Mentat

A Mentat was a profession and a discipline developed to replace the computers and thinking machines outlawed by the Butlerian Jihad, which forbade the making of any machine in the likeness of a human mind. In the same way that the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild took up functions once served by the thinking machines, the Mentats became living calculators, their minds trained into instruments of cognition that surpassed even the machines they replaced.

Origins after the Jihad#

In the aftermath of the Butlerian Jihad, computers and all forms of thinking technology were outlawed under the commandment against making a machine in the likeness of a human mind, and the penalty for possessing such a device was immediate death. To fill the gap left by the banned machines, humans were trained as their replacements. Gilbertus Albans displayed the first cognitive and computer-like calculating capacity necessary for the role and founded the Order of Mentats. As with the all-female Bene Gesserit and the Guild of Navigators, the Mentats took up functions that the thinking machines had covered before the Jihad.

The discipline#

The role of Mentat demanded both a natural degree of mental ability and strict conditioning, and the talent was limited to a small number of people. Not all Mentats were of equal power, but those with the discipline were prized in whatever role they chose and could readily find employment with one of the power brokers of the Known Universe. Unlike computers, Mentats were not merely calculators. Beyond immense mathematical skill they possessed exceptional memory and perception, the foundations for supralogical hypothesizing, strategizing, and tacticizing, in which they surpassed even the pre-Jihad thinking machines.

The heart of the discipline was the cultivation of the naive mind, a supralogical mind without preconception or prejudice, one able to extract the essential patterns of data and deliver useful conclusions with varying degrees of certainty. When a highly skilled Mentat such as the first Duncan Idaho ghola or Miles Teg was supplied with sufficient data, this process allowed the deduction of probable future outcomes, an approximation of prescience with somewhat less clarity. A Mentat's powers could be greatly heightened by sapho juice, extracted from the root of the Ecaz tree, which doubled or tripled processing power but led to addiction and stained the user's lips a telltale red.

Service to the Houses and the Sisterhood#

Mentats were used extensively by the Great Houses, primarily as political advisors during the era before the rise of the God-Emperor. Their vast memories and their capacity to organize enormous quantities of data delivered insights that would otherwise have been lost, and limited Mentat training was often given to individuals destined for political or military command. Thufir Hawat was among the few whose innate Mentat abilities were great enough to serve as an exclusive advisor to House Atreides, his capabilities feared even by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam Corrino IV. Many leaders, including Paul Atreides, the Duncan Idaho gholas, and Miles Teg, underwent some form of Mentat training.

The Bene Gesserit also employed Mentats, though to a lesser extent. Unlike those serving the Great Houses, all Bene Gesserit Mentats, such as Tertius Eileen Anteac and Bellonda, were pre-conditioned Reverend Mothers, combining the order's own disciplines with the analytic power of the Mentat.

Twisted Mentats#

A Mentat was required to operate within an ethical framework, a constraint that for some purposes was unwelcome. The Bene Tleilax were therefore known to condition certain Mentats to be twisted, freeing their supralogical hypothesizing, strategizing, and tacticizing from any ethical restraint. Piter de Vries, the Twisted Mentat in the service of the Harkonnens, was the most infamous of these, his intellect unbound by conscience.

Suppression and survival#

The ascendancy of Leto Atreides II to the title of God-Emperor brought new problems for the Mentat order, as it did for the Spacing Guild and the Bene Gesserit. Leto's extraordinarily long life and his single-minded pursuit of the Golden Path saw him hoard the spice melange with little regard for short-term consequences, and across his three and a half thousand year reign the Order of Mentats formed a nucleus of independent opposition. Like many other groups they were dispersed in the Scattering. Leto outlawed the Mentats and crushed any renegade training schools he found, yet the art itself was never eliminated. It survived through underground schools, preserved by the Bene Gesserit, who assumed that Leto knew of their work and chose to permit it.