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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 an

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 6y ago
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.)
- Rule35 6y ago
  > 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. We humans are also all that we have to rescue us humans. Decrying that we aren't gods doesn't help. If someone is screaming for help, how can we not go? > So our forceful interventions are much less likely to avert more suffering than they cause. I think that's the nature of force. Use very little.
krisoft 6y ago
> Indeed the implications and technologies of backing-up humans is not really addressed often or deeply in the novels. I'm not sure what "often" or "deeply" means, but I consider Surface Detail to be revolving entirely around those questions. The inciting incident, Lededje's reincarnation, can only happen because a Culture Mind has implanted her with a neural lace earlier. A bit of Culture tech which made a full backup of her mind state. The underlying conflict of the book, the "War in Heaven" is also about this question. Namely if cultures of the universe should be allowed of creating artificial Hells. Basically simulated realities where the backed-up sentients are tortured according to the morale percepts of the given culture. And to settle this question they fight in a simulated war game, where every soldier is a simulated instance of a personality backup, revented again and again to fight in different bodies on different simulated battle fields.
- samfriedman 6y ago
  War is hell, indeed.

philipkglass 6y ago

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.)

Rule35 6y ago
> 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. We humans are also all that we have to rescue us humans. Decrying that we aren't gods doesn't help. If someone is screaming for help, how can we not go? > So our forceful interventions are much less likely to avert more suffering than they cause. I think that's the nature of force. Use very little.

krisoft 6y ago

> Indeed the implications and technologies of backing-up humans is not really addressed often or deeply in the novels. I'm not sure what "often" or "deeply" means, but I consider Surface Detail to be revolving entirely around those questions. The inciting incident, Lededje's reincarnation, can only happen because a Culture Mind has implanted her with a neural lace earlier. A bit of Culture tech which made a full backup of her mind state. The underlying conflict of the book, the "War in Heaven" is also about this question. Namely if cultures of the universe should be allowed of creating artificial Hells. Basically simulated realities where the backed-up sentients are tortured according to the morale percepts of the given culture. And to settle this question they fight in a simulated war game, where every soldier is a simulated instance of a personality backup, revented again and again to fight in different bodies on different simulated battle fields.

samfriedman 6y ago
War is hell, indeed.