Comment by jiggawatts
3 days ago
To be more specific, the machine Minds rule the Culture civilisation and the humanoids are effectively mere pampered pets.
(Several characters in the novels comment on this, so it is entirely cannon.)
The Culture fought a war against the Idirans, who eschew the use of intelligent machines. The Idirans lost.
Similarly, the Gzilt civilisation in the novel The Hydrogen Sonata prefer to run their ships with a quorum of uploaded humanoid mind states running at highly accelerated speeds.
If I take my parents on trips, buy them nice things, visit often and generally make sure they are happy and fulfilled, are they my pampered pets?
Your parents have agency that your gifts do not dilute.
Humanoids in the Culture are controlled at every level, even their thoughts as guided… sorry… “aligned” with the Minds through the adoption of the language Marain.
No humanoid ever overrules a ship Mind in the novels.
Sure, you can just ignore the source text and the author explicit statements that it's a true utopia[1].
They're an anarchistic society, no one has power to overrule any one else.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheCulture/comments/kbtylt/ysk_the_...
8 replies →
> Humanoids in the Culture are controlled at every level
Nope, they have considerable freedom, arguably greater than we have today. It's true that they cannot directly challenge the almost onmipotent Minds when it comes to stuff that matters to them, but Minds in Culture are an example of a very well-aligned AI, so it's almost always the case that going against a Mind's intent will just make the situation worse for everyone.
I assumed they were referencing Algebraist.