42 KiB
A Few Notes on the Culture, by Iain M Banks
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Author: u/None *
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URL:
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Score: 14
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Created: 2015-08-21T23:46:32
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Comments:
u/eniteris [+8] (4 hours later)
There are no words to describe my sadness.
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
The Culture is interesting in some ways. It definitely features a much higher standard of living than our world. However, it is a system where humans are almost the pets of AIs with brains the size of planets (metaphorically speaking of course, the actual brains being in hyperspace, with measurements incomparable to planets in the strictest sense). Banks contrives to produce situations in which humans rather than Minds are required, but really, a Mind could probably create a meatsack drone whenever it really needed to.
Furthermore, I can't recall any Culture novels about what happens in the Culture featuring only people from the Culture. It's all Contact missions to distant civilizations, or memories of civil wars that the Culture is responsible for but happen in other polities, or...
As an aside on Banks, I'm reading Look to Windward right now. The first female character introduced is fridged in the first chapter, and other female characters tend not to last more than one scene. Meanwhile we've got the story of bunches of men. Player of Games is big on rape as a sign of evil. This obviously doesn't mean that Banks was evil and you are evil to enjoy his writing, but these are problems that it is beneficial to be aware of.
u/redrach [+3] (22 hours later)
However, it is a system where humans are almost the pets of AIs with brains the size of planets
I think it's better to look at the relationship between humanity and the Minds as more of a grandparent-grandchild thing.
Banks contrives to produce situations in which humans rather than Minds are required, but really, a Mind could probably create a meatsack drone whenever it really needed to.
Sure, but I don't see the problem there. In other stories if everything a human could do can be done better by another human it still doesn't take away from the fact that the former chose to take action and put himself at risk.
The first female character introduced is fridged in the first chapter, and other female characters tend not to last more than one scene. Meanwhile we've got the story of bunches of men.
The last three books all have female leads. It's also made pretty clear that the Culture views gender very differently than we do, since anyone can change their sex on a whim.
u/None [+6] (23 hours later)
I think it's better to look at the relationship between humanity and the Minds as more of a grandparent-grandchild thing.
Where the grandchildren are generally short-lived and will almost certainly never grow up to be anywhere near as competent as the grandparent.
Sure, but I don't see the problem there. In other stories if everything a human could do can be done better by another human it still doesn't take away from the fact that the former chose to take action and put himself at risk.
It's a problem for the motivations of the people in the stories when they care about victory.
Our orbital is being attacked. We actually want to defeat the attackers and as efficiently as possible. We send out small fighters. Do we include a human in them? Having the human there as a passenger means the ship has to be much more complicated because humans are squishy, which means more resources per ship, which means we're less likely to win. Having the humans pilot the ship in place of an AI means the ship performs much worse in combat. So if I'm a human who cares about the outcome of the fight, it is my duty not to ask to pilot a fighter or board one as a passenger. (One of the books has a scenario much like this, if I recall correctly.)
The Culture has contacted an empire in which rank is determined by how well you play a complex board game. Contact says we want to send a representative and the best outcome is if we perform well but lose convincingly. Or if we win decisively. Or... We can send our best human boardgame player, give them full Contact training, teach them the game, and hope for the best. Or we can disguise a ridiculously smart AI as a human and send them instead, and it'll be child's play to them. If I were the human they wanted to send in, I would cry in despair if they hadn't thought of that option and cry more if they thought that sending me was a better option, all else being equal. (This is the entire plot of Player of Games, and throughout the book, the ship that the protagonist rode on was capable of soundly defeating him in the game.)
Only in cases where victory is absolutely assured, or nearly so, would you sensibly risk sending in a human. Or if you're dealing with bigots who can detect a Mind.
The last three books all have female leads.
Surface Detail features a female protagonist who grew up as a slave and was subjected to repeated rape. It's like, is there some disease going around that makes authors unable to fathom the idea that women can be hurt in ways other than rape? (Hyperbole, yes, but not by much.)
u/redrach [+6] (a day later)
Where the grandchildren are generally short-lived and will almost certainly never grow up to be anywhere near as competent as the grandparent.
You misunderstand, I meant that the AI are the grandchildren in this analogy. They think of humans fondly but are aware of their limitations, as someone would think about their elderly grandparents.
Our orbital is being attacked. We actually want to defeat the attackers and as efficiently as possible. We send out small fighters. Do we include a human in them?
No, and the Culture don't either. Whenever humans are present on ships in a combat scenario it's always treated as an unfortunate event that has to be dealt with.
Or we can disguise a ridiculously smart AI as a human and send them instead, and it'll be child's play to them
I always figured that the Azadians were capable of distinguishing between Avatars and humans.
Surface Detail features a female protagonist who grew up as a slave and was subjected to repeated rape.
Are any and all depictions of rape in fiction inherently anti-feminist? Even if the perpetrator has been portrayed to be a despicable person who eventually gets his comeuppance?
I can understand having an aversion to reading about rape, but to claim that just having it in a story is a flaw in and of itself seems a bit much.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Are any and all depictions of rape in fiction inherently anti-feminist?
Need a woman to suffer? Have her be raped. Need a man to suffer? Rape's never an option. That is anti-feminist (as well as a terribly over-used trope).
u/MugaSofer [+4] (a day later)
Actually, a guy is raped in one of the Culture books.
It's done by a Mind, never brought up again, and I am not Literature enough to pass judgement on whether it's treated as a Proper Morally Bad Thing by the text.
u/None [+2] (23 hours later)
(This is the entire plot of Player of Games, and throughout the book, the ship that the protagonist rode on was capable of soundly defeating him in the game.)
The Culture weren't really trying to conquer the Empire of Azad, though. What they were trying to do was demonstrate their victory to be inevitable. As the drone more-or-less put it, "We can coincidentally cough someone up who can defeat your empire's best, by your own standards, without serious effort. Muda muda muda."
u/None [+1] (23 hours later)
Ironically, they spent considerably more effort getting the human they chose than if they had used the least capable Mind in the Culture.
u/None [+1] (23 hours later)
I'm fairly sure Culture Minds can't fit into human-scale bodies.
u/Empiricist_or_not [+2] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (a day later)
They don't, but they do have avatars for that.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Oh right, the guy in Excession had sex with one.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Yet they have human-sized avatars and smaller.
u/Yuridice [+1] (a day later)
Surface Detail features a female protagonist who grew up as a slave and was subjected to repeated rape. It's like, is there some disease going around that makes authors unable to fathom the idea that women can be hurt in ways other than rape? (Hyperbole, yes, but not by much.)
She is hurt in ways other than rape, if anything, from her perspective, rape is one of the less significant elements of her suffering.
u/None [+0] (a day later)
Right, she's raped in the backstory and murdered in narration. Unusually, she's not murdered immediately after rape because her rapist is done with her; she's murdered after running away because keeping her to rape more often is more trouble than it's worth.
Including rape is rubbing salt in the wounds of the twenty million potential readers who have been raped in the US alone. Rape is one of the leading causes of PTSD, too, so it's not just a slightly unpleasant memory that the text brings up. And as you said, it wasn't important to the story. So it was egregious to use rape.
Rape is a rather gendered crime -- women are significantly more likely to be raped than men. In the media, this imbalance is vastly exaggerated. It's extremely rare for an author to portray a man being raped. So by default I take any depiction of rape with a woman as a victim as an indication of sexism.
Banks did, I think, have masculine characters being raped in Player of Games; however, that was with a much higher depravity level. It was designed to cause revulsion toward the entire culture. In Surface Detail it feels like rape is more or less an expected aspect of slavery for women.
Sexism as an aspect of the world in speculative fiction is much more depressing to me because it tends to indicate that the author cannot imagine a world without sexism, as if it were as inevitable as entropy.
u/Yuridice [+4] (a day later)
And as you said, it wasn't important to the story.
No, I said it was one of the less significant elements of her suffering. It's important to the story, because while intagliation and everything that comes with it is obviously rather awful, sexual servitude isn't supposed to come into the bargain despite slavery. So Veppers' rape of Y'breq shows that he isn't merely being a bad dude in ways that are considered normal and unproblematic by the society in which he lives, but even by the standards of the society he is in, he is a bad dude. It also isn't the only way this is shown, what with the hells, his business ventures, murders, etc.
Including rape is rubbing salt in the wounds of the twenty million potential readers who have been raped in the US alone. Rape is one of the leading causes of PTSD, too, so it's not just a slightly unpleasant memory that the text brings up.
I'm not sure I see how this is relevant. Are there resources for people who have been raped to avoid depictions of rape if they so feel like it? In any case, I don't see why Banks should have self-censored himself for this reasoning.
Sexism as an aspect of the world in speculative fiction is much more depressing to me because it tends to indicate that the author cannot imagine a world without sexism, as if it were as inevitable as entropy.
I think you've rather hit the nail on the head there. In the more-primitive-than-the-Culture societies that Banks depicts, sexism is indeed a very common feature, along with all manner of other kinds of discrimination and violence and slavery and rape and whatever. I think that he does find sexism, along with the host of other nasty things that happen, to be something as rather close to inevitable when it comes to developing societies of beings that are comparable to humans. Even when sex instantiates in a different fashion, as per Player of Games with the 3 sexes, sexism is rampant. The way he's set up the Universe of the culture makes it a somewhat plausible assertion though, since in general the various alien species are still basically just humans with at most a bunch of random not-too-significant differences.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
In Surface Detail it feels like rape is more or less an expected aspect of slavery for women.
I get what you mean, but my nitpicking side feels obligated to point out that, while the slavery was legal in that culture, the rape was not.
I really, really wish that had been explored instead, since it's actually a fascinating little detail.
u/None [+1] (23 hours later)
Sure, but I don't see the problem there. In other stories if everything a human could do can be done better by another human it still doesn't take away from the fact that the former chose to take action and put himself at risk.
Two humans are both members of the same reference class; they see each-other as semi-equal competitors, neither of whom can wholly dominate the other's influence on events.
u/None [+4] (17 hours later)
Banks was definitely lacking in the feminism department.
The Culture is interesting in some ways. It definitely features a much higher standard of living than our world. However, it is a system where humans are almost the pets of AIs with brains the size of planets (metaphorically speaking of course, the actual brains being in hyperspace, with measurements incomparable to planets in the strictest sense). Banks contrives to produce situations in which humans rather than Minds are required, but really, a Mind could probably create a meatsack drone whenever it really needed to.
Of course, a major, major plus-point of the Culture is that the humans are actually free to upgrade to Mind-level capacities at any time. That's not the norm at the time when most of the novels take place, but it is, explicitly, a part of their history, and is mentioned as one of the Unusual Life Choices people sometimes make.
(Also, his Minds aren't actually that intelligent, in terms of Winningness, but that's not Banks' fault: we've only started filling in the real meat of the "mind = probabilistic causality engine" theory very recently.)
u/Yuridice [+6] (a day later)
Banks was definitely lacking in the feminism department.
I don't agree, and I would like to know how someone could come to that conclusion. Surface Detail and Inversions are counterpoints to Look to Windward if the issue is participation.
u/MugaSofer [+5] (a day later)
Banks always came across to me as a person who brought lots of stereotypes and assumptions to his writing, but who was nevertheless a feminist. He writes a feminist world, even if men and women are treated with a lot of reference to ideas which should have been cast by the wayside long ago.
u/Yuridice [+3] (a day later)
I agree.
with a lot of reference to ideas which should have been cast by the wayside long ago.
I think this is true of a lot of different aspects of the Culture world.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Hmm... I've only read Player of Games and Excession, and have started into Consider Phlebas, so I can't speak to those two.
u/Yuridice [+1] (a day later)
Also Matter. And Whit. And probably more, I haven't read all his books either.
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
Of course, a major, major plus-point of the Culture is that the humans are actually free to upgrade to Mind-level capacities at any time. That's not the norm at the time when most of the novels take place, but it is, explicitly, a part of their history, and is mentioned as one of the Unusual Life Choices people sometimes make.
I've always found that argument suspicious. When you are a superintelligent agent, you are by default responsible for everything around you. When almost every single one of your pets "freely chooses" to stay effectively lobotomised for his whole life, when your civilisation continues to stagnate and allow the universe to continue to be the cruel and uncaring place it is by default, you don't get to make excuses about anything. Inaction does not absolve one of responsibility and Minds are among the most terrifying villains I've ever encountered. They have the gall to pretend being benevolent gods all the while being responsible for mindboggling amounts of suffering.
u/None [+4] (a day later)
Oh boy. Let's go ahead and have this argument.
They have the gall to pretend being benevolent gods all the while being responsible for mindboggling amounts of suffering.
Excuse me, but no. The Minds don't pretend to be gods at all, except when they feel a particular need to Badass Boast. And that's precisely the right thing: gods are tyrannical by default, and the Culture's chief moral commitment is to freedom. It's the same reason the Culture doesn't take in immigrants: it would just be a disguised form of domination.
You're basically criticizing them for being, on the one hand, insufficiently utilitarian to go out and impose utopia by force, but on the other hand, being tyrants by default who're to blame for the fact that their human charges don't usually choose (in the era we're reading about -- they once did, and chose to change fashions with time) to radically upgrade themselves.
You can't really have it both ways. For one thing, upgrading a human mind to superintelligence by force is going to be both traumatizing for the victim and very likely to result in a pissed-off, traumatized, hissy superintelligent agent.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
Excuse me, but no. The Minds don't pretend to be gods at all, except when they feel a particular need to Badass Boast.
Fair enough, that was me being a bit of a drama queen.
They don't have to force anyone to do anything. They're fully capable of influencing society to subtly, gradually and painlessly shift values from current status quo to a more desirable state. My point is that we humans have an excuse of not being able to predict consequences of our meddling and so the stance "I do not interfere and let them decide themselves" makes sense. Minds don't have any excuse, for them inaction is not a morally privileged strategy. By choosing not to change anything they specify their preferred state of affairs.
A small fraction of agents holds all the power of post-singularity civilization in their hands and what they choose to do with it? They choose to make sure everyone else lives about half a millennia as a close enough to vanilla human and then irrevocably wipes themselves from the face of the universe, with a rare exception somehow escaping the indoctrination and ascending to gain some measure of power themselves.
u/None [+0] (a day later)
They're fully capable of influencing society to subtly, gradually and painlessly shift values from current status quo to a more desirable state. My point is that we humans have an excuse of not being able to predict consequences of our meddling and so the stance "I do not interfere and let them decide themselves" makes sense. Minds don't have any excuse, for them inaction is not a morally privileged strategy.
You know, I think that true inaction is still morally privileged. If true inaction means, "The same thing happens that would happen if I hadn't existed or been here", that is.
u/AugSphere [+2] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
Perhaps, but debating the virtues of agents who completely removed themselves from causal interaction with the rest of the universe is not the most productive of activities.
This does not apply to Minds anyway, since they are deeply influencing the society just by allowing everyone the knowledge of their own existence. There is no wiggle room here, either you are causally involved, or you are not. If you are, then you are responsible for results of your inaction as well as action. Minds do not live up to the responsibility of having their power.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
The Minds do not live up to the responsibility of having their power.
Just to establish grounds: what do you think is the responsibility of having their power?
u/AugSphere [+1] Dark Lord of Corruption (a day later)
Well at the very least they should promote a culture which does not encourage suicide. Not limiting the intelligence as much as possible would be nice as well. Spreading around the universe making sure the suffering is minimised, ideally.
u/Yuridice [+1] (a day later)
That's not very consequentialist of you.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
Uhhhh.... yes it is? I'm operating with rule-consequentialism here: incredibly powerful agents, capable of building up or tearing down whole civilizations, who care primarily about the freedom of other agents, should usually refrain from active interference in the lives of other agents. With respect to "the freedom of others" as a goal function, true inaction is morally privileged in the sense of usually being the right thing.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
And that's precisely the right thing: gods are tyrannical by default, and the Culture's chief moral commitment is to freedom. It's the same reason the Culture doesn't take in immigrants: it would just be a disguised form of domination.
A moral justification which is - in my opinion - wrong. It's morally abhorrent to the point where I have difficulty talking about it rationally.
You do not get to deny trillions - most of whom don't even know you exist - god-tech because you're concerned about cultural appropriation and the White Man's Burden.
but on the other hand, being tyrants by default who're to blame for the fact that their human charges don't usually choose (in the era we're reading about -- they once did, and chose to change fashions with time) to radically upgrade themselves.
I think you're mistaken there, actually. Culture Humans were once a great deal more "transhumanist" - in the sense of bodily upgrades, neural nets, and so forth - but immortality and becoming-a-Mind have always been Unusual Life Choices. I'd even go so far as to say Mind meddling - Marain, for example - is by far the most likely culprit, there. They control the media, they can literally talk every individual on the habitat out of it in person.
But ... I've always been uncomfortable with calling Minds "superintelligent". Sure, they can think quickly when they want to, and multitask inhumanly well, and a couple of other things - they technically fit the definition of "superintelligent", strictly better than human on an intellectual level. But most of the power differential between them and humans comes from tech, not intellect. They are not CelestAI, and they don't deserve to be held to the moral standards of such.
u/None [+1] (2 days later)
You do not get to deny trillions - most of whom don't even know you exist - god-tech because you're concerned about cultural appropriation and the White Man's Burden.
Now that we're bringing up comparisons between Culture Minds and LWian "superintelligences", how about: because you're concerned with completely tearing down someone's civilization and assimilating it into yours?
Culture Humans were once a great deal more "transhumanist" - in the sense of bodily upgrades, neural nets, and so forth - but immortality and becoming-a-Mind have always been Unusual Life Choices.
Oh. Really? Hmm...
I'd even go so far as to say Mind meddling - Marain, for example - is by far the most likely culprit, there.
Well Marain is a bit of an obvious meddling tool, yes.
They control the media
No silly, the Jews control the media ;-). (But actually, the Culture is explicitly mentioned to have quite a lot of cryptography and freedom-of-information measures in place.)
they can literally talk every individual on the habitat out of it in person.
How often have they actually done so?
But most of the power differential between them and humans comes from tech, not intellect. They are not CelestAI, and they don't deserve to be held to the moral standards of such.
Then why are you encouraging them to forcibly assimilate and uplift everyone, which is more-or-less the chief sin that CelestAI gets points off for? Are you saying the Culture Minds are smart enough to be manipulative on an Elders of Zion-level but not enough that their total domination of every smallest piece of the society they inhabit becomes a problem?
u/MugaSofer [+1] (2 days later)
Now that we're bringing up comparisons between Culture Minds and LWian "superintelligences", how about: because you're concerned with completely tearing down someone's civilization and assimilating it into yours?
Foreign cultures are not worth more than the people in them.
They are definitely not worth it if the people making them up would choose to accept the technology you're keeping from them if they frakking knew about it.
Then why are you encouraging them to forcibly assimilate and uplift everyone, which is more-or-less the chief sin that CelestAI gets points off for?
I just want them to give all the medieval worlds medical technology, honestly. There are a lot of things wrong with the Culture, but that is by far the highest expected utility intervention.
Within the Culture, they don't have to force people, that's the whole point. Just start using their influence to better the people involved, rather than having them lead lives so empty that the main point of discussion in the Culture seems to be "were we better-off as baselines?" for about four centuries or so before they commit suicide.
Maybe allow Minds to be a bit more accountable, considering how decidedly not infallible or perfect they are. But the main thing is the Von Neumann probes providing the galaxy with the equivalent of mosquito nets and vaccines.
But yeah, I think it's made explicit in Excession that they avoid military interventions that would save countless lives from aggressors because the Culture doesn't like to think of themselves as warlike. And that's a bad thing.
u/None [+2] (2 days later)
Ah, well ok, I can actually agree with that level of interventionism. "Hello, we're your friendly neighborhood galactically Active culture, and here's a DIY modernity kit!"
Only problems I can think of there are how to communicate the kit (package a low-level drone-mind for learning languages?), and the fact that a great deal of modernity is about social advancement rather than mere technology.
Also, I'd always taken the Culture's sense of ennui to just be bad writing on Banks' part. If your humans get so bored that they think they were better off maybe as baselines, someone has clearly suffered a failure of imagination: wouldn't, say, 150-year-old clever people, being the sum of vastly more knowledge, resources, and experience than a 30-something author, have something to their life we'd find interesting to read about?
I mean, Corey Doctorow at least pretended that his immortal semi-upgraded characters in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom had actually done things like research X sciences and compose Y symphonies, and they appear to have passable imitations of real personal relationships and entanglements. Culturenikim were lacking in that department, more due to writing than world-building.
u/Yuridice [+1] (a day later)
It's the same reason the Culture doesn't take in immigrants: it would just be a disguised form of domination.
I'm pretty sure they do, they just don't make it trivially easy like they could.
u/gommm [+2] (22 hours later)
To be fair in term of feminism, characters from the culture can change their gender at will...
u/None [+1] (22 hours later)
How is that relevant?
u/Yuridice [+2] (a day later)
From the linked piece of writing:
An elaborate thought-code, self-administered in a trance-like state (or simply a consistent desire, even if not conscious) will lead, over the course of about a year, to what amounts to a viral change from one sex into the other. The convention - tradition, even - in the Culture during the time of the stories written so far is that each person should give birth to one child in their lives.
...
To us, perhaps, the idea of being able to find out what sex is like for our complimentary gender ... may seem like mere wish-fulfilment. And indeed it is partly wish-fulfilment, but then the fulfilment of wishes is both one of civilisation's most powerful drives and arguably one of its highest functions; we wish to live longer, we wish to live more comfortably, we wish to live with less anxiety and more enjoyment, less ignorance and more knowledge than our ancestors did... but the abilities to change sex and to alter one's brain-chemistry - without resort to external technology or any form of payment - both have more serious functions within the Culture. A society in which it is so easy to change sex will rapidly find out if it is treating one gender better than the other; within the population, over time, there will gradually be greater and greater numbers of the sex it is more rewarding to be, and so pressure for change - within society rather than the individuals - will presumably therefore build up until some form of sexual equality and hence numerical parity is established.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
I am well aware of that aspect of the Culture. You haven't shown how that is relevant to the author's sexism.
u/Yuridice [+2] (a day later)
How is sexism not relevant when depicting people in a culture where sex is fundamentally malleable? Are you saying that such a difference does not change what constitutes sexism, or what?
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Gee, I dunno. A male author could view women as less worthwhile than men but acknowledge that women are necessary for reproduction, and in a sci-fi story he write about people who mercifully can be male most of the time and switch to female when they want a kid. A male author could fetishize women and wish he could be one for the purposes of sex but think women aren't as interesting as men. A male author could think of himself as not being sexist and come up with that body modification ability when exercising that belief but revert to the biases he's less conscious of when writing the stories in that constructed world.
If you hold up a sign that says "Men and women are equal!" that doesn't mean you have fixed the wage gap in your organization, or that you don't unconsciously use gender as a hiring criteria, or that you have taken steps to ensure that women in your discussions get a fair amount of time talking to each other. Even if you had, sexism is a problem that requires constant work to avoid. Even if we're being generous, we could conclude that Banks created that ability while putting forth unusual effort toward gender equality and his novels didn't reflect a similar amount of effort.
In short, the author did one thing early on as an almost throwaway aspect of his worldbuilding, and there's a chance that that was motivated by a desire for gender equality, but even if that were a guarantee, that doesn't guarantee that the rest of the work features gender equality, in world or otherwise.
u/Yuridice [+3] (a day later)
Sex in Banks' work is still not the same as sex in our world. To be sexist in the Culture is to discriminate against someone based on their choices, not on some involuntary assignment of status at birth. This is less akin to holding up a sign saying "men and women are equal" and is closer to actually making men and women equal. Sexism is still not a nice thing, but it could be compared to discrimination based on someone's clothing in our world. I would say that the context is fundamentally different, and that this is obviously very relevant to take into account.
A male author could think of himself as not being sexist and come up with that body modification ability when exercising that belief but revert to the biases he's less conscious of when writing the stories in that constructed world.
I agree with this to some extent with regards to Banks' work, there are bits and pieces that could be seen in this light. I feel like he is generally conscious of them though, and tends to lampshade them.
u/MugaSofer [+2] (a day later)
I'm pretty sure what we're talking about here is the narrative being sexist, not the characters (who are of course either avowed feminists or Evil.)
u/Yuridice [+3] (a day later)
Yes, but the fact that depiction of sexism within the narrative is fundamentally different in nature to more familiar sexism is relevant to the narrative being sexist. I'm not making a particularly strong claim, merely that the point made by /u/gommm is relevant.
u/IWantUsToMerge [+1] (23 hours later)
I don't think that means much. If you have pre-existing body-preferences (and most people do) switching gender would have either been unthinkable or equivalent to changing one's values - a partial death.
Tbh I am deeply offended by the notion that the human utility function takes its gender as an intrinsic value, rather than an extrinsic one, though. How inelegant and exploitable is that...
u/MugaSofer [+1] (a day later)
The galaxy (our galaxy) in the Culture stories is a place long lived-in, and scattered with a variety of life-forms...
And yet ... the Fermi Paradox?
No, wait, I'm underestimating the scale here. This is actually a pretty empty universe, all things considered, isn't it?
Essentially, the contention is that our currently dominant power systems cannot long survive in space; beyond a certain technological level a degree of anarchy is arguably inevitable and anyway preferable.
To survive in space, ships/habitats must be self-sufficient, or very nearly so; the hold of the state (or the corporation) over them therefore becomes tenuous
Yup, this sure is the first time in history that a majority of humans have been self-sufficient. And if there's anything history has taught us, it's that small, self-sufficient households and communities lead to democracy and enlightenment values.
Even so, this is certainly the most vulnerable point in the time-line of the Culture's existence, the point at which it is easiest to argue for things turning out quite differently... but it is also assumed that - for the reasons given above - that point is bound to come round again, and while the forces of repression need to win every time, the progressive elements need only triumph once.
I hate to admit it, but this is probably true, assuming "the hegemony" is not a Singleton of some kind. (Which also needs to win only once.)
But ... that's not going to lead to democracy and enlightenment values, right? That's the logic of nuclear proliferation, of the Deep Web and terrorist attacks. Although ... perhaps only at a Mind level?
Humans and Drones are basically trapped in the semi-benevolent Singleton of the Minds, I suppose. It's the same way there's very little law between nations, but plenty of law within nations. I don't think that's quite what the essay is getting at, though.
the mutuality of dependence involved in an environment which is inherently hostile would necessitate an internal social coherence which would contrast with the external casualness typifying the relations between such ships/habitats. Succinctly; socialism within, anarchy without.
Or ... maybe it is? I never really got the impression that relationships within the Culture exhibited "an internal social coherence which would contrast with the external casualness typifying the relations between such ships/habitats". Seemed like they were more casual with each other than with other ships, honestly.
The Culture, of course, has gone beyond even that, to an economy so much a part of society it is hardly worthy of a separate definition, and which is limited only by imagination, philosophy (and manners), and the idea of minimally wasteful elegance; a kind of galactic ecological awareness allied to a desire to create beauty and goodness.
I always loved the economics of the Culture, even if it seemed to slip at times from this ideal. Great stuff.
Education in the Culture is something that never ends; it may be at its most intense in the first tenth or so of an individual's life-
Don't Culture humans live 400 years or so?
Part of their education, both initially and continually, comprises the understanding that beings less fortunate - though no less intellectually or morally worthy - than themselves have suffered and, elsewhere, are still suffering. For the Culture to continue without terminal decadence, the point needs to be made, regularly, that its easy hedonism is not some ground-state of nature, but something desirable, assiduously worked for in the past, not necessarily easily attained, and requiring appreciation and maintenance both in the present and the future.
A fact which they respond to by partying slightly harder, and occasionally nudging the fate of worlds so they develop along the right path (i.e. that eventually leading to the Culture.)
Oh, no, sorry, that last part is "to let them feel vicariously useful." Of course.
The same self-generative belief-system applies to the Culture's AIs. They are designed (by other AIs, for virtually all of the Culture's history) within very broad parameters, but those parameters do exist; Culture AIs are designed to want to live, to want to experience, to desire to understand, and to find existence and their own thought-processes in some way rewarding, even enjoyable.
And ... why are they Friendly, exactly? An answer to this is promised several times in this essay, but never actually provided.
There are actually a couple of lines in the books that seem to imply Culture AI is based on very abstracted human brain emulation, but interestingly there's no mention of that here. It comes across as if Banks believes morality is ... an emergent property of sociopathy.
I think one has to ask why any AI civilisation - and probably any sophisticated culture at all - would want to spread itself everywhere in the galaxy (or the universe, for that matter). It would be perfectly possible to build a Von Neumann machine that would build copies of itself and eventually, unless stopped, turn the universe into nothing but those self-copies, but the question does arise; why? What is the point? To put it in what we might still regard as frivolous terms but which the Culture would have the wisdom to take perfectly seriously, where is the fun in that?
Interest - the delight in experience, in understanding - comes from the unknown; understanding is a process as well as a state, denoting the shift from the unknown to the known, from the random to the ordered...
Eh?
This is not to say that the odd Von-Neumann-machine event doesn't crop up in the galaxy every now and again (probably by accident rather than design), but something so rampantly monomaniac is unlikely to last long pitched against beings possessed of a more rounded wit, and which really only want to alter the Von Neumann machine's software a bit and make friends...
???
Philosophy, again; death is regarded as part of life, and nothing, including the universe, lasts forever. It is seen as bad manners to try and pretend that death is somehow not natural; instead death is seen as giving shape to life.
Unless you're a Mind, obviously. (Also, interesting in light of the later section that points out the Culture has "manners" instead of conventional laws.)
The attraction of Orbitals is their matter efficiency.
That is to say, based on "elegance" rather than actually being particularly efficient in any meaningful sense. Matter is not in short supply.
I mean, it's not unrealistic exactly, but it's an interesting little detail.
The very worst crime (to use our terminology), of course, is murder (defined as irretrievable brain-death, or total personality loss in the case of an AI).
Blatant lies, given the books, but whatever.
Between each universe there is something called the Energy Grid (I said this was all fake); I have no idea what this is, but it's what the Culture starships run on.
Heh.
Now, in all the above, there are two untold stories implicit. One is the history of the Culture's formation, which was a lot less easy and more troubled than its later demeanour might lead one to expect, and the other is the story which answers the question; why were there all those so-similar humanoid species scattered around the galaxy in the first place?
And now I'm sad again. :(