“Dune Notes”, Gwern2010-10-18 (Dune)⁠:

Observations on Frank Herbert’s Dune series—the notes are probably overstated, the Butlerian Jihad was not a robot uprising seeking to exterminate humanity, and precognition/prescience in the Dune universe appears to work backwards allowing for retro-causality and stable time-loops as exemplified by Leto II’s Golden Path creating Paul Atreides and the events of Dune.

• Notes For Dune 7
  • The Terrible Duo
  • Skepticism
  • Butlerian Jihad
• The Golden Path
  • Scattering over Multiple Universes
• The Bene Gesserit’s Goals
• The Real Story
  • Projections Of Dune 7
  • My Own Analysis
• The Empire
• Paul Is a Coward
• Genetics and Eugenics in Frank Herbert’s Dune