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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 game

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 6y ago
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simonh 6y ago
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.
shrimp_emoji 6y ago
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 6y ago
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.

deleted 6y ago

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simonh 6y ago

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.

shrimp_emoji 6y ago

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 6y ago

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.