4 ms·
But the minds clearly direct the people, messing with their psychology and constructing scenarios where the people see no other option than doing what the minds
by Joeri 6y ago
But the minds clearly direct the people, messing with their psychology and constructing scenarios where the people see no other option than doing what the minds want. Given that the minds are so much more intelligent, that they fully control the means of production, that they guide the development of people from birth, and that any deviancy in thinking of both people and minds is corrected, isolated or excised by the more powerful minds you have to wonder whether the culture is just one big mind trap.
And maybe that’s the whole point, that any culture shapes the thoughts of the people that are a part of it. Banks tried to design a context most able to let people develop their thoughts in a benevolent way. The people in the Culture are free to think and do anything, but they don’t because they are guided from birth not to consider some ideas.
- cygx 6y agoIf we consider it benign, we call it education, if not, indoctrination. A culture that doesn't do it will cease to exist.
- henrikschroder 6y agoExcept the Culture has a very strong taboo against reading someone's mind, and they also have a strong taboo against bumping into the simulation problem, which means that the Minds won't 100% know what the humans will do, and this is the preferred state of society. The ship/mind Grey Area is explicitly condemend and ostracised from polite society because of it, for example. (The simulation problem: If you want to simulate a society of sentient beings to figure out what they would do, then your simulated entities also have to be sentient for your simulation to be 100% accurate, but then you've accidentally created sentient life, which has rights, so shutting down your simulation is genocide, which means you now have to commit to keeping that simulation running for eternity, which is too much of a bother so you shouldn't do it in the first place.)
- dariusj18 6y agoThe simulation problem has kept me up at night. I think I figured out the answer to it though. If you were to create a simulation you would have to keep it running. Not for any moral reason, but because if we are ourselves a simulation attempting to answer the question of what to do with a simulation, it is in our interest for the answer to be, "keep it on."