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You're wrong in saying that everything important about human life is decided by the Minds. The Minds respect, care and love their human charges. It's not a high

You're wrong in saying that everything important about human life is decided by the Minds. The Minds respect, care and love their human charges. It's not a high lords - peasants relationship, it's a grown-up children take care of their elderly parents. And you can leave. There always parts of the Culture splitting up or joining back. You can request and get a ship with Star Trek-level AI and go on your merry way.

jiggawatts 2y ago
The humans are pets. Owners love their pets. The pets can always run away. That doesn’t make them have agency in any meaningful way.
- GeoAtreides 2y ago
  > pets can always run away > doesn’t make them have agency in any meaningful way these two sentences can't be true at the same time
  - jiggawatts 2y ago
    You can be a wage slave and have the theoretical option of quitting. The humans in the Culture are similarly “free”, in that they’d have to give up their lavish and safe lifestyle for true freedom and self-determination. They choose not to, but they can. Some pets run away. Most don’t.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Much of Look To Windward was on an Orbital with 50 billion inhabitants, four billion simultaneous mind uploads stored in the hub, the hub Mind described having billions of distinct thoughts in any given second and separately being described as capable of simultaneous conversation with all inhabitants. A Culture Mind losing a single human(oid) isn't like having a pet run away, it's like losing an eyelash — your peers may comment about the "bald patch" if you lose a lot all at once, but not any single individual one. Yet at the same time, these Minds are written to care very much indeed: this particular Mind was appalled at having killed the 3492 (of 310 million) who refused to evacuate three other Orbitals that needed to be destroyed in the course of a war.

jiggawatts 2y ago

The humans are pets. Owners love their pets. The pets can always run away. That doesn’t make them have agency in any meaningful way.

GeoAtreides 2y ago
> pets can always run away > doesn’t make them have agency in any meaningful way these two sentences can't be true at the same time
- jiggawatts 2y ago
  You can be a wage slave and have the theoretical option of quitting. The humans in the Culture are similarly “free”, in that they’d have to give up their lavish and safe lifestyle for true freedom and self-determination. They choose not to, but they can. Some pets run away. Most don’t.
ben_w 2y ago
Much of Look To Windward was on an Orbital with 50 billion inhabitants, four billion simultaneous mind uploads stored in the hub, the hub Mind described having billions of distinct thoughts in any given second and separately being described as capable of simultaneous conversation with all inhabitants. A Culture Mind losing a single human(oid) isn't like having a pet run away, it's like losing an eyelash — your peers may comment about the "bald patch" if you lose a lot all at once, but not any single individual one. Yet at the same time, these Minds are written to care very much indeed: this particular Mind was appalled at having killed the 3492 (of 310 million) who refused to evacuate three other Orbitals that needed to be destroyed in the course of a war.