A thing I really about the Culture as opposed to the Federation, and I hope this isn't off topic but
The Federation has this kind of liberal passivity to it, they are sure their ideas are the right ideas, but they aren't so sure in their ideas they are willing to stop repugnant acts regardless of the scale - as long as they aren't directly responsible for them
The Culture, or at least Contact, disagree: if you can do something about it, and you are fairly certain the results will be better to act than to not act, you ought do something
This is *the* defining social issue of the Culture, the one everyone argues on, if they had anything like political parties this would be the wedge issue. I very much dislike that in Star Trek, there is no debate, the debate is over. In The Culture, almost nobody says "we should never interfere", the points of contention are always "how much should we interfere, and what level of suffering are we willing to take responsibility for in the name of the greater good"
Though its easy to overstate how much the debate is a part of Culture life. 99% of the Culture lives their perfect lives of contentment and fulfillment, the stories just exist on the margins for obvious reasons.
Well for most issues this is true, their democracy has no need for everyone to be aware of what is going on in it, but there are still hundreds of billions of politically active characters
There are an awful lot of culture citizens in the book the characters run into that have very strong political opinions, iirc one of the characters hooks up with a girl that thinks the Idirans should have never been opposed even if it meant just letting them take whatever and whoever they wanted
Yeah, there are definitely a few depictions of political debate within the Culture, Matter, for instance, has someone stop the Contact agent protagonist in the bar and start an argument about the morality of Special Circumstances existing. Also there’s a whole bit in Look to Windward where they describe conflict over whether a rail system should’ve been built on a orbital plate and how it ended up escalating to larger and larger votes until the whole orbital was voting on the issue.
Re: how the culture ship looks, there's a really simplistic animation of the sleeper service (starts at about 1:20) that actually is fairly close to how I picture a plate class GSV. I would love to see a good creative team with a good budget take a whack at it
Most of the GSV's surface is sparsely populated natural terrain with all manner of things like floating islands, megacities, etc also located on it - with most of the population living on the surface inside the field envelope instead of within the ship's interior
It's kind of hard to wrap your head around these things because they're incomprehensibly large and complicated, and it's weird to think that the ship's "Shields" are all that separate the ship's population of hundreds of millions from hard vacuum (but the argument in the books is if anything is powerful enough to punch through, well, the ship's physical structure won't be any help)
A thing I really about the Culture as opposed to the Federation, and I hope this isn't off topic but
The Federation has this kind of liberal passivity to it, they are sure their ideas are the right ideas, but they aren't so sure in their ideas they are willing to stop repugnant acts regardless of the scale - as long as they aren't directly responsible for them
The Culture, or at least Contact, disagree: if you can do something about it, and you are fairly certain the results will be better to act than to not act, you ought do something
This is *the* defining social issue of the Culture, the one everyone argues on, if they had anything like political parties this would be the wedge issue. I very much dislike that in Star Trek, there is no debate, the debate is over. In The Culture, almost nobody says "we should never interfere", the points of contention are always "how much should we interfere, and what level of suffering are we willing to take responsibility for in the name of the greater good"
Though its easy to overstate how much the debate is a part of Culture life. 99% of the Culture lives their perfect lives of contentment and fulfillment, the stories just exist on the margins for obvious reasons.
Well for most issues this is true, their democracy has no need for everyone to be aware of what is going on in it, but there are still hundreds of billions of politically active characters
There are an awful lot of culture citizens in the book the characters run into that have very strong political opinions, iirc one of the characters hooks up with a girl that thinks the Idirans should have never been opposed even if it meant just letting them take whatever and whoever they wanted
Yeah, there are definitely a few depictions of political debate within the Culture, Matter, for instance, has someone stop the Contact agent protagonist in the bar and start an argument about the morality of Special Circumstances existing. Also there’s a whole bit in Look to Windward where they describe conflict over whether a rail system should’ve been built on a orbital plate and how it ended up escalating to larger and larger votes until the whole orbital was voting on the issue.
Yeah I suppose its wrong to say that Culture members just buzz along but they also fundamentally don't approach in-culture strife the same way as we might. A substantial chunk of the Culture breaks away over the Idiran war and as far as I can recall the Culture attitude towards it in general is "well that's a bummer but its of course their prerogative".
Yeah in Use of Weapons the first ship Zakalwe goes on has like decks that are "open" to space with people hang gliding in the atmosphere contained inside a field. Its barely even what we'd call a ship, most a collection of matter held in a functional shape by energy fields.
But then the warship in Player of Games is described as being extra solid like one gigantic piece of angry metal.
I love that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
A thing I really about the Culture as opposed to the Federation, and I hope this isn't off topic but
The Federation has this kind of liberal passivity to it, they are sure their ideas are the right ideas, but they aren't so sure in their ideas they are willing to stop repugnant acts regardless of the scale - as long as they aren't directly responsible for them
The Culture, or at least Contact, disagree: if you can do something about it, and you are fairly certain the results will be better to act than to not act, you ought do something
This is *the* defining social issue of the Culture, the one everyone argues on, if they had anything like political parties this would be the wedge issue. I very much dislike that in Star Trek, there is no debate, the debate is over. In The Culture, almost nobody says "we should never interfere", the points of contention are always "how much should we interfere, and what level of suffering are we willing to take responsibility for in the name of the greater good"
Though its easy to overstate how much the debate is a part of Culture life. 99% of the Culture lives their perfect lives of contentment and fulfillment, the stories just exist on the margins for obvious reasons.
Well for most issues this is true, their democracy has no need for everyone to be aware of what is going on in it, but there are still hundreds of billions of politically active characters
There are an awful lot of culture citizens in the book the characters run into that have very strong political opinions, iirc one of the characters hooks up with a girl that thinks the Idirans should have never been opposed even if it meant just letting them take whatever and whoever they wanted
Yeah, there are definitely a few depictions of political debate within the Culture, Matter, for instance, has someone stop the Contact agent protagonist in the bar and start an argument about the morality of Special Circumstances existing. Also there’s a whole bit in Look to Windward where they describe conflict over whether a rail system should’ve been built on a orbital plate and how it ended up escalating to larger and larger votes until the whole orbital was voting on the issue.
Yeah I suppose its wrong to say that Culture members just buzz along but they also fundamentally don't approach in-culture strife the same way as we might. A substantial chunk of the Culture breaks away over the Idiran war and as far as I can recall the Culture attitude towards it in general is "well that's a bummer but its of course their prerogative".
Yeah, the worst thing conflicts within the Culture tend to lead to is people being judgy with each other.
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killeddisplaced several key leaders into a passing GSV where they'll live out the rest of their lives in quiet but everyone on their planet believes they died horrific deaths as a result of their own choice, implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war.
Yeah in Use of Weapons the first ship Zakalwe goes on has like decks that are "open" to space with people hang gliding in the atmosphere contained inside a field. Its barely even what we'd call a ship, most a collection of matter held in a functional shape by energy fields.
But then the warship in Player of Games is described as being extra solid like one gigantic piece of angry metal.
Warships are different, in Excession that warship barely has enough interior space for a small room, same thing with Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints which has ZERO interior open volume and is made out of incredibly dense (possibly extradimensional?) exotic matter and has to actually eject one of its weapon systems so that theres a place for the passenger to stay
Culture Warships are just engine, sensors, brain, and guns, also:
Ulver Seich: Hehe, it looks like a dildo.
Churt Lyne (a drone): That's appropriate. Armed, it can fuck solar systems.
Remember that shot towards the end of Rogue One where the rebels are escaping orbit but then the Star Destroyer shows up out of nowhere dwarfing all the other ships as one of them crashes into its hull and collapses without harming it?
That's kind of what I imagine the feel of a GSV showing up in a film version would be. No direct violent, no flash, just unavoidable presence.
You wouldn't even finish describing the trolley problem to an SC drone before it had destroyed the trolley with a knife missile while secretly inventing many advanced technologies through shell corporations and using its newly acquired fortunes to manipulate the media to nudge the populous to stop putting people on trolley tracks
That's the interesting thing with Contact though, they'll ruin your society from the inside out and you'll never know what happened if they think its the best approach but nothing would make them happier than to be able to just show up in orbit and teach the locals about some new stuff they should try out. Like at the end of the day they really just want everyone to be peaceful and happy and the biggest motive for people joining Contact seems to be just a desire to go out into the galaxy and see and help.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
Oh and to engage in some torture of the most unrepentant, sound minded monsters. The alien nazi in Excession who talks about how those that they rounded up, murdered, disposed of, and erased from history were the lucky ones because *he* had to live with what he had done to them while *they* only had to suffer for a short while, yikes.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
I think the brain lasers probably work pretty good on humans but Grey Area would probably burn out his effectors brain lasering racists and just blow up the sun out of frustration
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
My wife was endlessly tickled by the idea of drone slapping
She also pointed out something interesting to me in that artificial minds place an emphasis on their names and identity that one might almost view as religious in importance and purpose.
In a nutshell, humans have religions to help make sense of their origins and the randomness of reality. It makes us feel to some degree apart from the natural world and we need that. Drones place so much emphasis on their names because they're surrounded by incredibly complex and mindless machines at all levels and they fundamentally need to feel that they're separate from that in a real way.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Its been a while but wasn't their final call "close but we'll just let this one cook for a bit longer"? They contact earth some time in like our 23rd Century iirc
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
Oh and to engage in some torture of the most unrepentant, sound minded monsters. The alien nazi in Excession who talks about how those that they rounded up, murdered, disposed of, and erased from history were the lucky ones because *he* had to live with what he had done to them while *they* only had to suffer for a short while, yikes.
GSV Grey Area is also known as Meatfucker for a reason. It's also considered to be slightly rogue from the general consensus.
Also of note, iitc... it maintains a very thorough collection of torture implements invented by civilizations. Especially humans.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Banks eventually said, maybe optimistically, that they eventually uplift Earth too.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Banks eventually said, maybe optimistically, that they eventually uplift Earth too.
Could swear that Consider Phelbas ends with a summation of the war in what is basically a "catch up" textbook intended for newly uplifted earthlings.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
Let me put it this way: once Gray Area is done with a genocide, those involved don't do it again. Gray Area actual way of dealing with it is both educational and preventive.
The other Minds only object because forcing someone to experience the last moments of all their victims, one after another, until their heart stops, involves mind manipulation, and most Minds think that's not polite.
Just killing them would be fine. For example, by figuring out what's the most horrifying way to die for an attempted mass murderer, and then killing them that way.
To send a message.
My wife was endlessly tickled by the idea of drone slapping
She also pointed out something interesting to me in that artificial minds place an emphasis on their names and identity that one might almost view as religious in importance and purpose.
In a nutshell, humans have religions to help make sense of their origins and the randomness of reality. It makes us feel to some degree apart from the natural world and we need that. Drones place so much emphasis on their names because they're surrounded by incredibly complex and mindless machines at all levels and they fundamentally need to feel that they're separate from that in a real way.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Its been a while but wasn't their final call "close but we'll just let this one cook for a bit longer"? They contact earth some time in like our 23rd Century iirc
Is that something that comes up later? In State of the Art it takes place in the 70s and iirc the resolution of the story is them just leaving the planet.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Banks eventually said, maybe optimistically, that they eventually uplift Earth too.
My wife was endlessly tickled by the idea of drone slapping
She also pointed out something interesting to me in that artificial minds place an emphasis on their names and identity that one might almost view as religious in importance and purpose.
In a nutshell, humans have religions to help make sense of their origins and the randomness of reality. It makes us feel to some degree apart from the natural world and we need that. Drones place so much emphasis on their names because they're surrounded by incredibly complex and mindless machines at all levels and they fundamentally need to feel that they're separate from that in a real way.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Its been a while but wasn't their final call "close but we'll just let this one cook for a bit longer"? They contact earth some time in like our 23rd Century iirc
Is that something that comes up later? In State of the Art it takes place in the 70s and iirc the resolution of the story is them just leaving the planet.
Yeah I'm just going on memory here, but I could swear that the exposition at the end of the book is addressed towards future earthlings as a history lesson.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Banks eventually said, maybe optimistically, that they eventually uplift Earth too.
*looks at current political climate*
...they aren’t coming back, are they?
I mean, the president isnt so different from the crazy paranoid emperor from player of games except that he would never be able to win at that game
My wife was endlessly tickled by the idea of drone slapping
She also pointed out something interesting to me in that artificial minds place an emphasis on their names and identity that one might almost view as religious in importance and purpose.
In a nutshell, humans have religions to help make sense of their origins and the randomness of reality. It makes us feel to some degree apart from the natural world and we need that. Drones place so much emphasis on their names because they're surrounded by incredibly complex and mindless machines at all levels and they fundamentally need to feel that they're separate from that in a real way.
I ove that The Culture operates on the near opposite of the Prime Directive.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
I feel like this would not work on humans.
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
Its been a while but wasn't their final call "close but we'll just let this one cook for a bit longer"? They contact earth some time in like our 23rd Century iirc
Is that something that comes up later? In State of the Art it takes place in the 70s and iirc the resolution of the story is them just leaving the planet.
Yeah I'm just going on memory here, but I could swear that the exposition at the end of the book is addressed towards future earthlings as a history lesson.
It is.
At the end of State of the Art, the Contact unit just leave, 'cause there's no major issues that need intervention.
The end of Consider Phlebas is a primer on the war for Earths.
Later on, you have a ship named after Buddhism (Bodhisattva, OAQS)
One implication in the universe that gets me is that the Ascended are implied to be capable of...a lot, and yet none of them intervene, really. They don't even care. Not even the newly minted ones!
So is the space the Culture is operating in just unimportant in the big scheme of things? Are they just faffing about vaingloriously?
Which reminds me, the best part of that story is when they make lab grown meat from the DNA samples of various oligarchs from Earth and have a party where they literally eat the rich.
One implication in the universe that gets me is that the Ascended are implied to be capable of...a lot, and yet none of them intervene, really. They don't even care. Not even the newly minted ones!
So is the space the Culture is operating in just unimportant in the big scheme of things? Are they just faffing about vaingloriously?
My guess would be that 3d space just mostly isn't interesting to nth-d beings. Like what would the lives and morality of a 2d universe mean to us, even if we were part of it once?
The Culture views the sublimed as mildly irresponsible fwiw
One implication in the universe that gets me is that the Ascended are implied to be capable of...a lot, and yet none of them intervene, really. They don't even care. Not even the newly minted ones!
So is the space the Culture is operating in just unimportant in the big scheme of things? Are they just faffing about vaingloriously?
The Culture has considered this question deeply, and reached the conclusion that the Ascended are wrong, and that if Ascension makes you unable of empathy and compassion, it's wrong and not worth it.
One implication in the universe that gets me is that the Ascended are implied to be capable of...a lot, and yet none of them intervene, really. They don't even care. Not even the newly minted ones!
So is the space the Culture is operating in just unimportant in the big scheme of things? Are they just faffing about vaingloriously?
I think Hydrogen Sonata was kind of meant to indicate that it doesn’t matter. Even sublimation is just another thing you can do. The Culture’s reason for existence is as valid as anything else.
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Yeah, there are definitely a few depictions of political debate within the Culture, Matter, for instance, has someone stop the Contact agent protagonist in the bar and start an argument about the morality of Special Circumstances existing. Also there’s a whole bit in Look to Windward where they describe conflict over whether a rail system should’ve been built on a orbital plate and how it ended up escalating to larger and larger votes until the whole orbital was voting on the issue.
Just remembered a Culture ship hides inside a sun and everyone on the other side is just jesus christ what the fuck. I love these books.
Having some sort of framing device that lets you see it from the Mind’s perspective would be neat.
Most of the GSV's surface is sparsely populated natural terrain with all manner of things like floating islands, megacities, etc also located on it - with most of the population living on the surface inside the field envelope instead of within the ship's interior
It's kind of hard to wrap your head around these things because they're incomprehensibly large and complicated, and it's weird to think that the ship's "Shields" are all that separate the ship's population of hundreds of millions from hard vacuum (but the argument in the books is if anything is powerful enough to punch through, well, the ship's physical structure won't be any help)
Yeah I suppose its wrong to say that Culture members just buzz along but they also fundamentally don't approach in-culture strife the same way as we might. A substantial chunk of the Culture breaks away over the Idiran war and as far as I can recall the Culture attitude towards it in general is "well that's a bummer but its of course their prerogative".
But then the warship in Player of Games is described as being extra solid like one gigantic piece of angry metal.
Star Trek: Who are we to interfere with Planet Nazis?
Culture: Planet Nazis? Oh, we infiltrated and killed several key leaders implicating resistance forces which led to a civil war. The result is still essentially an oligarchy but they’ve established universal suffrage. With some nudging they should even out in a few decades and we can start considering first contact.
You face The Culture with the trolley problem they’ll not only flip the switch, they’ll then start heading up the track to take out the next negligent conductor.
Yeah, the worst thing conflicts within the Culture tend to lead to is people being judgy with each other.
Do something similar to Red vs Blue. Show rapid, jarring combat from the point of view of the Mind while a regular person is virtually frozen in time.
Warships are different, in Excession that warship barely has enough interior space for a small room, same thing with Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints which has ZERO interior open volume and is made out of incredibly dense (possibly extradimensional?) exotic matter and has to actually eject one of its weapon systems so that theres a place for the passenger to stay
Culture Warships are just engine, sensors, brain, and guns, also:
That's kind of what I imagine the feel of a GSV showing up in a film version would be. No direct violent, no flash, just unavoidable presence.
I also like the notion that this is fundamentally what gives the lives of the people in the Culture meaning: there are other people out in the universe suffering and because they are attempting to motivate those civilizations to willingly adopt the moral framework of the Culture, even the most ostentatious hedonism on the part of Culture citizens at least serves the purpose of making the Culture’s lifestyle more attractive to those who haven’t adopted it.
They don't even want or need these foreign groups to join the Culture either, which is interesting. They just want them to be better, kinder and more peaceful versions of what they already are.
With the exception of eccentrics like Grey Area who using his power as an impossibly advanced spacecraft coasts from one industrialized world to the next exposing their most heinous and least talked about sins against their own race to their entire world
That'd be some shit for first contact right? You're sitting around eating a burger and suddenly every electronic device on the planet is hijacked by aliens to confront you with the ugliest deeds your race has ever done for no motive other than to make sure you don't do it again because you can't hide from it, others are watching
Oh and to engage in some torture of the most unrepentant, sound minded monsters. The alien nazi in Excession who talks about how those that they rounded up, murdered, disposed of, and erased from history were the lucky ones because *he* had to live with what he had done to them while *they* only had to suffer for a short while, yikes.
I feel like this would not work on humans.
I think the brain lasers probably work pretty good on humans but Grey Area would probably burn out his effectors brain lasering racists and just blow up the sun out of frustration
That’s why the Culture ultimately just decided to leave Earth as a control group.
She also pointed out something interesting to me in that artificial minds place an emphasis on their names and identity that one might almost view as religious in importance and purpose.
In a nutshell, humans have religions to help make sense of their origins and the randomness of reality. It makes us feel to some degree apart from the natural world and we need that. Drones place so much emphasis on their names because they're surrounded by incredibly complex and mindless machines at all levels and they fundamentally need to feel that they're separate from that in a real way.
Its been a while but wasn't their final call "close but we'll just let this one cook for a bit longer"? They contact earth some time in like our 23rd Century iirc
GSV Grey Area is also known as Meatfucker for a reason. It's also considered to be slightly rogue from the general consensus.
Also of note, iitc... it maintains a very thorough collection of torture implements invented by civilizations. Especially humans.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
which Minds consider to be the just the rudest, most egotistical thing
Banks eventually said, maybe optimistically, that they eventually uplift Earth too.
Could swear that Consider Phelbas ends with a summation of the war in what is basically a "catch up" textbook intended for newly uplifted earthlings.
Let me put it this way: once Gray Area is done with a genocide, those involved don't do it again. Gray Area actual way of dealing with it is both educational and preventive.
Just killing them would be fine. For example, by figuring out what's the most horrifying way to die for an attempted mass murderer, and then killing them that way.
To send a message.
Do not fuck with the Culture.
It was definitely many, many decades after the horror that was the 80’s that they first showed up for.
Is that something that comes up later? In State of the Art it takes place in the 70s and iirc the resolution of the story is them just leaving the planet.
*looks at current political climate*
...they aren’t coming back, are they?
Yeah I'm just going on memory here, but I could swear that the exposition at the end of the book is addressed towards future earthlings as a history lesson.
I mean, the president isnt so different from the crazy paranoid emperor from player of games except that he would never be able to win at that game
It is.
At the end of State of the Art, the Contact unit just leave, 'cause there's no major issues that need intervention.
The end of Consider Phlebas is a primer on the war for Earths.
Later on, you have a ship named after Buddhism (Bodhisattva, OAQS)
So is the space the Culture is operating in just unimportant in the big scheme of things? Are they just faffing about vaingloriously?
My guess would be that 3d space just mostly isn't interesting to nth-d beings. Like what would the lives and morality of a 2d universe mean to us, even if we were part of it once?
The Culture views the sublimed as mildly irresponsible fwiw
I think Hydrogen Sonata was kind of meant to indicate that it doesn’t matter. Even sublimation is just another thing you can do. The Culture’s reason for existence is as valid as anything else.