking democracy increase democracy?).

What about inequality? Is inequality Lindy? Does the rule of power affect equality in the same way it affects hierarchy, by making it antifragile? Do attempts to decrease inequality in a society succeed or they just end up increasing it? Not sure about how to answer these questions. I don’t even know how to answer the question ’is inequality Lindy?’ because I don’t know how to interpret inequality in pre-historical tribes. In Dune there is a tribe that is similar to our old tribes: the Fremen. The Fremen tribe is violent and hierarchical, but it is less unequal than other tribes (societies) that are richer and more technologically advanced. Why is it that? Is it because of their nature or is it because of their poverty and lack of technology? This was an important reflection point for Herbert: Dune tells the story that humans are basically very similar; it is their condition: their level of wealth and technology that generates their system of beliefs, culture, values, the way they live and interact with each other, and the political and diplomatic structure they build. The Fremen culture and system of values appears as a consequence of their (very poor) condition. When such condition changes their culture changes too (spoiler of subsequent Dune books, you will not realize this in the first book).

You could argue that Herbert chose to define a hierarchical, violent and unequal setting in Dune because it is the logical consequence of lack of intelligent machines. Since the level of technology in Dune is not very different from our actual level of technology (except space travel) then the political settings mustn’t be very different from our actual real political setting. In fact many people believe that technology such as the AI may definitely change the way humanity lives by destroying even things such as hierarchy, violence or inequality. I personally do not agree I think the only aspect that might radically change humanity is the lack of scarcity. This is a concept you can find in Dune too: there is a lot of conflict and power plays because there is scarcity: nobody knows for how much time the Spice, the fundamental resource of the Universe (that resource makes space travel happen), will still be available.

Tribes

Are tribes Lindy? Specific tribes are not Lindy in my opinion, they die and other tribes take their place. But is the tribal organizational system Lindy? I believe yes because humans have always lived divided in tribes, in history and pre-history. This is an important point because it is very trendy in our times. Many people believe tribes are a thing of the past and in the future we will all be mixed up in a sort of entropic global tribe where everybody inside it is different. Dune is about a remote future of thousands of years, maybe even hundreds of thousands of years, and humans still live in tribes. In my opinion there is no reason to believe technology such as the AI has much to do with this point. This is more related to the scarcity of the Spice: people cannot afford space travel and a technology such as the actual media doesn’t seem to exist (as far as I understood)! Therefore, each planet is its own bubble. But there are tribes inside one planet and there are multi-planetary tribes (those who can afford space travel). And Herbert puts a lot of emphasis on tribes. Why is it that? Is it because of lack of imagination? Is it because he made some metaphor of reality? Or is it just because tribes are fun to read?

As I already said the tribal system is Lindy, but is it antifragile? What happens when you try to break up a tribal world, when you try to make everyone adhere to some global standards and then mix up everyone as in the actual multi-cultural societies where each individual is either similar and different to the each other. Does it work? Or does it just increase the level of tribality?

Religion

In Dune there is a lot about religion. No religion actually existent has survived: there is no Christianity, Hinduism or Islam. But all the patterns typical to Religion are alive: superstitions, myths, rites, beliefs, rules. All the societies: from Fremen the least wealthy to the wealthiest have some sort of Religion. Each tribe has its culture and belief system. Tribes that are like cults have esoteric religions (Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilax). Tribes that are not cults, like the Fremen, have religions that they think should be imposed to everyone else. In my opinion it makes perfectly sense, that’s how real life is, cults don’t want to impose their beliefs to everybody else. The basic concept of Religion in cults is informational advantage: for example, Bene Gesserit’s job is all about gaining and exploiting informational advantage.

I don’t think any specific Religion is Lindy: in history and pre-history Religions die to be replaced by other Religions, exactly as tribes. But I believe religious thinking in generally is Lindy. There is no society that is totally atheistic, there has never been.

Is religious thinking antifragile? If you try to break what constitutes a religion: superstitions, myths, rites, beliefs and rules in a society what happens? Does it become less or more religious? Is there a rule of religious thinking as there is a rule of power: that religious thinking, like power, does not leave empty spaces? Personally I believe religious thinking very rarely can leave empty spaces.