This is a special post for quick takes by Alexander. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
[Minor spoiler alert] I've been obsessed with Dune lately. I watched the movie and read the book and loved both. Dune contains many subtle elements of rationality and x-risks despite the overall mythological/religious theme. Here are my interpretations: the goal of the Bene Gesserit is to selectively breed a perfect Bayesian who can help humanity find the Golden Path. The Golden Path is the narrow set of futures that don't result in an extinction event. The Dune world is mysteriously and powerfully seductive.
I think you're reading that into it. No one before Leto II shows any awareness of Kralizec or the inevitable extinction of humanity at the hands of prescient machines invented by the Ixians (and given the retroactive prescience dynamics, unclear if anyone even could). The BG's stated goals are always to make humanity grow up into 'adults', equipped for the challenges of a radically open infinite universe; this ultimately contributes to Leto's plans, but that was not the BG's intention, and they were pawns of prescience starting before Dune when Paul retroc... (read more)