> On HN I've seen the reading that Culture humans are pretty much housecats to the Culture Minds. Is that a mainstream reading, or fringe? I think it's a prett

> On HN I've seen the reading that Culture humans are pretty much housecats to the Culture Minds. Is that a mainstream reading, or fringe? I think it's a pretty mainstream reading. I've seen it a lot, and, IMHO, it'd be pretty hard to interpret those books any other way. IIRC, there's even one other species in that has that view, and chose to use "accelerated copies" of themselves to command their ships instead of AI, to avoid that fate.