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Curious question for HN re: Banks/culture -- how do Culture-esque civilizations dominate technologically and economically over civilizations with less Culture-l
by ethbr1 2y ago
Curious question for HN re: Banks/culture -- how do Culture-esque civilizations dominate technologically and economically over civilizations with less Culture-like attributes?^
That respect of Banks always felt a bit handwavey as to the specifics. (I.e. good/freedom triumphs over evil/tyranny, because it's a superior philosophy)
At galactic-scale, across civilization timespans, it's not as apparent why that should hold true.
Would have hoped that Banks, had he lived longer, would have delved into this in detail.
Granted, Vinge takes a similar approach, constructing his big bad from an obviously-not-equivalent antagonist, sidestepping the direct comparison.
The closest I got from either of them was that they posited that civilizations that tolerate and encourage diversity and individual autonomy persist for longer, are thus older, and that older counts for a lot at galactic scale.
^ Note: I'm asking more about the Idiran Empire than an OCP.
- bloopernova 2y agoI always assumed that Infinite Fun Space was used by the Minds to pre-emptively model any potential conflict.
- mattmanser 2y agoHe's explicit about that in Excession, and other books.
- Vecr 2y agoHow does he deal with the trillions of people tortured in infinite fun space? Wars don't tend to be suffering free, especially when they are the really nasty worst-case scenario ones you want to simulate. Did he reject the substrate invariance argument? It sounds like that, but if you want the culture to be our future (as in the future of actual humans), you can't do that, because... It's not true.
- ethbr1 2y agoBut the Minds are something of a turtles-all-the-way-down solution. If the Culture has Minds, why wouldn't other civilizations? And why would Culture-esque Minds be superior to less-Culture-y Minds?
- AlotOfReading 2y agoOther civilizations do have minds, constructed differently. The Gzilt in Hydrogen Sonata have minds constructed by humans after they've passed, with personalities from those people.
- Vecr 2y ago1) Not humans, Banks just calls them that in the text of the books, and 2) Any mind derived from a "human like" (even to a very small degree, really human like civilization and evolved) is at a massive disadvantage to a very highly optimized result of recursive self improvement.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoActual earth humans are in the books and noted to be of the same general body plan. Close enough. The Gzilt minds are specifically compared to culture minds and deemed to be comparable in capabilities.
- Vecr 2y ago> The Gzilt minds are specifically compared to culture minds and deemed to be comparable in capabilities. Well, that's not really realistic. Maybe they are only pretending to be based on organics, but really aren't, and just put up a facade.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoThey're not based on organics, but that's missing the larger point that realism isn't the point of sci fi like the culture series. It's an imaginary setting the author is using to look at society.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ItCouldBeWorse 2y ago
- swayvil 2y agoI figured that it was simply a flavor of fun that only Minds can appreciate (tho it could have practical uses too of course).
- satori99 2y agoI'm not sure that Infinite Fun Space is used to simulate the real. I got the impression that IFS is where Minds go to unwind and play in synthetic universes with rules of their own imagining. And that humans cannot really even properly conceive them. The Culture is also very cautious about running high fidelity simulations for ethical reasons. Useful simulations approach the real in fidelity which makes them problematic to delete -- But they still do it.
- sxp 2y agoExcession deals with this. It involves the Culture and "The Affront" which is a spacefaring but savage civilization that some people in the Culture dislike. Player of Games is a similar story about a civilization that the Culture dislikes. Those are my two favorite Culture books among my favorite books in general. The Wikipedia articles about the books goes into spoiler-heavy details about the Culture's interaction with those civilizations.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoThat's a big part of the stories. Special Circumstances nudges other civilizations towards the Culture's leanings (see player of games, surface detail) as they're climbing the technology ladder.
- ItCouldBeWorse 2y agoSome day, the ambassador just travels upriver to the bad lands and starts a revolution- and wins. The lessons to learn here- always offer them a chair and kill them if they react badly..
- ethbr1 2y agoSee my comment below, re: Minds though. "Anything unique to Culture" as a solution begs the question "Why is that unique to the Culture?" It isn't clear why super-spy-diplomat-warriors would only be produced by the Culture. As soon as both sides have a thing, it ceases to be a competitive advantage. So SC as a solution implies that no other civilizations have their version of SC. Why not?
- idontwantthis 2y agoIn the first book it seemed like they confronted an enemy that actually got pretty close to beating them. Plus I really liked the epilogue where it briefly put the Culture in it’s proper scale and talked about completely unrelated goings on in the Galaxy that were so far away the Culture would never have anything to do with them. It’s conceivable there are several same level civilizations in the galaxy that would compete with the Culture if they ever met.
- shawn_w 2y ago>It’s conceivable there are several same level civilizations in the galaxy that would compete with the Culture if they ever met. More than conceivable, we see them in some of the books.
- hermitcrab 2y agoThe galaxy is so old that different civilizations could easily be millions or even billions of years apart in development. And look what happens when human civilizations only a few hundred years apart meet. So it seems unlikely that 2 civilization would be closely matched.
- wcarss 2y agoI think answers in response to your post will differ depending on whether or not you've read many of the Culture books -- to me it kind of sounds like you have, but it also kind of sounds like you haven't. If you haven't, I would recommend Player of Games, which is one of the few culture novels I have read, but which I think deals with this topic directly as the main idea of the book. If you have read it, it's possible your criticism is running deeper and you feel the way it's handled in that book is handwavey. I can't really address that criticism, it's perfectly valid! I'm not sure if other books do any better of a job, but it felt on par to Asimov writing political/military intrigue in Foundation: entertaining and a little cute, if somewhat shallow.
- ethbr1 2y agoIt's been a minute since I read Games, but from memory the target civilization there is of a scale far smaller than the Culture. Which is to say, if they both mobilized for brute force total war, the Culture could steamroll them. Which makes it a "send the Terminator back time to kill Sarah Connor" solution -- strangle a potential future competitor in the womb. That makes for an interesting book on the ruthless realpolitik behavior of otherwise moral and ethical superior civilizations, and how they actually maintain their superiority. (Probably Banks' point) But less-so on the hot tech-vogue generalization of "Isn't the Culture so dreamy? They've evolved beyond our ignorance."
- n4r9 2y agoI'd note a couple of points here: - Yes, the Culture is way more technologically advanced than the Azadians. But the point is that a basic Culture human of standard intelligence (albeit extensive knowledge of strategy games) can - after a relatively small amount of training - defeat an Azadian who has devoted their entire life to Azad. And the reason is that the Culture humans's strategies reflect the values and philosophy of the Culture. The subtext is that the non-heirarchical nature of the Culture leads to a more effective use of resources. - The Culture-Idiran war is an example of them confronting an enemy that is of comparable technological development. Again, it's implied that the Culture wins because their decentralised and non-hierarchical existence let them move rapidly throughout the galaxy while switching quickly to a full war-footing. - It sounds like you have the impression that the Culture dominates all other civilisations. This is not true. For example, in Excession they discover that they're being observed by a vastly superior civilization that has some ability to hop between dimensions in a way that they cannot. There are civilisations like the Gzilt or Homomdans who are on a level with the Culture, and ancient Elder species like the Involucra who also give Culture ships a run for their money on combat.
- YawningAngel 2y agoThe fact that the Culture was not only willing to use very powerful general AI but allow it to run the entire civilisation, whereas the Idirans banned it, might have been a factor. No matter how smart Idirans might be presumably Minds would have a significant edge
- nazgulnarsil 2y agothe mechanics of cooperation probably scale better than those of defection, by their nature. Defectors need to pay higher costs guarding themselves against the other defectors, and always trying to figure out how they are going to pick the right defections for themselves to win.
- Vecr 2y agoThat's not known for sure. The game theory simulations go one way or the other depending on what assumptions you use. I'm not sure you can say "probably" there.
- nazgulnarsil 2y agoHighly recommend Statistical Physics of Human Cooperation.
- Vecr 2y agoI'm thinking of slightly more esoteric concerns, in recent simulations I've seen some evidence that something like the All Defector from The Fractal Prince, a book in a series recommended in this thread, might be possible.
- lxe 2y agoI don't think Culture's philosophy has been the driving factor behind its dominance and military advantage. I think the anarchy utopia is the side effect of the Culture minds being at the developmental peak over other civilizations.
- Rzor 2y agoIt's explicitly said in the novels (or by Banks, I can't remember exactly) that while civilizations sublime when they reach a certain point of development, the Culture seems hellbent on staying there venturing around the universe.
- elihu 2y agoI think the reason is that the Culture has been around long enough to attain a level of technological development at which most civilizations sublime and simply stop participating in what we call material existence. The Culture could do so but has chosen not to do so (at least not collectively; individual people and minds sublime on a regular basis). A lot of the civilizations that would be militarily or economically more powerful than the culture aren't a problem because they've already sublimed.
- ethbr1 2y agoThat's a solid answer, if unsatisfactory (for Culture fans) because it empowers them by retarding their civilization-wide transcendence.
- yencabulator 2y agoI personally read it as there's some weird quirk to the psychology of Culture that lets them have enough fun right now that they're not drawn to transcendence.
- LeroyRaz 2y agoThe culture triumphs because it is a technological super power. It is a technological super power because the minds (the super AIs running everything) are given free reign (and presumably most of its industrial base is used to create more minds, and develop more industry). I've always gotten the impression that the resources dedicated to maintaining and serving the humans in the culture empire are dwaft by the resources invested into developing their science and AI. (I mean basically they have Von Neumann machines controlling whole star systems, obviously this level of industry beats most biological enemies) It's worth noting though that there are several other cultures/species that are more advanced than the culture though. E.g., the ascended species that stewards the tomb worlds (and is in essence like a god compared to the culture). There are many other examples. I don't think it was ever claimed that the culture was predestined to be the strongest, or anything like that.
- yencabulator 2y ago> Vinge takes a similar approach, constructing his big bad from an obviously-not-equivalent antagonist, sidestepping the direct comparison. I'd argue A Fire Upon the Deep clearly has the antagonist winning, and the life we recognize is only saved by basically staying within a safe area of the galaxy. You haven't conquered the monster just because you're safe under your blanket.