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His argument is "total liberation from hierarchy isn't communist at all it's liberal, and liberalism = fascism, therefore liberation from hierarchy is fascism." He's trolling, don't fall for it just because he has the patience to not actually insert reddit catchphrases. When reading BOTL, ask yourself, does this argument require a. not understanding capitalism b. not understanding liberalism c. not understanding communism d. not understanding fascism e. all of the above f. BOTL understands those things but is a sophist who doesn't care about anything other than how far language can be abused Gravitas Shortfall posted:I also love The Culture, and I think that we're supposed to realise that it's far more sketchy than it seems, but Banks does too good a job making it sound awesome (and is too in love with his own creation) I think this is why Consider Phlebas is the opening book: the Culture is highly utopian, very much a "Star Trek but with a lot more follow through," but it isn't perfect or for that matter omnipotent (Consider Phlebas' whole plot revolves around both the Culture and the Idirans playing 'don't wake daddy' with the Dra'Azon who are incomprehensibly more powerful than either). By putting us in Horza's shoes, we get an intimate look at who considers the Culture evil and what they value: freedom from choice, authority, and organic supremacy. This is an interesting set of inversions that most readers are able to parse quite quickly, and the antipathy that Horza and the Idirans hold for the Culture is, well, basically bullshit. The moral distance between how Idirans conceptualize place and violent apartheid is basically nil, which damns Horza as a source of moral judgment. It's fairly clear that living inside the Culture is a far better thing than basically any alternative and I can't even imagine how comfortable your life on Earth is if you can easily look at The Culture and say "I'm better off," but most of the books focus on the incredibly messy question of "do we have a responsibility to spread this to others" and has a couple of different answers and very obviously has internal disputes and politicking over both when to intervene and how. It also introduces what becomes far more apparent in Use of Weapons and is basically the Section 31/deniable ops problem - the willingness to use distancing mechanisms when you believe the ends justify the means but you also don't want to actually do the part where you justify the means. This is a valuable question though the real world versions of it are deeply questionable (e.g. the US talking about spreading democracy is hard to use as an analogue given that living in the US actually sucks). The reason for this focus, AFAICT, is that "and then we ate awesome grapes and had super orgies and it was awesome" isn't much of a book by modern standards.
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Jul 2, 2020 18:52
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Tulip posted:but most of the books focus on the incredibly messy question of "do we have a responsibility to spread this to others" and has a couple of different answers and very obviously has internal disputes and politicking over both when to intervene and how. It also introduces what becomes far more apparent in Use of Weapons and is basically the Section 31/deniable ops problem - the willingness to use distancing mechanisms when you believe the ends justify the means but you also don't want to actually do the part where you justify the means. This is what I meant by agreeing with BotL (I also agree that he's a massive troll that likes huffing his own farts and assertions that aren't backed up by the text but I guess a stopped clock etc etc). It's not hard to see the Culture as a reflection of the west's liberal interventionist policies. Hell, the Culture explicitly uses carrot/stick methods on less technologically advanced societies, holding out the promise of advanced tech in exchange for cultural change. Obviously this is a 1:1 comparison because it doesn't come with economic exploitation and life in the Culture is actually rad as hell, but that's what makes it a Liberal fantasy. "Those primitives are all crude and barbaric and would definitely be better off if their society was more like ours" is preeeetty sketchy and the only thing that makes it work is a technomagical Utopia. EDIT: Banks is of course aware of this Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 09:36 on Jul 3, 2020 |
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Jul 3, 2020 09:11
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I think the one thing both of you have omitted from discussion thus far is that the Culture is definitely post-singularity, although I can't recall if Banks ever acknowledged that in those terms. The AI are very clearly the ones in-charge in The Culture, and per his own words in an essay organic life forms are seen as a combination of "elderly parents, parasites, and pets" that the AI care for. It's not much of a leap to read that as the Liberal Paternalist fantasy taken to a darkly funny extreme, one that as we've all agreed Banks is clearly aware of, but also one that carries the enticing lure of "You don't know this isn't how AI are going to react once they're capable of iterating positively upon themselves." I don't recall ever seeing any writing in the books, including Excession, to indicate that the GSVs and the like were keeping organic members of The Culture truly in the dark or playing some exceptional long game of 12D chess, and honestly I'm glad I don't because such a thing seems like it would be beside the point-- Banks was smart enough to know he could never convincingly write AI of that theoretical level, much less draw any satisfying dramatic/thematic conclusions. My point being that The Culture largely still works as utopian fantasy because the actual 0s and 1s of the AI are hazy, but it is demonstrated through the various bits of technomagic that they're either playing an extreme long game and/or so breathtakingly effective at mollifying organic life that it arguably doesn't matter (which is again very darkly funny).
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Jul 3, 2020 22:47
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:This is what I meant by agreeing with BotL (I also agree that he's a massive troll that likes huffing his own farts and assertions that aren't backed up by the text but I guess a stopped clock etc etc). It's not hard to see the Culture as a reflection of the west's liberal interventionist policies. Hell, the Culture explicitly uses carrot/stick methods on less technologically advanced societies, holding out the promise of advanced tech in exchange for cultural change. Obviously this is a 1:1 comparison because it doesn't come with economic exploitation and life in the Culture is actually rad as hell, but that's what makes it a Liberal fantasy. "Those primitives are all crude and barbaric and would definitely be better off if their society was more like ours" is preeeetty sketchy and the only thing that makes it work is a technomagical Utopia. Oh sure, I just don't want to give him credit for some of the more ludicrous claims he makes. If anything, I think this is part of why I like my left wing buds reading at least a little bit about The Culture. That the Culture still has this problematic "interventionism for their own good" thing raises the problem of: if you successfully create a communist utopia in a location, what is your foreign policy? Do you have a responsibility to spread revolution everywhere forever? Have you really thought about what that entails? Or is the simple defense of your own territory all you need? It's the classic "communism in one country" problem, and Banks points out that this is a reasonable cleavage in anarchy as well as Leninism. mind the walrus posted:I don't recall ever seeing any writing in the books, including Excession, to indicate that the GSVs and the like were keeping organic members of The Culture truly in the dark or playing some exceptional long game of 12D chess, and honestly I'm glad I don't because such a thing seems like it would be beside the point-- Banks was smart enough to know he could never convincingly write AI of that theoretical level, much less draw any satisfying dramatic/thematic conclusions. There's a couple of hints about that - it's basically the very first thing Horza says about the Culture, and it's also part of the implication of Player of Games is that, however smart Gurgeh is, he's completely out of his depth compared to the Minds. I don't think it's very deeply engaged with because I don't think Banks was really interested in such an abstract question, but in the still pretty abstract question of 'what are the grey areas of utopia.' I will say that one thing that Banks could have drawn on a little more would have been mysticism. To most modern humans, it's distressing to think too hard about not being the ones on top, but humans do have a pretty rich set of theories and ideas about how to live life among gods. Though most humans in the Culture I guess are just so blissed out of their minds that this is a dumb problem to worry about for them.
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Jul 4, 2020 03:13
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Given Diziet and Zakalwe's interactions it is very clear that Culture citizens are given pretty heavy indoctrinating education from a very young age, on everything from why it's healthy to let your appearance age to why it's a good thing to eventually accept death, and the between-the-lines read is that the Minds are very artful at guiding their citizens. I give Banks credit for not trying to smooth over that read of things, especially because the rebuttal is always implicitly-- "yeah maybe the Minds are controlling everything, choice is an absolute illusion, and if you're on the outside of The Culture you run a real risk of getting a miserable deal in service of some centuries-long master plan, but if you're in The Culture you empirically do not need to worry about such things. The ostensible promise of the authoritarian central state is being upheld, therefore is all of that really a problem?" and the answer is consistently "Well, I guess not then."
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Jul 4, 2020 03:43
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Kuvo posted:Consider Phlebas is first and Hydrogen Sonata is last, the rest dont matter I would add that you should read Inversions (my personal favourite) later rather than earlier.
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Jul 4, 2020 14:52
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Gurgeh is literally a pawn rather than a gameplayer, the Minds are pulling off the equivalent of a Full Web by using him to effect regime change on the Empire of Azad while at the same time conditioning him to be a better Culture citizen. The game starts before he leaves the Orbital, the moves consist of careful manipulation of information, as well as straight up blackmail. The Gurgeh that returns is different from the one that left, he's reached the end of the board and been promoted to a more thoughtful, compassionate quite possibly traumatised human. Anyway, have these (contains some spoilers):           
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Jul 4, 2020 17:56
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Which culture book deals the most with the Minds? I’ve read Consider Phlebas and also Use of Weapons, and they were alright. I want more AI stuff I guess.
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Jul 5, 2020 01:38
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ConfusedUs posted:Which culture book deals the most with the Minds? I’ve read Consider Phlebas and also Use of Weapons, and they were alright. I want more AI stuff I guess. Excession and Look to Windward jump to mind (no pun intended), though while the latter deals primarily with a single Mind. Hydrogen Sonata has lots of Minds interacting but it's relatively superficial IMO.
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Jul 5, 2020 02:09
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Admiralty Flag posted:Excession and Look to Windward jump to mind (no pun intended), though while the latter deals primarily with a single Mind. Hydrogen Sonata has lots of Minds interacting but it's relatively superficial IMO. Agreed but you should absolutely leave Hydrogen Sonata for the last book after you read all the others (in whatever order).
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Jul 5, 2020 02:13
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Excession would be the one if you want to see Minds interacting.
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Jul 5, 2020 02:23
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So the only Culture book I've read is Surface Detail since it's one of only two Culture books that my local library has (the other is Hydrogen Sonata). I enjoyed it, so where does it rank on most people's lists?
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Jul 6, 2020 03:14
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:So the only Culture book I've read is Surface Detail since it's one of only two Culture books that my local library has (the other is Hydrogen Sonata). I enjoyed it, so where does it rank on most people's lists? It is incredibly hosed up but really good. It's one I would read later in the series than earlier if given the option.
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Jul 6, 2020 03:26
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Matter is the best imo, the title is basically a skeleton key for the entire book. What matters, what is matter, who matters, we are all matter. In terms of liberal interventionism, look to windward is about exactly that, the culture intervenes and it turns to absolute poo poo and the book is about what happens next.
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Jul 6, 2020 08:00
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Read CP, the most interesting part was the fat cannibal guy with razor teeth and Horza being a loser who believes in contiguous identity. Went on to excession and bounced off the impenetrable AI chat logs after a while.
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Jul 7, 2020 09:30
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T-man posted:Read CP, the most interesting part was the fat cannibal guy with razor teeth and Horza being a loser who believes in contiguous identity. Went on to excession and bounced off the impenetrable AI chat logs after a while. They’re impenetrable on purpose, to obscure a conspiracy and it’s members. You might gloss over them on a first read through without much confusion.
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Jul 7, 2020 10:15
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I'm reading thru excession and smh'ing my head at the prologue. The book itself is much better so far, but the prologue was loving terrible.
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Jul 11, 2020 23:26
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What, with the drone escaping the ship? Why didn't you like it?
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Jul 11, 2020 23:44
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sebmojo posted:What, with the drone escaping the ship? Why didn't you like it? That's not the prologue on my edition, it's a (thankfully) short part about Dajeil Gelian on Sleeper Service. The drone parts and the affront parts were way better written, imo. Dajeil's parts have some interesting tidbits laying under heavy prose.  Ulver's parts aren't doing the book any favor either, but... At least the drone's saving these parts.
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Jul 12, 2020 00:29
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Jul 12, 2020 01:13
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Just read Inversions and State of the Art, which I skipped when I read all the other novels before. I was expecting not to like Inversions but I really did. Based on these two, (spoilers for both)--> 
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Jul 14, 2020 03:49
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mind the walrus posted:I do love Use of Weapons but it's such a "I had this idea when I was 19 and held onto it for way too long" book. I’ve just finished this one (and State of the Art, which took about an hour) on my current read through , and they’re a real (and unexpected) drop in quality from ‘Phlebas’ and ‘Player’. Having not read them for maybe fifteen years, I was unprepared for their faults, which while not fatal, were an unwelcome surprise. The above quote is pretty accurate, for both books; a lot of sophomoric noodling wrapped around a few good ideas. I remember liking these both quite well at the time they came out (when I was twenty or so), but time has either removed their charms or my ability to appreciate them.
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Jul 18, 2020 18:36
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The Memento gambit in Use of weapons was a rewrite on the advice of another writer (Ken Macleod). Supposedly the earlier version was longer and actually more complicated.
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Jul 19, 2020 20:48
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It’s thirty years old, I’m not sure you need to spoiler tag it. The ending seems like a massive asspull because there’s absolutely no explanation for Elethiomel’s character arc from ‘adoptive brother’ to ‘war criminal of unfathomable depravity’ to ‘woe is me I need redemption’. The sections of his life are believable when taken individually, but the kid who steals the gun doesn’t believably become the man who makes a chair out of his sister’s bones and skin. That utterly depraved individual is in turn unrecognisable as the man begging for forgiveness at the end of the book. The ending brought to mind Sagan’s famous quote that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence: this book is not well constructed enough for me to enjoy the denouement, because I’m being asked to care for someone with no underpinnings and no real motivation.
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Jul 19, 2020 22:05
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Yeah I really like the book as a series of vignettes but the connective tissue between young Elethiomel, Elethiomel, and the man who would be Zakalwe is essentially non-existent. It's very far from bad, I remember most of its setpieces quite a bit over other books in the series, I'd consider it a hell of an accomplishment really, but it doesn't "gel" together in the way I had hoped at the outset. I still find a surprising number of uses for "soft the way the ocean is soft" though.
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Jul 24, 2020 01:23
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I finished excession a few days back. All I can say is that it had some very good bits and it was structured as a mess, but dear god what a mess The whole 'some bored minds try to force the affront issue via the excession' part was neat. Minds thumbing their noses at Grey Area and Sleeper Service while being high school gossip girls was neat. The whole 'this has happened before, find the human mind in Sleeper Service' plot that got semi-dropped would've been more fun than anything to do with Ulver Seich imo. While the minds were in fact capable of thinking about an abstract 'outside context problem', the excession itself flip-flopped between being one and then not. It got reduced to 'oops sorry, my bad I deleted half of your mind, here have it back' and 'if you wanna go back, we delete your memories of us' at the end. I'd like it more if it was still unknowable, tbh. Also, is there no therapy in the Culture, or is it all 'it's your brain, you get to decide if you wanna fix it' deal or what. What happens if the brain in question can not decide and fucks up? e: should I spoiler these or not, idk.
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Jul 26, 2020 10:20
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Musluk posted:While the minds were in fact capable of thinking about an abstract 'outside context problem', the excession itself flip-flopped between being one and then not. It got reduced to 'oops sorry, my bad I deleted half of your mind, here have it back' and 'if you wanna go back, we delete your memories of us' at the end. I'd like it more if it was still unknowable, tbh.
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Jul 26, 2020 21:29
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Musluk posted:Also, is there no therapy in the Culture, or is it all 'it's your brain, you get to decide if you wanna fix it' deal or what. What happens if the brain in question can not decide and fucks up? There is therapy, it's mentioned in the backstory of a minor character in.. actually isn't it in Excession? who's the sole human occupant of a Ship cold storage location. He's noted as having gone through all sorts of therapy and help from Minds but still remained weirdly misanthropic. So they put him somewhere where he'd be happy without people constantly trying to improve him. Gravitas Shortfall fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jul 26, 2020 |
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Jul 26, 2020 22:42
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I disagree, I think it was useful to balance out the prologue of Excession to make it clear that there's nothing malicious about the entity and nobody's actually been killed, it really is just unfathomably powerful and not interested in contact.
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Jul 26, 2020 22:55
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Alchenar posted:I disagree, I think it was useful to balance out the prologue of Excession to make it clear that there's nothing malicious about the entity and nobody's actually been killed, it really is just unfathomably powerful and not interested in contact. Although it thinks Excession is kind of a cool name
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Jul 26, 2020 23:20
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:There is therapy, it's mentioned in the backstory of a minor character in.. actually isn't it in Excession? who's the sole human occupant of a Ship cold storage location. He's noted as having gone through all sorts of therapy and help from Minds but still remained weirdly misanthropic. So they put him somewhere where he'd be happy without people constantly trying to improve him. It is in Excession. I love some of the minor side characters Banks created, like this guy who just starts little bonfires on the hangar deck for fun. He's not a pyromaniac, he just likes lighting little fires and hates talking to people.
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Jul 26, 2020 23:36
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Alchenar posted:I disagree, I think it was useful to balance out the prologue of Excession to make it clear that there's nothing malicious about the entity and nobody's actually been killed, it really is just unfathomably powerful and not interested in contact.
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Jul 26, 2020 23:43
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I think the mundanity was part of the point. We’re focussed on the Culture, and their magical technology, and there exist things that pay no more attention to them than we do to houseflies: not evil galaxy-destroyers, just things off to do stuff.
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Jul 27, 2020 08:35
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Scope posted:Why is it insulting to put a human mind in a drone body? I think it's only insulting to put a human mind into a Mind, not simply a drone Scope posted:So what's with the whole thing about some drones and other companion tech like space suits being as smart or smarter than the average culture human, but they have no problems with being in permanent (until the human dies or moves on) servitude to someone? Sounds a lot like a form of slavery to me. most of the ones "in service" to humans are either part of Contact/SC so they have their own mission parameters (pretty well demonstrated in Player of Games) or like the space suits are for very short durations (and typically are just an extension of the Mind that created it) Alchenar posted:I disagree, I think it was useful to balance out the prologue of Excession to make it clear that there's nothing malicious about the entity and nobody's actually been killed, it really is just unfathomably powerful and not interested in contact. it was interested in contact, it just determined that the inhabitants of this universe weren't ready to make it. although it does let Grey Area hitch a ride to a different universe
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Sep 24, 2020 23:27
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The deal with the Culture is that it's impossible to have any civilisation that's not ultimately controlled by a privileged few wielding disproportionate power with the vast, vast majority basically powerless, so what the founders of The Culture basically did was accept that and go "yeah, okay, if I'm going to live in a world controlled by someone else and the odds of me being one of the people in control is so vanishingly small as to be irrelevant, then gently caress it, I'm going to build the person in power and make sure they're decent and have my best interests truly at heart instead of just being power-hungry assholes or demagogues"
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Sep 25, 2020 02:30
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:There is therapy, it's mentioned in the backstory of a minor character in.. actually isn't it in Excession? who's the sole human occupant of a Ship cold storage location. He's noted as having gone through all sorts of therapy and help from Minds but still remained weirdly misanthropic. So they put him somewhere where he'd be happy without people constantly trying to improve him. Yeah, they say that he probably was 'fixable' to norms but doing so would change him so very much so that he'd no longer really be him and he was uncomfortable with that, so instead they were able to find a niche where he could be happy as he was instead.
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Sep 25, 2020 02:33
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but at the end he's hanging out with the family groups anyway
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Sep 25, 2020 02:39
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indigi posted:but at the end he's hanging out with the family groups anyway Yeah well the trauma from being murdered isn't really an accepted therapy technique
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Sep 25, 2020 03:01
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indigi posted:but at the end he's hanging out with the family groups anyway On his terms though.
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Sep 25, 2020 06:37
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:This is what I meant by agreeing with BotL (I also agree that he's a massive troll that likes huffing his own farts and assertions that aren't backed up by the text but I guess a stopped clock etc etc). It's not hard to see the Culture as a reflection of the west's liberal interventionist policies. Hell, the Culture explicitly uses carrot/stick methods on less technologically advanced societies, holding out the promise of advanced tech in exchange for cultural change. Obviously this is a 1:1 comparison because it doesn't come with economic exploitation and life in the Culture is actually rad as hell, but that's what makes it a Liberal fantasy. "Those primitives are all crude and barbaric and would definitely be better off if their society was more like ours" is preeeetty sketchy and the only thing that makes it work is a technomagical Utopia. IMO I think it's more than Banks being aware of it - I think that he deliberately wrote the structure as a Liberal ideal as a way of writing about questions of liberal interventionism. A lot of his books are built around the tension between allowing crimes against humanity to take place versus attempting a "we know better" intervention and how hubristic that is. I think he was writing out a lot his own wrestling with the mid-90s international relations questions about intervention. He was personally really leftist, but I don't think the Culture was ever written as a Communist utopia - I think he meant it to be the apotheosis of the Liberal vision and a way of thinking about what that would mean.
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Sep 25, 2020 15:37
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