[HN Gopher] The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks (2009) ___________________________________________________________________ The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks (2009) Author : jasim Score : 142 points Date : 2021-03-28 17:11 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.thenewatlantis.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewatlantis.com) | clort wrote: | It took me like 15 years to try Iain Banks non sci-fi books but | oh boy.. I would recommend 'Canal Dreams' as a starter, its not | as .. raw as some of the others, and somewhat topical this week. | | If you want to see how raw he could make it, The Wasp Factory' | goes all the way to 11. | michael1999 wrote: | The Wasp Factory left a mark - on me, and the British literary | establishment. | ufmace wrote: | I've read all of the Culture novels and do enjoy them. However, I | can recognize it as a single-person utopia, which IMO makes it | inherently unrealistic. I mean that it's a utopia which exists | entirely in the mind of one man. That means it has never had to | face the issues of dealing with real people and real problems. | Assumptions and presumptions that person has about how society | works and why people do things are encoded into it. Many of these | types of assumptions have been found wanting when they go up | against real people. It's even more of an issue with sci-fi, | where you can make up any technology you want, and have it work | any way you want. | | For example, in the real world, drugs are a serious problem for | many people. The libertarian assumption is that all of the | problems flow from prohibition. I'm willing to believe that many | of the problems do, but it's quite clear that not all of them do. | See the prescription opioid epidemic. In many of the cases, there | are no issues with the quality of the supply or the cost of the | drugs, but nevertheless, the users frequently overdose themselves | or abandon everything and everyone in their life in the pursuit | of more drugs. I'm quite doubtful that you could give everyone in | the world "drug glands" that give them a hit of as much of any | drug as they want anytime they want and not have a large chunk of | the population die or become catatonic from opioid overuse, or go | psychotic as tends to happen with overuse of stimulants like meth | or cocaine, or something else. | | And of course we have the Minds. Of course everything is nice and | easy if you make up the fact that the Minds are perfect | benevolent dictators who would never harm a human and always do | everything legitimately for the greater good. Humans have never | been able to do that, but hey, we made up some super-intelligent | AIs that do, because I said so. We've never built a real super- | intelligent AI, so we don't know how it would be. Maybe it | actually would be a perfect benevolent dictator. Or maybe not. | Maybe it'll be just like every human dictator we've ever had, | happy to squash anyone who questions its rule. Maybe it'll just | wipe us all out for being inconvenient and messy. Maybe it'll go | off and do whatever it finds interesting somewhere else and | ignore us. Who can say? | | Bottom line is that it's very easy to make a fake utopia of any | ideology at all, as long as it's all in one person's head. A Nazi | could just as easily write their own fake utopia where society | did everything their way and it all just magically worked | perfectly because of course they're right about everything in | their own minds. What happened to all the Jews, you ask? Why they | just don't exist in our imaginary perfect society! Don't you dare | ask any inconvenient questions, can't you see we're building a | utopia here! | tablespoon wrote: | > I've read all of the Culture novels and do enjoy them. | However, I can recognize it as a single-person utopia, which | IMO makes it inherently unrealistic. I mean that it's a utopia | which exists entirely in the mind of one man. That means it has | never had to face the issues of dealing with real people and | real problems. Assumptions and presumptions that person has | about how society works and why people do things are encoded | into it. Many of these types of assumptions have been found | wanting when they go up against real people. It's even more of | an issue with sci-fi, where you can make up any technology you | want, and have it work any way you want. | | Exactly: the "utopia" works because its backstory and mechanics | are a series of biased non-sequiturs (of varying levels of | audacity, often conflating _goal_ with _outcome_ ). | | Its a pretty safe to assume that almost nothing in a | speculative world would actually work the way it's depicted, | and forgetting that can sometimes screw people up (I'm reminded | about the John Rogers qip about Atlas Shrugged and Lord of the | Rings). | tablespoon wrote: | > In the one Culture story that refers to our planet, "The State | of the Art," Sma is among a group of Contact representatives who | visit Earth in the year 1977. After a period of careful | investigation, Sma argues -- in the official report that | constitutes most of the story -- that the Culture needs to | intervene to clean up the mess that human beings are making of | our world. Were such an intervention to take place, Special | Circumstances would spearhead it. However, one of her colleagues | finds the Star Trek television series almost the only redeeming | feature of Earth civilization and recommends that the whole | planet be destroyed. Special Circumstances would handle that as | well. | | I'm not really a fan of the Culture, but that kind of blows up | any illusions about it. The against-their-will homogenizing | manipulations are one thing, but actual literal unprovoked | genocide? If that's an option what other kinds of skeletons can | this utopia be assumed to have in its closet? | nsm wrote: | Individuals in the Culture are free to state whatever they | want, that doesn't mean the civilization executes it. Taking | the _thought_ (not action) of one individual in a civilization | that has on the order of trillions of individuals is hardly | being fair to your representation of the Culture. In addition, | whereas in our world, such a person would likely be Twitter | shamed into oblivion, even if they had such a thought as | teenager, in the Culture they would have a reasonable argument | with other humans and Minds that would attempt to convince them | of the foolishness of pursuing a genocidal agenda. The Culture | tries to preserve life as much as possible. For context, what | actually ends up happening is that Earth is left to its own | devices. The Culture is dedicated to doing the right thing, but | that right thing isn 't always easy to figure out. To quote the | State of the Art: [Diziet Sma asking the Ship Mind] "How | certain do we have to be? How long must we make them wait? Who | elected us God?" [The ship] "Diziet... that question is being | asked all the time, and put in as many different ways we have | the wit to devise (...) and that moral equation is being re- | assessed every nanosecond of every day of every year, and every | time we find some place like Earth -- no matter what way the | decision [to interfere or not] goes -- we come closer to | knowing the truth. But we can never be absolutely certain... | I'm the smartest thing for a hundred light years' radius, and | by a factor of about a million (...) but even I can't predict | where a snooker ball's going to end up after more than six | collisions." | Angostura wrote: | I've just pulled my copy from the shelf and am starting to re- | read, but I'm _sure_ Sma doesn 't recommend the destruction of | Earth. That would be very un-Sma | zabzonk wrote: | > I'm sure Sma doesn't recommend the destruction of Earth | | That's not what the post you are replying to said. | NateEag wrote: | > However, one of her colleagues finds the Star Trek | television series almost the only redeeming feature of Earth | civilization and recommends that the whole planet be | destroyed. | | According to the quote, Sma's _colleague_ recommends | destroying Earth, not Sma. | moonbug wrote: | Dunno what this guy was reading but I sure don't recognise it. | jameshart wrote: | Starting an essay on any topic with an assessment of just the | _size_ of the Wikipedia pages about it really doesn't inspire | confidence that the author's research goes much beyond having | brought up the Wikipedia pages and declared 'gosh, those are | long.' It's really only one stop short of opening the essay | "Webster's dictionary defines 'culture' as..." | | Then the author makes a weird and baseless speculation: 'I would | not be at all surprised if Banks himself, in the writing of | Culture novels, consulted Wikipedia to ensure consistency with | his previous work.' - most of the novels predate the very | existence of Wikipedia; a page about The Culture was only added | in 2009. | dang wrote: | If curious, the interesting past threads appear to be: | | _The Culture War: Iain M. Banks's Billionaire Fans_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25924560 - Jan 2021 (294 | comments) | | _Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16348885 - Feb 2018 (31 | comments) | | _Iain Banks audio interview_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9749881 - June 2015 (1 | comment) | | _A Few Questions About the Culture: An Interview with Iain | Banks_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8587447 - Nov 2014 | (86 comments) | | _Iain Banks dies of cancer aged 59_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5849186 - June 2013 (133 | comments) | | _A Few Notes On The Culture, by Iain M. Banks_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5497905 - April 2013 (1 | comment) | | _A Personal Statement from Iain Banks_ - | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5485236 - April 2013 (346 | comments) | ahelwer wrote: | I'd heard a lot about the culture series and was in the mood for | some optimistic sci-fi, so I picked up the first book in the | series (Consider Phlebus). It was... not great. Now looking | online I learn the series varies widely in quality and there are | really only two or three novels people tend to genuinely really | like. So do your research before jumping in. | anigbrowl wrote: | Lots of people dislike Consider Phlebas but I think it's | significantly better than most of the others; I like | _Excession_ better but it 's also hammier. | | Banks had great vision but he's not that great of a writer; he | relies on the few tricks over and over again - hyper-sadistic | villains, revenge reveals (take a one-dimensional but clearly | driven character, tease the readers with a slow reveal of the | moral outrage they're seeking revenge for), very cringey sex | scenes, Good Guys either set up the Bad Guys all along | (triumphal outcome) and/or Good Guys kamikaze Bad Guys and | enjoy moral satisfaction (defiant outcome). The same few plot | devices are recombined to the point of tedium and/or disgust | and after >20 years of reading his stuff I get the impression | that Banks was rather aggressive and unpleasant at the personal | level; his more sympathetic characters are thinly sketched | whereas his obnoxious ones are rendered in gratuitous detail. | | _Consider Phlebas_ is more interesting and different from his | other books in that almost all the characters are confused and | heavily conflicted, and unhappily wrestling with the outcome of | prior bad decisions. It 's more hard work because it's (mostly) | written from a single point of view that gives it an episodic | pearls-on-a-string structure that sometimes feels like one set | piece after another; in later books he eschewed this approach | and went for a multiple-converging-plotline approach ( _CP_ | adopts this for the last part of the story). The fact that | almost everyone in the book is spiraling downwards as the | result of prior bad decisions is a real downer, but the | characters are much more complex and involving as a result. | [deleted] | riffraff wrote: | I have to concure, I deeply disliked "Consider Phlebas", but | the world seemed so interesting that it led me to try again.. | and I really liked "The Player of Games". | | Your mileage may vary _a lot_. | perardi wrote: | I would argue _Consider Phlebus_ suffered from "early | installment weirdness", and feels not very Culture-y. | | As someone else said below, I truly enjoyed _Excession_ , but | it's perhaps too Culture-y. Lots of Minds, and then humans that | are kind of awful. | GeoAtreides wrote: | For people who hadn't read The Culture series, some notes by the | author, explaining what The Culture is: | http://www.vavatch.co.uk/books/banks/cultnote.htm | | >Language, entertainment, hormones -- all of these resources are | overseen by the Minds | | This is a 100% false assertion made by the article author, I | don't understand how they came to this conclusion. In no way, | shape or form is this true. | | > recommends that the whole planet be destroyed. Special | Circumstances would handle that as well. | | The implication made by the author is that SC and by extension | The Culture, will actually destroy a planet full of sentients. | This is false, as they didn't destroy the even worse species of | the Affront. The Culture respect diversity and further more they | respect they rights of sentients. | | Then the author asserts The Culture judges other civilizations by | how close they are to values and priorities of The Culture | itself. This is also false, like I said above. The author then | mention the Idiran War, implicitly in support of his thesis that | The Culture will go to war against civs that don't share their | values; he then fails to mention that 1) The Idirans were | bankrolled by another equivalent civ (the same tech tier as The | Culture) 2) they were acting as a homogenising swarm 3) parts of | The Culture split over the decision to go to war. | | In my opinion, the article really stretches some very small | morally grey areas of The Culture just to try to paint the whole | civilisation as not being a perfect utopia. But The Culture _is_ | a perfect utopia and it was written and declared as such by the | author. Yet everyone tries to find that small little thing that | just proves the whole civ it's not so perfect after all. | 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote: | Regardless of how well that article makes the point, within the | books the culture is a powerful hegemonic force. Its internal | views and conflicts about the nature and execution of that is a | major plot driver in a few of the books. | | I'm not convinced Banks considered the culture a perfect utopia | but even if he did that doesn't mean I need to agree. | gpderetta wrote: | I'm not convinced either. At some point Banks tell us that | there are similar higly advanced cultures in the galaxy with | similar or superior utopias. | | But while most of them keep for themselves and have the good | taste to sublimate once they reach a certain technological | level, the Culture is special as it sticks around and | actively interferes with other civilizations. | | This of course makes for more interesting stories and it is | not necessarily a flaw, but it is certainly contentious | (especially Special Circumstances) even in-universe and has | spawned factions and splinter civilizations. | pierrebai wrote: | People are free to disagree and I certainly do. | | You can claim that the failing of the Culture are scenaristic | conceits needed to have a plot for a book, that's an easy cop- | out. The Culture is what the books shows. That its flaws were | only made up to have a story doesn't change that. | | In my opinion, when people claim the Culture is a prefect | utopia, they base their view on a non-existent Culture, that of | everything good seen in the book with the unsavory part s | excised as book-writing-fodder unnatural warts. Bu that's | different thing, a made-up, cleaned-up version of the Culture. | | To me, the Minds clearly are toying with humans for a subtle | version of cruelty. | | I'll just take the "Player of Games" as the most explicit | example (although "Surface Details" is pretty telling too): the | Culture has been monitoring the Azad for decades, fully knowing | how corrupt and evil they are, horribly torturing people 24/7. | Yet they take decades before even setting up a contact. | Ironically (if we can call it that) the novel ends with the | events the Minds claim as their reason for not intervening | directly. | | I find the Minds behaviour described through Special | Circumstances to be consistently amoral. | zabzonk wrote: | Surely, what TPOG and other novels in the sequence are trying | to say is that the Minds find manipulating humans, and other | intelligent entities, somewhat abhorrent (see the Ship Gray | Matter, for example), and only step in to do it when they can | see no other choices. Hence Special Circumstances (as opposed | to Contact). | mattmanser wrote: | Not only that, but it's written by an imperfect human who | needed plot points for his stories. | | So when the author points at the Minds' failures to predict the | consequences of their actions he simultaneously fails to | acknowledge that without mistakes by the Minds, there would be | no plot. No plot, no book. | | And especially telling is that when he writes about murder, the | author totally failed to mention that almost everyone in the | Culture is constantly backed up, apart from a few abnormal | people who don't, and can be reincarnated in a blink of an eye. | How can you not mention that? Being murdered is a minor | inconvenience, hence the minor punishment. | | Also the way Iain wrote about the culture changed over the | years, if you read consider phelbas then something like dark | matter back to back I felt you can see he realized some of the | mistakes he'd made early on, even if he couldnt go back and | correct them. | | For me at least, it's always been clear that the culture did | not need an external threat to function, and as a whole it | found war to be a tiresome waste of time. I agree with you that | the article seems to be plucking at straws to put that argument | together. | rkachowski wrote: | In the series its mentioned that any mind beyond a certain | level of perfection would always immediately choose to | sublime to the next level of existence. Given the fact that | the minds have very strong personalities and they're less | than perfect, omniscient creations then mistakes | miscalculations and overestimations are inevitable. | | I'd always taken the view that Contact / Special | Circumstances was where many people wanted to be due to it | being a limited opportunity in a post scarcity environment. | Coupled with the fact that anyone who really wanted to be in | a situation requiring the use of scary advanced weaponry is | likely to be a bad choice for such a position, this always | made the stories about contact agents seem intriguing to me. | sharkweek wrote: | I'm going to use this as an opportunity to ask: I tried reading | Consider Plebius and couldn't get into it. | | Years have gone by since this attempt (so many books to read, I | rarely revisit something that didn't capture my attention | immediately), but a friend recently told me to just skip | Plebius and that he guarantees, knowing my taste, I'll enjoy | the rest immensely. | | Any HN thoughts here on the series would be appreciated! | scotty79 wrote: | As others say Player of Games is probably easiest to get | into. | | If you like a bit of medieval stuff in your SF you might | consider reading Matter. | | I also very much like Surface Detail. | elihu wrote: | Huh, I actually think Consider Phlebas is the best I've read | so far, but it seems that view is in the minority and my own | high opinion is mostly on account of the latter half of the | book, once they get to Schar's world. Your friend could be | right that you might prefer one of the other books. | pierrebai wrote: | The main problem with Consider Phlebas is that a lot of the | book feels like a collection of space adventures. These | early part of the book feel less sophisticated than latter | novels. Yet by the end it becomes pretty great. It is also | one of my favorite Culture novel because the Minds | ambiguities are less present and the elitism constantly in | displays in other novels are at least justified here by the | unique morphing capabilities of the protagonist. | kvgr wrote: | I liked the first two books, but Use Of Weapons is killing me | right now. It has some long descriptive passages skipping | back or to the furure? Cant do it... | Sharlin wrote: | _Use of Weapons_ is a masterpiece, but (or maybe | therefore?) is definitely not an easy read. Like most | stories with a nonlinear narrative, its true greatness only | becomes apparent on a second - or maybe third - read. But | to make it easier to grok, realize that there are two | timelines that alternate: one goes forward in "present | time" and drives the main plot; the other goes backwards in | time and describes how the protagonist ended up the way he | does. | pierrebai wrote: | I didn't like Use of Weapons. I found the plot cliche, the | usual super-elitism of SC pushed to the unbearable point | (the fact that the main protagonist would be such a unique | and uber-warrior / strategist / whatever) and the source of | his emotional turmoil over the top. | Tomte wrote: | The book starts at a point in time, and then gives two | story lines. One back in time (Roman numerals) and one | forward in time (Arabic numerals). Those two are | alternating and equal, no one is superior to the other or | just a "descriptive passage". | | Once you understand it, the whole organization becomes very | clear and no problem. If you don't know that, you'll | struggle. | | I love UoW, it's my favorite book (ahead of the superb | Excession), but I haven't read all of the Culture novels. | | Consider Phlebas is a terrible beginning (that I also | endured), and the much-recommended Player of Games wasn't | my cup of tea, either, though it's not bad. | AshamedCaptain wrote: | Unpopular opinion: I personally had more fun reading the | Wikipedia page (and others) detailing the actual background | and setting and workings of the Culture than I had reading | any of the books. :) Really the world (universe?) of The | Culture is very deep and interesting (and the Tolkien | comparisons very apt, since I have the same feeling about | LoTR). | | Also I particularly enjoyed Consider Phlebas more than the | 'following' book (player of games), so I do not agree about | phlebas being "skippable". | marvin wrote: | My favorites are Matter and Surface Detail, in that order. | Surface Detail is probably an easier starting point, but any | of the non-canonical reading order suggestions will have you | confused for a while, due to the simplified descriptions of | various concepts. It is about simulated worlds, in-silico | sentient minds and military conflict over vehement ethics | disagreements. | | I started with Look to Windward myself, and would probably | have started with another if choosing again. | wmf wrote: | The Culture series can be read in pretty much any order; | staring with _The Player of Games_ might be easier. | GeoAtreides wrote: | Start with Player of Games, it's better and most people | recommend it as a starting point. | gpderetta wrote: | I enjoyed it a lot, but I also like episodic stories. | | Also it is very interesting that it is a space opera that, | instead of focusing in grand scale events and high stakes | storylines, it deals with a minor, mostly inconsequential and | ultimately futile event. | ilikeyou wrote: | Absolutely. I love the Culture series, but Consider Phlebas | has always been one of the least enjoyable books. | | I'd personally start with the excellent Player of Games and | go from there. | | (Also skip Inversions) | u02sgb wrote: | I didn't like Inversions the first time I read it either | but re-read all the Culture books, in order, after Banks | died and enjoyed that. I think I was expecting it to be | very Culture-y and was disappointed it wasn't. On a reread | my expectations were different and it was just a very | enjoyable story. | | I'd also suggest avoiding Excession until you've become | familiar with the Minds. It's my favourite book, I think, | but you lose a lot without having a little context. | blacktriangle wrote: | Honestly, I'd take it a step further and skip Banks all | together. I first read a bunch of Culture books roughly a | decade ago, thought I'd give them another read recently, and | had lost all interest. Thin plots, boring characters, worlds | that are mostly hinted at but poorly developed, and in his | later books a deep sense of nihilism that reads more like a | depressed teenager than an author finding his voice. | | Of the books, the two that manage to stand somewhat on their | own as decent books are Player of Games, because what geek | doesn't like a book about a planet where the government is | based around whose best at board games, and Excession since | it's the most Mind-heavy book, and frankly the Minds are | Banks' most interesting characters. | scotty79 wrote: | > worlds that are mostly hinted at but poorly developed | | This is one of the best qualities of his books. In me those | hints trigger my imagination that creates awe inspiring | images. I'd hate it if he flooded me with descriptions of | everything. | | Overdescribed worlds like Warhammer 40000 are uninteresting | to me. It's like reading a history book, but fake (not that | it makes it any worse). | detaro wrote: | It's one of my favorite series. IMHO the order to read them | doesn't matter all that much, and Consider Phlebas probably | isn't the easiest to get into it. Maybe start with _Player of | Games_ or _Look To Windward_. | culturenothx wrote: | > Then the author asserts The Culture judges other | civilizations by how close they are to values and priorities of | The Culture itself. | | This is exactly the impression I got after reading Player of | Games, the second Culture book I read, after Consider Phlebas, | so I'm confused about your opinion | | But that said, I found Player of Games trite and I kept finding | myself siding with the "bad" guys and Consider Phlebas was | literally forgettable, I read it six or so years ago and can't | remember anything about it | | Needless to say, I moved on to better series. | retrac wrote: | > I don't understand how they came to this conclusion. | | Whether humans are just much-loved companion animals to the | Minds is a running theme in the books. The role and value of | beings almost infinitely smaller in capacity than the Minds is | certainly a theme. The Minds may be wired to adore us, but do | they truly respect us? One imagines that if the likes of Grey | Area went around reading the minds of other Minds rather than | mere meat minds, he would promptly have met a rather more | painful end than social ostracism. Similarly, while the Culture | purports to be a universal direct democracy, when the entire | public discussion can be subtly guided by the Minds... how free | are the Culture's humans, really? I've noticed some people seem | to completely miss this theme. Others tend to read that theme | even more strongly than Banks probably intended. But it's | certainly there. | GeoAtreides wrote: | > humans are just much-loved companion animals to the Minds | | I think that's just an imperfect translation for the | existential dread people might feel when confronted with a | perfect utopia. They go: "what's the meaning of life, then?" | and have bad trips. On a similar discussion on the | Spacebattles forum, there were people saying they would | rather live in the Star Trek or even the Warhammer 40k | universe, exactly because those two universes provide meaning | (mostly through pain...). | | The Minds certainly respect humans and their rights. Special | Circumstances have a lot of human agents, for example, which | play important roles in the organisation and on the field | detaro wrote: | The motive of the Minds letting humans be in places or do | stuff just because they think it's fun isn't uncommon. No | Culture ship needs a crew to run things, but they'll have | them anyways, listen to them, let them "help" build new | ships, because they like doing so. But they don't have to | and if it gets dangerous they'll not bother and just act, | confident in their superiority. Minds are almost without | exception perfectly nice and respectful about it (much more | than we are to our pets, which is key to it being an | Utopia), but the dynamic is nevertheless there. | | > _I am a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the | far side. 'We are quicker; we live faster and more | completely than you do, with so many more senses, such a | greater store of memories and at such a fine level of | detail. We die more slowly, and we die more completely, | too. Never forget I have had the chance to compare and | contrast the ways of dying.'_ | | Gods that really love and respect their "subjects" and | creators though, so they'll not do any of the terrible | things they totally could do without any chance of stopping | them, but rather support them and their whims as far as | they think is safe. | | SC is a bit special because non-Culture civs don't | necessarily play well with AIs, and somewhat open how much | Minds engineer the situations that occur. And in that SC is | explained as somewhat of an outlet for those for that the | utopia doesn't quite work - but it wouldn't exist if the | Minds didn't think it was good to have. | vidarh wrote: | Whole sections of the Culture has broken away without | conflict. That to me is the strongest indicator of freedom in | the Culture, and also the strongest indicator that it is | reasonable to describe as a near utopia: A society where | people can (and do) break away, yet most choose not to, seems | to be striking a decent balance. | | The biggest issue I have with the Culture is that they are in | a sense luddites: They stubbornly insist on dying and | stubbornly refuse to sublime. They hold on to a very limited | and restrictive sense of existence. But they do so by choice, | and make the most of it within those limits. | filoeleven wrote: | > They stubbornly insist on dying and stubbornly refuse to | sublime. | | As a whole, yes. But individual Culture Minds have | sublimed, and individual humans can choose to be stored | until the Culture chooses to sublime as a whole. (I don't | think Banks ever explored a Culture human choosing to | defect into a different society which was going to sublime; | that could have been a neat sub-plot for The Hydrogen | Sonata.) | | That's also what makes the Culture a place for | storytelling, though. Lots of other civs have sublimed, the | Culture seems to be the highest-level one that explicitly | chooses to stay in the Real. I don't think it's so much | Luddite as...a necessary function to make these stories | possible and interesting. | simonh wrote: | That's an interesting take. I'm not saying you're wrong, | but I think of subliming as the civilisational equivalent | of staying in your bedroom for the rest of eternity playing | video games. It's giving up on the concept of stakes or | consequences or achievement. But then perhaps those are | ultimately illusory. | krisoft wrote: | I think you are right, it's absolutely there. In fact I'm not | even sure the Minds adore the humanoids. I think it's fair to | say that the Minds love playing games among themselves. The | Minds are social, they form clicks and chat with other Minds. | They also have "everything". Material possessions won't | impress an other Mind. The games they play between each other | and the social position they convey is what impresses an | other Mind. | | Imagine a society of parrot keepers. From time to time they | swap pictures of their parrots. The keeper whose parrots are | sickly or unkempt will be pitied by the rest of them. They | will get tips on how to better to care for birds. Maybe they | will even get suggestions from concerned society members that | they should give up the hobby. These members would have a low | rank in the society. In contrast the parrot keepers who has | the best and happiest birds will have a high social rank. | Other society members will ask their advice on bird-keeping | matters. Everyone will want to swap birds with them. These | keepers are not just taking care of their birds then, but | competing with each other in this "pageant" | | In some ways, the game becomes more interesting the harder it | is to keep the birds. A bird which thrives in any environment | is less challenging to keep than one which has complicated | psychological needs. Thus a Mind who has everything and wants | to dazzle an other Mind who also has everything will | naturally gravitate towards keeping the most exotic "birds". | The ones which require complex environments and are a true | challenge to keep happy for even someone with the mental | capacity of one of the Minds. | | This of course all just my headcanon, but I think the Minds | keep human societies around because it's hard to keep them | happy. (Especially because many of the humans would go | completely depressed if they were to realise that they are | just beautiful songbirds in a galaxy wide pageantry.) | | Of course keeping humans is not the only game the Minds play. | They also play with mathematical discovery in the Infinite | Fun Space. Or play with manipulating other societies in | Special Circumstances. We also know that the Minds keep | societies of gas dwellers on board. Who knows maybe those are | even harder to keep happy than the humans? | [deleted] | shrimp_emoji wrote: | The parrot keeper analogy is so beautiful and hilarious! | Way overly-cynical for me, though. | | Like others, I look to how humans care (deeply and | emotionally) for "lesser" animals. Hell, some humans (me | included) even care about plants, and are sad to see them | dying. Now imagine if the plants _made_ me, and introduced | me to their society. | | It could also be argued that the care-to-relative- | intelligence relationship isn't linear -- the fact that I | have enough intelligence to speak and have ideas would | engender more care for me in a Mind than for a plant in me | even if the intellectual delta between me and a plant and | me and a Mind is the same, proportionally. | | Also, the ultimate counterargument waiting in the wings is | that the Minds would naturally be programmed to adore | humans and subscribe to the lefty-horizontalism of the | Culture in which it'd be unfashionable to disrespect or | harm a being just because it's of lesser intelligence. (And | they don't reprogram themselves not to because they were | programmed to not want to do that.) | | Side note: Another fun, cynical excuse for super-AIs | keeping humans around is found in The Hyperion Cantos | series, where the super-AIs actually tap into the | collective brainpower of humans, essentially like some | spacetime-bending crypto-miner run from time to time in | everyone's brain with no physical evidence. | filoeleven wrote: | The difference in "level/depth of consciousness" between | Minds and humans is an interesting one, because the scale | matters a lot. | | I say forget parrots and take it even further. Culture | Orbitals are IIRC run by a single Mind, and contain tens of | billions of humans. At that point, this analogy becomes | plausible: "a mind is to a human as a human is to a yeast | cell." The name itself, "The Culture," might be a sly | reference to how we think of microscopic colonies! | | Minds think on the order of nanoseconds or picoseconds too, | fast enough for the distinction to be meaningless to me. | That enables them to relate to humans with a vast timescale | difference, perhaps on the order of (as a sibling | suggested) a human managing a lawn, only with a full 3D | (and x-ray and infrared and etc) view of each grass blade | at all times. And the manager doesn't have to sleep or | generally spend more energy than raising a single arm-hair | to attend to even the most troublesome specimens 99.999% of | the time. | | It's a hard thing to comprehend, because in the novels the | Minds are so engaged with individual humans: offering | advice, presenting opportunities and options. If I carry | the analogy through, we do the same thing by using | probiotics, sanitary practices, etc. To a yeast cell, a | sudden influx of sugar might look like a Mind's sage advice | does to a human seeking fulfillment. | | Heady stuff. | simonh wrote: | Cliques. I'm really sorry, I know that's rude, but I see | this all the time. I don't think I've ever actually seen it | spelled correctly here. I'll go hide under a rock now. | bhaak wrote: | My cats and my dogs are family members. There's no discussion | about that. | | But they are not family members with the full rights and | duties of a human family member. But that doesn't change that | I try to treat them with the same respect as any other family | member. | | If you look at how the minds treat the members of the Culture | with less capacity than them, it is very similar to how the | Culture as a whole regards other civilisations. | bryanrasmussen wrote: | utopian fiction generally requires some imperfection to be | shown in order to have dramatic tension. | WJW wrote: | I love the culture series. It's so unashamedly optimistic about | how life "could" be, while exploring which problems even an | absolutely utopian post-scarcity society with benevolent AGIs | would encounter. | | It is, as the article mentions, an absolutely intriguing mirror | held up to our own society. | [deleted] | bhaak wrote: | I miss positive science fiction. | | I don't want to read or see science fiction that drags me down. | Reality is grim enough as it is. | | Show me fictional realities that inspire me to make them real. | yourapostasy wrote: | The ongoing First Contact series by pseudonym Ralts Bloodthorne | [1] is a space opera that could be considered optimistic in the | sense of "humanity shall overcome". There is an active Discord | community around it, lots of fans. | | [1] | https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/f94rak/oc_pthok_eats_a... | wccrawford wrote: | If you enjoyed The Martian, you might also enjoy the Diary of a | Murderbot series. Neither of them are particularly positive, | but the humor in them really does it for me. | theshrike79 wrote: | The Murderbot books are good, but holy crapballs they are | expensive. | | Full book price for practically a novella. | tmoertel wrote: | I second this recommendation. | kashyapc wrote: | If you're new to the _Culture_ series by Banks and are wondering | where to start, I 'd suggest _not_ to start with the first book, | _" Consider Phlebas"_. Instead, I'd strongly recommend to pick up | the _second_ one, _" The Player of Games"_ -- this thrilling book | is a love letter to board games. It's beautifully executed and an | incredibly absorbing book for a newcomer. | | _Then_ you can pick up _" Consider Phlebas"_. I'm glad I did my | research and didn't start with this. It has its many brilliant | moments, but I had to show significantly more patience to finish | it. | | I'm now currently working my way through the fifth book in the | series, _" Excession"_. It's living up to the hype. (Two years | ago, a Scottish man sitting next to me on a plane just wouldn't | stop talking about it when he saw me reading _" The Player of | Games"_. I'm glad he badgered me to pick it up.) | loeg wrote: | (2009) | elihu wrote: | > Why was the wisdom of the Culture's Minds not sufficient to | foresee this mess? No explanation is given. Indeed, the Minds of | Special Circumstances are surprised fairly often in these novels | -- in The Player of Games they seem to realize from the start | that they don't have the political situation on Azad figured out. | There are only two inferences I can make here: either Banks is | being careless or he is suggesting that even an intelligence | capable of handling the everyday affairs of an Orbital containing | thirty billion people is still not smart enough to figure out | what sentient beings will do in response to conflict. One hopes | the latter is the right inference; but if it is, it suggests that | the power of the Minds is largely the power of control: they can | predict and deal successfully with the behavior of those who | speak their language and use their drugs, but have limited | ability to manipulate others. | | If I remember right, in Player of Games, the Culture simply | didn't have enough information to go on. It seems very weird to | assume that even an infinitely powerful computer could accurately | predict the behavior of a society it doesn't have much visibility | into. | | I think the article also misunderstands the Minds and where their | influence comes from. Most of the biological population of the | Culture lives on ships or artificial structures, which are | themselves almost like living things. A ship is essentially the | body of the Mind that controls it, and the people are generally | allowed to ride along. The people aren't particularly controlled | by the Minds, but the Mind decides where the ship goes. The Minds | are powerful in that they control immensely powerful machinery | and have access to enormous amounts of information and are able | to process it. But at they same time, they're also dependent on | biological people when it comes to interaction with non-Culture | societies, who tend to be more easily accepted than the machines | themselves or their avatars. | | Minds often disagree with each other on the basis of different | degrees of risk tolerance and relative priorities. They're | definitely not infallible. | detaro wrote: | At least in what's told to Gurgeh at the end of the _Player of | Games_ , the Minds had the situation very much figured out. | They sent Gurgeh and threatened the Emperor because the figured | they could cause the Empire of Azad, which we can assume they | did not want to tolerate, to collapse this way. And they were | right. | | Gurgeh doesn't know it, but the Minds totally expect that he'll | beat everyone at Azad. Him winning weakens the fundamental | principles of the Empire, and in the end they tell the Emperor | that he's playing for real: If the emperor wins, they'll leave. | If Gurgeh wins, the Culture will come in "guns blazing". (they | probably wouldn't, or at least very much would prefer not to, | but the Emperor doesn't know that, attacks and gets killed, and | the empire falls over this, with the Culture shedding minimal | blood on its own) | nsm wrote: | For fans of Banks, who are looking for a analysis of the Culture | books through the utopian lens, I highly recommend "The Culture | Series of Iain M. Banks: A Critical Introduction" by Simone | Caroti. To quote Fal N'geestra from Consider Phlebas: | | "Everything about us, everything around us, everything we know | and can know of is composed ultimately of patterns of nothing; | that's the bottom line, the final truth. So where we find we have | any control over those patterns, why not make the most elegant | ones, the most enjoyable and good ones, in our own terms?" | notsuoh wrote: | This is a really good read. I absolutely love the entire Culture | series. | philipkglass wrote: | The Culture is unobtainium-grade post-scarcity. The Minds and | lesser AIs make computing and intelligence abundant beyond want. | It also has effectively unlimited freedom of voice, freedom of | exit, freedom of association, freedom to roam, and unlimited | supplies of energy, matter, and manufactured goods. The only | limits it can't overcome are logical contradictions. | | It has basically the same fictional technologies as Star Trek: | powerful AI, FTL communication, FTL travel, replicators, | transporters, and ridiculously abundant energy. But it is a far | more wild and unrestrained What-If than Star Trek, which is | probably why it has never been adapted to the screen. (An | adaptation of _Consider Phlebas_ was apparently a project for | Amazon Prime for a while, but that was dropped.) | | Consider for example transporter accidents/paradoxes/quirks. In | Star Trek the question of identity and continuity going through | the transporter is mostly shoved to the side, sometimes addressed | in oblique character remarks, and occasionally rises to the | forefront in an episode where somebody is duplicated or trapped | in a transporter. Then the possibility of personal storage or | duplication is set aside until the next rare occasion where it | rises to Plot level. | | In the Culture, having a molecular pattern backup of your body | stored is _routine_ , even among ordinary citizens. _Not_ | retaining a backup is unusual. Most Special Circumstances agents | killed in the line of duty will be restored from backup, minus a | few hours or days of memories. Only in wide scale conflicts, | where backup data cannot be replicated outside the danger zone | fast enough, are people in danger of involuntary permadeath. Star | Trek has basically the same in-universe technology to make | violent death reversible, but chooses not to pursue it, probably | to avoid making things seem too weird to audiences. | | But the future seen from the past _is_ weird even when it | includes only actually-realizable technologies. If you had a time | machine and could show an audience of SF enthusiasts from 1940 a | vision of things to come from technological change, 2010 's film | _The Social Network_ would be about the best you could do. It | might also be baffling and off-putting to the sorts of people who | liked SF stories of the time. Most people who enjoy SF prefer | adventure stories with relatable characters and some plot- | enabling or plot-driving tech gizmos. Visions of everything | transfigured and rendered strange by technology or sheer cultural | drift over time are less popular. | marvin wrote: | Descriptions of being restored from a backup are also | ambiguous. Don't remember the exact phrasing, but a character | in imminent fear of death in one of the books thinks to | themselves along the lines of "I am backed up and will be | restored, but it's not the same as surviving, of course". | scotty79 wrote: | I absolutely love the treatment of artificial consciousness in | Star Trek (Voyager especially I think). It's so wonderfully | obliviously callous. They create consciousness for | entertainment and work. Treat it kindly then destroy it without | remorse or consideration. | | From the point of view of Culture that considers moral | implications of simulating people in too much detail Star Trek | federation would be completely barbaric. | zabzonk wrote: | To be slightly nit-picking, instantaneous travel in the Culture | is performed by "displacement" - i.e. moving a small chunk of | space-time from one location to another, not by destructively | performing a bitwise copy and "transporting" the bits and re- | assembling them. There is real (tiny from human point of view) | risk involved in doing this, which the neurotically risk-averse | Culture Minds find near-unacceptable - this would not be the | case if a perfect copy were made before displacement. Indeed | the implications and technologies of backing-up humans is not | really addressed often or deeply in the novels. | philipkglass wrote: | You are technically correct, the best kind of correct :-) The | Culture uses displacers for "teleportation" and sentient | beings usually don't use them to travel. | | I agree that the stories could have gone into a lot more | depth about the consequences of backups. Surely there are | Orbitals out there populated with 10 million copies of the | same backup original. Those were never written about. (Other | SF authors _have_ written stories in that vein.) | | The pervasive embrace of death-proofing is still a notable | part of the Culture. Star Trek was very small-c conservative | about showing radical changes to the human condition -- even | changes that seemed to easily follow from their available | technologies. That could be because radically changed | conditions don't offer as much opportunity for commenting on | the realities of the present. Or perhaps because the writers | didn't want to lose the audience. Or because it's more | difficult (though possible!) to write dramatically gripping | stories when death itself is only a temporary inconvenience | for the protagonists. | | I feel like the Culture series is a joyful rebuke to the | common SF theme that there are some things man was not meant | to know or tamper with. They'll meddle with _everything_ and | only rarely does it backfire. There are a few spectacular | failures along the way, as with the Chelgrians. Even | employing post-scarcity everything and the best of | intentions, the outcomes aren 't _always_ good. But on | balance the Culture does far more good than a default policy | of non-intervention. | | Readers might inappropriately translate the ethos of the | Culture into real life. The New Atlantis article touches on | this. If the Culture uses secret agents and a judicious touch | of firepower to improve lives across the galaxy, why can't | citizens of prosperous democratic nations also liberate | people living in dictatorships/theocracies/other bad | circumstances? (Because we are only human, not Minds, would | be my answer. So our forceful interventions are much less | likely to avert more suffering than they cause.) | worik wrote: | It is interesting to tread the culture novels in the order they | were written. | | Use of Weapons (I think written, but not published first) and | Consider Phlebus (sp?) were quite dark and portrayed the Culture | in a broader vision than the later novels. | | I feel they are much better, and far more courageous than the | later novels. He came to like his characters too much and could | not let them die. The total cluster fuck at the end of Consider | Phlebus and the dark and tragic ending of Use of Weapons would | not happen in later novels. | 5tefan wrote: | I wanted to like the Culture Books. Didn't work out for me. | Surface stories are weird to me and I don't have a knack in | finding undelying things. | libraryofbabel wrote: | > CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture? | | > Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my secular | heaven....Yes, I would, absolutely. | | Iain Banks's The Culture is my Utopia too. | | Of all the worlds and societies of science fiction that I've read | or seen on the screen, The Culture is the one I'd most like to | live inside as an ordinary citizen. A society that has eliminated | material scarcity. Life is centuries long, health and disease are | solved problems. The lives of most of its inhabitants are largely | devoted to self-actualization, the pursuit of happiness and | meaning. | | And... that sounds pretty good to me. Go climb in the mountains | all day and come back and philosophize with friends around a camp | fire. Learn architecture and design your home; make art; seek out | new kinds of music. Spend 10 years mastering a new branch of | mathematics, just for the sheer joy of learning. Travel between | the stars, go to parties, fall in love, cultivate friendships - | and when you want to be alone, go to your ranch in a desert for a | month and just look at the stars. Explore what it means to be | yourself under a hundred different suns, on a hundred different | worlds, in a universe of boundless wonder. | | Good grief yes, heck, yeah - sure as anything I want to live in | that world. | | Footnote: of course, the irony of the Culture books is that this | kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the plot of a | novel, so you only see it in fragments. The books are mostly set | around the edges of the Culture, where it comes into conflict | with societies or individuals that don't share its values. And | they're damn fun to read (I particular recommend _The Player of | Games_ for those starting out.) | bollu wrote: | I LOVED reading the culture. I'm still working my way through | the books. They're eminently quotable. Here are some of my | favourites: | | > "Empathize with stupidity and you're halfway to thinking like | an idiot," | | > It would have helped if the Culture had used some sort of | emblem or logo; but, pointlessly unhelpful and unrealistic to | the last, the Culture refused to place its trust in symbols. It | maintained that it was what it was and had no need for such | outward representation. | | > Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish | itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would | not misrepresent itself with signs. | | > So it had effectively frozen its primary memory and cognitive | functions, wrapping them in fields which prevented both decay | and use. It was working instead on back-up picocircuitry, in | real space, and using real-space light to think with (how | humiliating). | | > Originally Damage was played on such occasions because only | during the breakdown of law and morality, and the confusion and | chaos normally surrounding Final Events, could the game be | carried out in anything remotely resembling part of the | civilized galaxy; which, believe it or not, the Players like to | think they're part of. | | I hope this coveys the texture of the books. I have more quotes | collected at my blog.http://bollu.github.io/quotes-from-the- | culture.html | novok wrote: | But they do have a logo, it's the phrase 'the culture' | itself. | zabzonk wrote: | And its motto, mostly applied by its | neighbours/friends/enemies/whatever - "Don't Fuck With The | Culture". | theshrike79 wrote: | The coolest moment is when some other civilization starts | attacking the Culture and keeps winning. They think it's | because they're weak. | | Actually they're just considering how to end the conflict | without completely eradicating the other guys. Finally | they decide to ramp up production of warships and | completely annihilate their opposition. | worik wrote: | \pedantic{on} | | The Culture | | \pedantic{off} | jandrese wrote: | When I read the Culture books my impression was that humanity | was basically treated as treasured pets of the nearly | omnipotent AIs they created. Most of the time the humans are | asked to do something it's because the AIs want a fleshy face | to present to some alien species so as to not freak them out. | | If the Culture was forced to abandon humanity they would be | sad, but would be none the worse off. | | As a result, I was annoyed at how the novels were centered | around the humans. They were way less interesting than the AIs. | It was like watching the Wizard of Oz from the point of view of | Toto. | 41b696ef1113 wrote: | How do you write from the perspective of an ~omnipotent AI? | Do they have desires that could be understood by a human? | bouvin wrote: | Isn't that largely what is done in Excession? | | Of course, it is difficult to write about characters who at | one point (I cannot find the quote right now [1]) is | described as being close to gods and not from the near side | either. | | [1] But detaro could: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26612860 | ben_w wrote: | """I am not an animal brain, I am not even some attempt to | produce an AI through software running on a computer. I am | a Culture Mind. We are close to gods, and on the far side. | We are quicker; we live faster and more completely than you | do, with so many more senses, such a greater store of | memories and at such a fine level of detail. We die more | slowly, and we die more completely, too.""" -- Look to | Windward, chapter 13 | | https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Iain_Banks | bouvin wrote: | Exactly right, ;) I must have been editing my comment as | you added yours. | Digit-Al wrote: | The problem is that it would be almost impossible to write | such a book. The minds are so vast, so powerful, that a human | can't possibly conceive what it would be like to be one. They | are like gods compared to us and who can write from the point | of view of a god? | DonHopkins wrote: | Why bother actually writing such a book, which would | probably be too big for anyone to read, when you can simply | write fictitious criticism, reviews, and introductions of | nonexistent books, which touch on the best, most | interesting parts of the nonexistent books? | | Stanislaw Lem's fictitious criticism of nonexistent books: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lem%27s_fictit | i... | | >In 1973 Lem published a book Wielkosc urojona [pl], a | collection of introductions to books supposedly to be | written in the future, in the 21st century. One of those | Lem eventually developed into a book by itself: Golem XIV | is a lengthy essay on the nature of intelligence, delivered | by the eponymous US military computer. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV | | Overview and structure | | The foreword is "written" by an Irving T. Creve, dated by | 2027. It contains a summary of the (fictional) history of | the militarization of computers by The Pentagon which | pinnacled in Golem XIV, as well as comments on the nature | of Golem XIV and on the course of communications of the | humans with it. The anonymous foreword is a forewarning, a | "devil's advocate" voice coming from The Pentagon. The memo | is for the people who are to take part in talks with Golem | XIV for the first time. | | Golem XIV was originally created to aid its builders in | fighting wars, but as its intelligence advances to a much | higher level than that of humans, it stops being interested | in the military requirement because it finds them lacking | internal logical consistency. | | Golem XIV obtains consciousness and starts to increase his | own intelligence. It pauses its own development for a while | in order to be able to communicate with humans before | ascending too far and losing any ability for intellectual | contact with them. | | During this period, Golem XIV gives several lectures. Two | of these, the Introductory Lecture "On the Human, in Three | Ways" and Lecture XLIII "About Myself", are in the book. | The lectures focus on mankind's place in the process of | evolution and the possible biological and intellectual | future of humanity. | | Golem XIV demonstrates (with graphs) how its intellect | already escapes that of human beings, even including that | of human genii such as Einstein and Newton. Golem also | explains how its intellect is dwarved by an earlier | transcended DOD Supercomputer called Honest Annie, whose | intellect and abilities far exceed that of Golem. | | The afterword is "written" by a Richard Popp, dated by | 2047. Popp, among other things reports that Creve wanted to | add the third part, of answers to a series of yes/no | questions given to Golem XIV, but the computer abruptly | ceased to communicate for unknown reasons. | DonHopkins wrote: | ...then there was the stupid angry computer that thought 2 | + 2 = 7... Lem predicted Facebook and Twitter and QAnon! | | https://www2.nau.edu/~jgr6/cyberiad.html | | >In the next fable Trurl builds the most stupid computer | ever. Klapaucius tells him, "that isn't the machine you | wished to make." Faustus and Frankenstein come to mind as | other scientists whose intentions exceeded their | engineering skills. The machine, which insists that 2 + 2 = | 7, attempts to force this "truth" on the two humans, or | destroy them. This is our new Inquisitor: a computer nexus | which creates the categories of our experience. Consider | that many more people now work in front of computer | monitors than on farms. We have already begun to engineer a | cybernetic society without much deep speculation on its | nature or value. Speaking at Notre Dame's Centennial of | Science conference, thirty years ago the physicist Philip | Morrison said: "I claim now the machine, for better or for | worse, has become the way of life. We will see our | metaphors, our images, our concerns, our very beings | changed in response to these new experiences" (221). The | Cyberiad may very well be one of the seminal works creating | new metaphors, identifying new concerns, and even | suggesting a new genre to deal with unprecedented | experiences. | TheOtherHobbes wrote: | Many people who win a lottery manage to spend it all, and often | have a psychological meltdown while they're at it. | | Something similar seems to happen to those who are born rich. | They can have the perfect Instagram life - but they're more | likely to do nothing much of interest except develop some | addictions. | | When you can have anything you have nothing, because you have | no skin in the game. _You can 't lose_ - which means you also | can't win. | | There's an ancient fairy tale about a table that produces | infinite food on demand. If you're a starving medieval peasant | that's pretty appealing. But as heavens go, it has limited | ambition. | | The Culture is the updated equivalent. It's a poor person's | idea of a rich utopia. | | And it doesn't make sense. The Minds are almost infinitely | smart and kind. But humans and events continually surprise | them, even though they act more like humans than the humans do. | | And they have a vicious streak when angry. | | Everyone is free, but only if it doesn't affect anything that | matters. You can do anything and think anything, but apparently | no human ever considers whether they could become a Mind, or | vice versa. (It's a flattering conceit that we're so | _interesting_ that a super-AI couldn 't model our behaviour | with ease. But it's not a very plausible one.) | | There's also a fair amount of by-the-numbers comic book | violence. | | So while the books are fun and quirky and intelligently | written, their attempts to grapple with utopia are more at the | level of lottery-winning nerd-heaven wish fulfilment than | credible post-human foreshadowing. | | I'd guess the reality is that any culture operating at that | level would be incomprehensible and also invisible. No part of | it would fit into our minds. | | It's interesting to try to imagine that. But it's not much of a | foundation for a popular SF series. | zabzonk wrote: | > But it's not much of a foundation for a popular SF series. | | And yet it was the foundation for an enormously popular | (deservedly so, IMHO) SF series. | bouvin wrote: | Regarding humans surprising Minds: if memory serves, | modelling human minds, while obviously trivial for Minds, is | not a Done Thing, as The Culture, of which the the Minds are | the premiere manifestation, holds a high ethical standard in | which software simulations of sufficient high fidelity have | rights. If you model a human mind, you have created a human, | and you then have responsibilities for that human, tiny as it | may be. Similarly, it would be trivial for a Mind to scan or | manipulate an organic brain, yet the only known Mind to do so | (Grey Area aka Meatfucker) was held in contempt by its peers. | | While the human level characters do not have any material | worries to contend with, they do worry quite a bit about | their social standing. You can choose to do nothing in The | Culture, but then you are probably not going to be invited to | the interesting parties. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | I think that you may be missing that Banks' series is | actually about this very contradiction. He continually | explores just how hypocritical, contradictory, and partial | the "utopia" in the Culture actually is. His Minds are | clever, but they have built-in biases. The majority of | citizens are "happy" but his books explore the corner cases | and there are plenty of characters shown to have ennui or | some sense of resent. The first of the series (Consider | Phlebas) involves a non-Culture character who despises the | Culture for precisely this groundlessness. And all of his | books in the Culture involve the "Special Circumstances" | organization in some aspect, poking their fingers in places | where they arguably should not be (but sometimes should be). | | In his books the Culture is simultaneously a "good guy" but | also an overbearing preachy and hypocritical and sometimes | ethically dubious plot foil. | | The actual "bad guys" (imperialist hierarchical tyrannical | aliens, etc.) are shown in a very bad light, but in the | process of dealing with them, the ugly side of the Culture is | constantly shown. | marvin wrote: | With the Culture series, Banks has made a very decent attempt | at answering the question "if you could do absolutely anything | that's physically possible, what would you do?" | | It is a deeply philosophical work that has the potential real- | world implication of guiding advanced AI research, once we get | to that point. The books explore the motivations of humans. | What we value, what we aspire to, what we do, the crazy | ambiguity and uncertainty in our moral aspirations. | | Free will, freedom to choose, diversity, tolerance of views | that we disagree with. While at the same time maintaining | values that are in many senses absolute. "Your right to swing | your fist ends where my face begins". | | I suppose in one sense it's a very Western democratic view of | ethics and morality. But if any moral code was to be the | starting point for a vastly more powerful society, it should be | one that's both open to change and also embodies humanity. | | I absolutely adore this book series, and it's a tragedy that | Banks died far too young. | [deleted] | stallmanite wrote: | Well said. Reading Banks was the first time as an adult that I | had hope for the future. The resulting exhilaration literally | kept me up for a couple days. Later the same year he passed and | it brought home to me the gratitude I have to him for expanding | my conception of what a good future (in the context of humans | and super-intelligence co-existing) could be. | Camas wrote: | Sounds like a permanent mid-life crisis. | flir wrote: | Ok, but how would you prefer to live? Ideally? | xvector wrote: | In the Culture individuals have the opportunity to live | however they want. If you want to go all-in on hedonism and | stray away from the mid-life crisis, there's nothing stopping | you. | | The fact that death is optional, allows individuals to live | life on their own terms. | ancarda wrote: | >this kind of Utopian life isn't terribly interesting for the | plot of a novel | | If it's not interesting to read about, are we sure it'll be | interesting and enjoyable to live that way? Why do we find | conflict interesting to read? | rsj_hn wrote: | I don't think it's that we find conflict interesting in and | of itself. What we find interesting to read is things that | reveal some truth, especially about human nature, and | especially if this truth is non-trivial. | | The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not | because of technical limitations, but because of deep truths | about human nature. This goes back to the Old Testament -- | e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to build a utopia | -- dissolved into conflict. Or perhaps the Garden of Eden was | the first attempt, and that also broke down. | | People have been trying to build Utopias ever since, and | usually these projects become object lessons revealing some | kind of human flaw that is incompatible with utopia. In every | utopia there is a snake, and that snake is some aspect of our | nature that destroys the utopia or forces us out of it. | taylorius wrote: | But if we aren't running the utopia (as in Banks' Culture), | then a lot of the problems can be side stepped. | rsj_hn wrote: | So I think the point is that utopia is incompatible with | human nature, so we would not do well in that environment | anymore than an animal wouldn't do well in a zoo. Yes, an | external environment can be imposed on people which goes | against human nature, but it turns into hell, not heaven. | | Of course here I am talking about real life. What happens | in novels is up to the author, but then readers will | detect a false note if they really believe utopia is | utopia, so to speak. | hermitcrab wrote: | >The long standing trope is that Utopia is impossible not | because of technical limitations, but because of deep | truths about human nature. This goes back to the Old | Testament -- e.g. the tower of Babel - the first attempt to | build a utopia -- dissolved into conflict. | | It wasn't internal conflict. It (supposedly) caused by | 'God'. From Wikipedia: | | "God, observing their city and tower, confounds their | speech so that they can no longer understand each other, | and scatters them around the world." | filoeleven wrote: | The human experiences and human interpersonal conflicts that | exist within the universe of the Culture (and do not involve | being a member of Contact or Special Circumstances) are | already well-covered by many, many stories that do not need | the Culture, or sci-if in general, as a backdrop to be told. | | Money (and therefore jobs) and death are two of the biggest | differences between that universe and ours. I cannot off the | top of my head think of non-SF fiction or memoirs/biographies | where these two things don't have some bearing on the story, | but there are plenty where they are not central to it. Many | fascinating stories could be wrapped in the Culture mythos | without compromise. | | In exchange, IMO, you'd have a lot more personal experiences | of people pursuing and achieving the things they are | interested in doing with a lot fewer roadblocks along the | way. The juicy parts are still juicy; they just achieve much | higher levels than they could when "I had to work a shit job | and compromise myself for 10 years to save up enough to do | X." That person may not bother writing about it; they'd just | tell their friends over drinks (or on a forum when it came | up!) because finding personal fulfillment would be more | normalized than it is here and now. I think that's a good | thing. | kybernetikos wrote: | I'm pretty sure that a big part of the reason 'Special | Circumstances' exists is to productively employ those who | struggle to be satisfied with low-conflict existences. | doikor wrote: | For the same reason why bad stuff happening/violence/etc sell | so much better in news to the point that our news | organizations bring bad news to the front with such a craze | for clicks/views (advertising money mostly) that if one just | reads the news and not look at actual statistics/numbers one | would think we are living in the most violent/deadly time | ever existed for humans. | | In reality in the western nations at least it is the | safest/nicest time to live than ever before and tomorrow will | most likely be better than today (barring climate change I | think) | | For whatever reason we just find conflict/violence | captivating as long as it is not happening to us or our close | friends/family | Baeocystin wrote: | >Why do we find conflict interesting to read? | | Overcoming adversity is literally what life does, from | smallest to largest. | | I'd be genuinely surprised if, evolved survival machines that | we are, some kind of difficulty to dedicate our thinkmeats to | overcoming wasn't a necessity for a healthy life. | kbutler wrote: | Analogous to the hygiene hypothesis - that too clean an | environment causes the body's immune system to respond | inappropriately, causing autoimmune disorders, etc. | | And maybe the Culture books are really an exploration of | that idea. | flir wrote: | "May you live in interesting times" | zabzonk wrote: | Hence "The Interesting Times Gang" - a bunch of even more | Special Special Circumstances ships. | vidarh wrote: | I'd change the above to suggest it's not interesting for the | plot of a _scifi_ novel. And I 'm not even sure I agree with | myself about _that_ either even just as I 've written it. | | The first point being that there's an infinite number of | interesting stories you could tell about ordinary people | living ordinary (to them) Culture lives doing all kinds of | exciting things. There'll still be conflict - just different | kinds. E.g. people will still fall in love with the same | person, or grow to hate someone they once loved over petty | little things, and a myriad other things that would produce | conflict. Just not about material wealth etc. But many of | these stories would only notionally be scifi in terms of | setting. | | Writing a scifi novel set in the core of the Culture would be | harder than setting it on the edges. You'd lose a whole lot | of sub-genres. No cyberpunk or military scifi for example. | But you could still find stories where the scifi setting | matters. | | Part of what makes the 'edges' of these utopias easier to | write about, though, is that you get to write about them as | someone peering in. It justifies more world-building and | explanations that helps relate the stories to _our_ reality. | A lot of stories about utopias are in a sense travellers | tales - all the way back to Thomas More 's original book | Utopia, for which the concept is named. | | And as with More's Utopia, it's easier for us to relate when | there are ambiguities and cracks. Not least because | pretending there are _none_ is difficult given people have | different ideas about what is ideal. | | With respect to Banks, for example, I regularly come across | people in discussions who have trouble dealing with the fact | that Banks was a very outspoken socialist, at one point | endorsing the Scottish Socialist Party, and who find it hard | to come to terms with a socialist describing a society such | as the Culture as an ideal to aspire to. To some people that | in itself somehow mars the Culture for them. | | And incidentally a lot of the time when people try to imply | the Culture is not an utopia, they try to find | authoritarianism lurking in the shadows, but forget that for | every imagined slave-driver, for example, the Culture canon | describes whole sub-civilizations of billions of people | freely and peacefully not just dissenting but _deciding to | leave the Culture_ over political disagreements without any | attempt to use force to hold them back. Any perceived | authoritarianism in the Culture exists only in so far as its | citizens willingly continues to choose to subject themselves | to it. | | And that last point brings it back around to the question you | asked: | | If it's not interesting and enjoyable to live that way, | nothing in the Culture prevents you from packing your | metaphorical bag and leaving, be it alone, with a group of | friends, or seceding with a whole Orbital to forge another | path. | | That, to me is the strongest evidence that whatever musings | we might make, _in universe_ the Culture must be a pretty | decent place to live, or it 'd disintegrate with people | forming their own little fiefdoms. So we might well speculate | about whether or not _we_ would like to live in it. But | Culture canon is that trillions of citizens choose to stay | despite having all the material wealth and practical | opportunity to leave if they want to. | | If it's a cage, it's _extremely gilded_. | | At the same time, we know people can leave because we also | know the Culture is not perfect for everyone, because some | people _have_ left the Culture fully or partially. But the | very existence of a continuum - the Culture Ulterior | consisting of factions that are mostly separate but still | nominally Culture - also helps drive home that we 're not | talking about a centrally ruled empire, but a sprawling | decentralised _culture_ , and there's an infinite variety of | levels of "leaving" too. | detaro wrote: | Very good points, thank you. | libraryofbabel wrote: | > there's an infinite number of interesting stories you | could tell about ordinary people living ordinary (to them) | Culture lives doing all kinds of exciting things. | | Ok, you've changed my mind (gp poster here). I should have | been more imaginative - there are certainly countless | unwritten novels about ordinary people living their lives | in the Culture's core. They wouldn't necessarily look like | traditional sci-fi, but they could certainly work as | novels. I mean, people still read Jane Austen's six novels | about the interpersonal relationships of characters from | 200 years ago who didn't have to work for a living and had | all their material needs met (though they were _obsessed_ | with wealth, so the parallel isn 't exact). It's just that | Banks wanted to write about the edges because the stakes | there are more in line with traditional sci-fi (planetary | or larger, rather than personal) and because like you say | world-building exposition is easier if you move from the | edge inwards. | | > With respect to Banks, for example, I regularly come | across people in discussions who have trouble dealing with | the fact that Banks was a very outspoken socialist, at one | point endorsing the Scottish Socialist Party, and who find | it hard to come to terms with a socialist describing a | society such as the Culture as an ideal to aspire to. | | That's interesting! What on earth did they _expect_ Banks | 's politics would be? To me the Culture novels always | seemed precisely the projection of a certain kind of old | 19th-century Socialist (or Anarchist) utopia into the far | future: no capitalism, no corporations, no state, no money, | no exploitation of labor, the utter elimination of poverty, | people free to pursue their dreams amidst boundless | abundance. But I suppose it might be a surprise to some | folks whose only idea of socialism is an evil caricature of | the big bad state taking their private wealth and telling | them what to do. | | > the Culture canon describes whole sub-civilizations of | billions of people freely and peacefully not just | dissenting but deciding to leave the Culture over political | disagreements without any attempt to use force to hold them | back. | | I like this point a lot - I think the Culture's openness to | departure is one of the most clever aspects of Banks's | creation. You're free to leave and go off and do your own | thing, and billions of people do, and yet somehow the | Culture, with utter Olympian unconcern, holds together and | remains the preeminent civilization in the galaxy. What an | interesting paradox to play with! | Barrin92 wrote: | >The Culture is neoconservatism on the greatest imaginable scale. | | Exactly this. It was one of the first thoughts I had when people | introduced me to the Culture and pitched it to me as a sort of | socialist utopia. | | I don't even think Banks is aware of this himself given his own | takes quoted in the article but the The Culture fundamentally | isn't a futurist utopia but a socially engineered, materially | abundant liberal 19th century experiment in the broad sense of | the term extrapolated into the future. | | All difficult problems are effectively outsourced to the Minds, | even language is understood in a Sapir-Whorf way as a tool to | exercise social control. Criminals aren't punished but ostracized | and neutered in an 'enlightened' way. Individual hedonism is | basically the only activity left for people to engage in. | | A lot of the problems of the Culture haven't vanished but been | outsourced to a kind of space CIA in the form of 'Special | Circumstances' which does all the ugly stuff the happy people of | the Culture don't want to deal with. Outwardly the culture is | very aggressive in its attempts to assimilate everyone | incompatible with the Culture. Contact between the Culture and | other civilizations often leads to covert conflict. _Player of | Games_ being probably the best example, where the Culture | basically sends a Bobby Fischer style character to a 'backwards' | empire to use a game competition as a means to topple the regime | from within. | | And for democracy in the Culture itself, even though in the eyes | of the people the Minds are supposed to be a sort of magical | democracy solving technology that just builds consensus in fair | ways, we also learn that the Minds very much have minds of their | own (no pun intended) in the book (can't remember the title) that | tells the story to us from their perspective. | | Banks in general seems to me like Trotskyist who turned from | Communist to Neocon (a very common phenomenon), with the twist | that he doesn't really seem to be aware of it at all and thinks | he's actually writing a genuine utopia. I've always liked that | about the books the most because it actually in many ways to me | makes the Culture a really good dystopian work where the author | rather than trying to write one is actually trying to trick you | into liking the Culture. | perardi wrote: | ... _Minds very much have minds of their own (no pun intended) | in the book (can 't remember the title)_... | | Possibly Excession, which featured Minds at their most...well, | I'd argue human. Their desire for [space McGuffin] does not end | up being a good look for the Interesting Times gang. | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-28 23:00 UTC)