Leto's aim appears to have been the gradual destruction of The Order, beginning by progressively weakening it: his many Duncan Idahos were charged with surveillance of all known Mentat Advisors; lower-ranking Mentats were required to register with planetary governors and secure special permission to travel between planets; the Spacing Guild (fearing loss of its spice allowance) often refused even reasonable Mentat requests. This harassment climaxed with the infamous report of Idaho-11736, which accused the Order of responsibility for the disasters that befell many Houses Major at the end of the Corrino dynasty. In carefully orchestrated horror at the report, Leto outlawed Mentat training in 11745. Within ninety years all known Mentats, including those in probationary training, had died, and the Fish Speakers sealed the vacant Order House on Tleilax for two hundred years.
The House was later reopened as a museum, but Leto did not extend his toleration of Museum Fremen to allow the establishment of Museum Mentats. Nevertheless, when the public was permitted access to the House, no papers, manuals, or instructional guides were found among the records. To date, the only Mentat material found among the Rakis Hoard is a transcription of a mutilated, partial copy of the Mentat Handbook. There remains the possibility, never actually confirmed or denied, that the Bene Gesserit had stolen the missing material to incorporate Mentat training into their own programs.
By an irony of history, Leto II was once forced to rely on B.G. Reverend Mother Anteac, who, contrary to Leto's order, was alleged to be a fully trained Mentat Advisor. In the last year of his life, Leto asked Anteac to undertake a journey to the planet Ix. She died there without reporting to her Mother House either the nature or the result of that mission. The irony is double if indeed Anteac, a woman, was the last of the Mentats.
P.F.
Further references: MENTAT ORGANIZATION; PITER DE VRIES; Dondar Kooreeg, The Rise and Fall of the Order of Mentats, 2 v. (Centralia: Johun University Press).
MENTAT ORGANIZATION
The name "Mentat" is derived from mentis, meaning "of the mind" in Latin, an ancient Terran language. The founder of the Order of Mentats, Gilbertus Albans (1192-1294), a logician and philosopher of interstellar repute, coined the term to refer to those fully trained and proficient in the techniques he prescribed for the Order. For thousands of years, society thought of Mentats as the embodiment of logic and reason.
CHARACTERISTICS. A Mentat adept could be characterized as (a) a human in the generic, Bene Gesserit sense (although the Sisterhood would deny it violently), i.e., "an animal with reason and logic"; (b) an expert in all methods of logic and inference; (c) a conceptual generalist, in contrast to specialists in narrow areas; and (d) one possessing a quasi-truth-sense based not on prescience but on inference.
The Mentat adept was capable of achieving remarkable inferential linkages and gestalten spasms of pure insight, but usually only when deep in a Mentat-trance. Some allege that the so-called Mentat-trance was merely a dramatic device used to make the Mentat appear more impressive. But the subjective reports of scores of Mentats and the objective evidence of hundreds of studies all point to the authenticity of the trance. The eyes glazed, the voice-intonation flattened, and awareness appeared to be turned inward.
Perhaps because of their apparent need to rely on this isolating trance-stale for higher percentages of accuracy, Mentats historically failed as leaders. There is hardly a case on record of a Mentat succeeding as an entrepreneur, a politician, or a soldier. Some have even argued that Paul Muad'Dib himself was partly unsuccessful because he tried too often to approach complex social and political problems only as a Mentat. But his case is atypical, for he never officially studied in an Order-approved program. A supporting argument is that leadership is a matter of temperament, not reasoning ability. Indeed, the effective leader must often make intuitive decisions in the absence of complete data. Mentats — human computers — are trained to avoid such judgments when at all possible. Thus, a good emperor, duke, general, or director acts because a decision must be made, but a Mentat delays because a decision should not be made.
MENTAT RANKS. From the earliest days of the Order, Gilbertus Albans saw little connection between skill as a leader and excellence as a Mentat. Therefore, in naming the six ranks of Mentats, Albans avoided titles that suggested action (such as "president," "director," "manager," and the like) in favor of titles that emphasized processes and relationships. The three junior ranks were named, in ascending order, Memorizer, Processor, and Hypothesist. The three senior ranks, developed about seventeen years later, were Generalist, Simulationist, and Advisor.
Prospective Mentats were required to have both the inner predisposition necessary to make the training effective, and what Albans referred to as "a call to reason" to make the discipline tolerable. Given these qualities, following a solemn decision and much preliminary training, the initiate would be welcomed into the actual program as a novice Memorizer.
MINOR ORDERS. Memorizer. The fully prepared Memorizer was capable of retaining both related and unrelated information. The final test involved absorbing a series of 2 x 104 numbers or letters and reproducing them in correct sequence, duplicating the same timing or spacing as the original. Memorizers were able to repeat entire books from recall. They were able to replicate spatial configurations, such as the layout of a city after having seen the place (or plans of it) only once. Their chief accomplishment, however, was the ability to repeat conversations word for word from start to finish, mimicking the cadence and vocal inflection of each participant. Albans worked hardest to help young memorizers avoid what he called the "Babble Problem" — becoming overwhelmed by the minutiae of data. The best defense against Babble was further training to categorize the data.
CHOAM directors especially appreciated the record-keeping ability of memorizers, particularly since the Butlerian Jihad had destroyed the most efficient means of storing the voluminous records of interplanetary commerce. But Gilbertus Albans refused to sell Mentats who were "merely memorizers," as he put it. The minimum rank required before a Mentat could be sold, even for routine CHOAM use, was that of Hypothesist. Albans was not blind to the economic value of his trainees, but even in the hardest, poorest early years he refused to compromise his standards. He insisted that "a public representative of our Order must be able to do more than just sponge up data, chew on it, and blat it out in unhelpful chunks."1
Processor. Processors learned to combine, divide, sort, and file pieces of discrete information with 99.99985 percent accuracy per 10,000 items. They were capable of introducing order and regularity to seemingly unrelated sets of information. Albans noted that the clear danger to Processors was that the order they introduced might or might not accord with reality. Thus, Processors were trained to attempt first to use the categories and labels that others provided. The sorting, sifting, and retrieving of information, as well as the ability to connect it with specific names, places, or events, was valuable beyond estimation in the anti-computer culture of the times.
Hypothesist. Hypothesists were trained to extrapolate from information to alternative explanations of the causes or the effects of that information. Hypothesists often prided themselves on the number of differing interpretations they could see in a set of events. A sample question: "How many motives might Muad'Dib have had for walking into the desert?" might produce as many as seven possible reasons for his action. The Hypothesist would naturally provide his master with at least a two-place ranking of the likelihood of the interpretations he offered. The primary hypothesis was 92 to 98 percent reliable.
Mentats of Hypothesist rank and higher, incidentally, were barred from official Cheops competition, for obvious reasons, but they enjoyed no special advantage at games of chance: suppose that a roulette globe was imperfectly suspended, causing its operation to vary from strict randomness. Given a sufficiently large record of results of the globe, a Hypothesist could easily have ranked the likelihood of successive spins, but the assembling of the record would have required a lifetime spen
t at the gaming tables.
Commercially, Hypothesists could be used to speculate on future market conditions, commodity prices, outcomes of various economic tactics, and likely changes in consumption of planets and populations.
MAJOR ORDERS. The three senior ranks of Mentats were announced seventeen years after Albans first presented his Hypothesists to the worlds. Two factors influenced his decision to expand Mentat training. The first Mentat Hypothesists went to CHOAM, but Albans realized that his graduates could be remarkably useful to governments, but not just in the bureaucratic tasks that the juniors could fill. Planetary governors, heads of Houses, generals, and politicians would all welcome reliable, objective, loyal, discreet, and accurate advisors. Junior-rank Mentats could not fill this need.
Factor number two was Grodon Orpar Playt III (1186-1272), the ex-CHOAM director who joined the order and revised the Mentat Handbook to include the three senior ranks of Generalist, Simulationist, and Advisor. Playt's Handbook was used, virtually unchanged, through the history of the Order of Mentats.
Generalist. If Processors seemed innocent and accepting, Generalists appeared haughty and pedantic. Generalists overcame the naive literalism of the junior orders by "bringing to decision making a healthy common sense,"2 but in achieving awareness of the "broad sweep of what is happening in his universe" (and note the relativism of "his universe"), the Generalist risked believing himself supreme in his encyclopedic store of knowledge.
Generalists were expected to possess broad and accurate knowledge of at least 94.75 percent of everything occurring in "his universe"; this knowledge, joined to the confidence-building Mentat training, led many a Generalist to annoy his comrades with an overblown sense of his own superiority. The Handbook warned that principles of expertise can change, that no one can catalogue all knowledge, and that the Generalist was himself part of the set of phenomena to be learned. But even with these caveats, Generalists were very difficult people to work with.
Simulationist, Mentats who freed their reasoning from dependence on absolutes, and who could correct for assumptions hidden in another's inferences achieved the title of Simulationist. The Simulationist conceived and proposed in detail alternative futures, courses of action, and explanations of events. Economic, political, and military strategy depended heavily on the unfolding of options by Simulationists: a good one could easily offer his master up to ten courses of action, and what is more, infer the dozens of possible consequences of pursuing, altering, combining, or disengaging any of these courses. The Simulationist saw every human being as a set of behavior patterns ready to be orchestrated.
Advisor. Only one novice in twenty achieved the coveted sixth rank, Advisor. Skilled in wisdom and diplomacy, possessing the abilities of all the lower ranks, adding sophistication and understanding, an Advisor was the equal in price and value of a Sardaukar legion or a bloc of CHOAM shares. Advisors planned for the long run, they negotiated delicate matters, they judged matters of life and death. Regularly, a field marshal, a planetary governor, or a CHOAM director would closet himself with an Advisor before taking key actions. A Mentat-Advisor was thought to be able to transform a mediocre ruler into a respected leader, and a better-than-average ruler into a potential emperor. By the 9000s, no Great House lacked a Mentat-Advisor, the death of whom was often disastrous to its fortunes: several years might pass before a suitable replacement could be trained, purchased, briefed, and functioning. Not only were Advisors sometimes unavailable, but long waiting lists and astronomic bidding might further delay replacement.
MENTAT DYSFUNCTION. Mentat-Freeze. Memorizer Babble, Processor naivete, and Generalist pride have been noted above. But other conditions could impair a Mentat’s abilities. Generalists and higher-rank Mentats were vulnerable to a syndrome called "Mentat-Freeze," which sprang from self-doubt. Although taught to transcend the narrowness of specialization, no human being can be entirely free from the element of uncertainty that transcendence implies. Repeated and strenuous questioning of a Mentat's computations did not lead to new computations — those were inferentially determined — but to anxiety about the base of those computations. Senior-rank Mentats were repeatedly warned that wavering was the first step toward the totally disabling Mentat-Freeze. That state halted all Mentat functions permanently unless the doubt could be removed and confidence restored.
The rehabilitation of frozen Mentats consumed a long process of hypnosis, counseling, and the ultimate rebuilding of a personality strengthened to resist self-doubt. So devastating was Mentat-Freeze that the condition, even if recovery was complete, was an insuperable impediment to progress to higher rank. Recuperated fifth and sixth rank Mentats were reduced to appropriate junior levels. Mentats were often haunted by fear of freezing, particularly those who labored alone, far from the protective support of the Order House or other senior Mentats. Self-doubt attacked the solitary Mentat with greater speed and force, and buyers were advised to protect their investment by abstaining from chronic criticism of their Mentats. Several cases are known of Houses trying to freeze a rival's Mentat by feeding false data to undermine his confidence in his data base.
A dangerous strategy for avoiding self-doubt was reliance on absolutes. Mentats naturally preferred known parameters to help establish the limits of inference, and absolutes could increase accuracy by reducing alternatives. Besides lending a feeling of self-assurance, absolutes appealed to Mentats as shortcuts. But the abuse of absolutes was easy and often unnoticed — hypotheses overlooked, options unexplored, fallacious inferences based on wrong assumptions. Playt vigorously countered overdependence on absolutes through exercises in conceived reality with radical differences, e.g., a city without laws, tools designed for feet rather than hands, or a community without division of labor. Such mental gymnastics promoted an awareness of the role of unconscious assumptions and absolutes in Mentat thinking.
Sapho Addiction. Addiction to Sapho, an energizing liquid extracted from Ecaz plants, was a trap to which Simulationists both in training and in the field were most susceptible. Although Sapho amplified speculation and extrapolation, it subjected its users to unpredictable outbursts of emotion or long periods of passivity. The Mentat-addict's lethargy led him to neglect the constant updating of information upon which his accuracy depended. A measurable falling-off in reliability was a better indicator of Sapho addiction than its physical signs — ruby-colored lips, a reddening of the skin — which could be concealed. Rehabilitation was possible, but relapses into the habit were frequent.
Rhajia. For Mentats Rhajia was the song of the sirens. It was the total immersion of the Mentat in the inferential consciousness, and even Albans and Playt, usually so like-minded, disagreed on its nature. Playt called it the "Movement of Infinity," and regarded it as the final stage of the Order, a breaking of the chains of servitude to practicality; but Albans thought it a death-trap: only 30 percent of Mentats who entered rhajia "reawakened"; the other 70 percent became comatose and died. Those surviving reported either no memories whatsoever or the most richly satisfying intellectual experience of their lives. Rumor had it that older Mentats near death would seek rhajia as "The most pleasant passing" a human could be blessed with.
Verbal Dependence. Although not strictly a dysfunction, verbal dependence was a potential weakness in the Mentat system, one first identified by the Bene Gesserit. Always mistrustful of the logic-dependent approach of the rival Order of Mentats yet never attacking its methods openly, the Bene Gesserit secretly spread the word that Mentats could be undermined by self-doubt. Openly, the Bene Gesserit charged that Mentats could not adequately interpret the quality of the data they used. The Sisterhood read the language of the body in the nuance of a blink, a gesture, a shrug, and contrasted their additional channel of information with the Mentat reliance on discursive symbolic systems. The Bene Gesserit maintained that no Mentat could ever provide a full reading, and thus could never offer complete advice. Many lent some credence to the charge, but discounted its importance to a Mentat's
function. The real dispute between the two Orders lay in the epistemology of inference, The nature-nurture controversy, and religious disagreement.
One relied on intuition, the other on reason; one placed its faith in the power of heredity, supported by training, The other in the power of training, aided by heredity; one — an Order tempered in the fire of the Butlerian Jihad — believed most fanatically "Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind," and the other dedicated itself to making human minds in the likeness of machines. Through centuries of mutual mistrust, neither benefited from the accumulated wisdom of the other.
TRAINING. Mentat training began as early as possible, even in infancy if strong potential was noted. Early training stimulated sensory awareness through sound, color, texture, odor, and taste; kinesic's awareness through spinning, rocking, warmth, cold; emotional awareness through fear, joy, anger, love, hate, and security.
During childhood, the future Mentats developed mentally and physically in rigorous, year-round programs. The aim was to broaden the youngster's cognition and to resist specialization. Severe punishment met the child who neglected one study in favor of another: "Everything is important, and nothing is more important than everything" was the motto of the Mentat training school.
A strict and unforgiving disciplinary code promoted Albans' goal that every child be completely self-directed by fifteen. Campus construction and maintenance, the evening silence, the weekly fast, all tasks performed by lowerclassmen and directed and enforced by upperclassmen, who punished breaches with a severity they had learned in their turn from their predecessors. Sports developed strategy as well as physical skill; some, long-distance running, for example, aided the disciplinary code and the six-day-a-week curriculum in either producing a fully ready candidate for the novitiate or in washing him out of the program.
In the final preparatory year, at about fourteen, students were grounded in prepositional and predicate logic, inference, modal deduction, transfinite induction, statistics, multivalent analysis, conceptual synthesis, N-dimensional geometry, formal linguistics, and transcendental phenomenology. These studies provided the mental linkages to accept subsequent Mentat training, should the student succeed in mastering them.
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