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Are you familiar with the old motorcycle line about there being two types of riders, those who have gone down, and those who will.
The meaning and value of such a statement isn't so much in it's literal semantic content so much as what follows from it. You may have never had a wreck, but that just means that you're due. Every time you ride you are rolling the dice, and if you keep rolling dice eventually you are going to roll snake-eyes. To dismiss it as offering no predictive value on a given dice-roll is to completely miss the point.
In their addendum @FCfromSSC posits a specific mechanism by which "Good times make weak men, and weak men make hard times", that being the unmooring of status and rewards from performance. In doing so they provide a valuable insight into precisely what it is they mean by "good times" and "bad times", and by "strong" and "weak". Through FC's addendum we can even derive a possible working definition of the term "Decadence" IE the degree to which status is no longer reflective of performance. This greatly narrows the scope of the debate, and presents us with possible examples both fictional and historical to play with.
Of course this addendum is problematic for Devereaux and his supporters as by offering a mechanism and the merest hint of a definition FC has shot the whole "Decadence lacks a coherent definition" argument to pieces.
Please point to the specific place where @FCfromSSC stated anything to the effect that something being "inspiring" was the same as it being "true".
I assume you included the qualifier "In the main series" because you were aware that Devereaux had devoted an entire interlude to how poor and unsophisticated the Fremen are, and wanted to cover your ass in case I brought it up.
I reiterate my position that Devereaux is attacking a strawman, and by extension I believe that you, @self_made_human, are attacking a strawman. I don't really see what else there is to say.
The leading cause of death was being alive in the first place. Cautioning against the risk of motorcycle accidents is based on decades of actuarial information and comparisons to the relative and absolute risk from other forms of transport. If FC was able to muster up that kind of information, I would not be making this argument.
Please note that I am making an additional claim. I do not dispute that it is inspirational, many things are inspirational. I dispute that it is true or helpful. You can inspire people to do stupid things.
I am flattered that you think I care about arguing about Dune that much, or covering my ass beyond the pants I wear with regularity. Devereaux points out the poverty of Fremen, in comparison to the other powers in the setting. Them being stronger than outsiders believe is mildly interesting in-universe, but it adds fuck all to the Hard Times thesis.
I notice you edited out your reference to being a patent lawyer. I never could have guessed.
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