Elon Musk Just Doesn't Understand the Sci-Fi Visions of Iain M. Banks
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It is remarkable because Banks, as much as I love his writing, is __rarely subtle__ about his beliefs and who the "good guys" are.
(Yes there is a lot of exploration of the grey areas and inhumanities, and thereby legitimately critical questions of the titular society- but Bank's himself has said that he would very much like to live in the Culture, even considering all the uglier parts.)
My wife writes some fiction, and one thing I've learned from observing her interaction with test readers is that no matter how heavy-handed the writing, a fair proportion of readers will still misunderstand it. It's practically impossible to make anything so explicit that nobody will get it wrong, even with a bunch of repetition.
Though, most egregious misreading activity does seem to be confined to the same set of readers, across discussion of her test-reads, other writers she knows' test reads by the same readers, and just general conversation about other published fiction—that is, certain readers struggle to follow seemingly every damn thing they read, while others almost never make these kinds of errors. I find it hard to relate to wanting to continue reading books while being so constantly confused by their content, but they do it anyway. Completely alien to me, their experience of reading must be rather impressionistic and seems unpleasant, but to each their own.
I did some exploratory education videos, and associated user testing. A hobby project. And I got bitten by what I'm told was a noob mistake - a cartoon character reads a simple sign aloud. Shortly afterward, I'd stop the video for feedback, and get confusion as if the scene wasn't even there. I'd sometimes then replay it, and get "oh yes, this version is much better". Even firm disbelief that they'd already seen it seconds earlier. Apparently the cognitive load spike of having simultaneous reading and listening to do, is known to hammer comprehension of both.
I wonder if there's a body of similar insights for fiction writing. Or transferable insights from say, how to disrupt misunderstandings in science education content. And then, of course, whether these might be made available as automated editor or ghostwriter tooling.
Time after time, an astonishingly large number of readers and watchers assume that main characters are good and are unable to fathom that a main character can be bad. Luckily for the rest of us, this is emotional shibboleth that once identified serves as a high-accuracy litmus test for personal engagement.
"Nevertheless, [Dan Harmon] and Roiland insist these people are a small subset. The worst of them—the ones who see Rick as a role model—are missing the point."[2] - On Dan Harmon's[Co-creator of Rick and Morty] view of Rickfandom.
"Tyler [Durden] has proven so perniciously stubborn as a hero of alienated young men."[3]
Generally, I see this aligned with Protagonist-centered Morality[4]. The way I discovered this phenomenon was repeatedly observing it in fan forums. I decided not to link to those because they are low signal to noise[5], but you're welcome and encouraged to seek them out. In revisiting them to refresh my memory, my present impression is:
1. Some people just like rooting for and sympathize with the main character above all else - no amount of atrocities can change that.
2. Some people just think the these characters are 'cool'.
Tony Soprano is an interesting case, because the creator was one of the die hard Tony fans, while much of the audience concluded that "He was a fucking murderer." I guess being in the creator seat doesn't magically bestow insight.
1. https://filmmakermagazine.com/84504-its-better-to-be-somebod...
2. https://www.gq.com/story/dan-harmon-rick-and-morty-profile?
3. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/a44891150/chuck-...
4. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProtagonistCente...
5. ie: Reddit.
The Musk/Banks thing even gets a mention under MisaimedFandom.
I just can't imagine how that would happen. As others mention, missing the point on villains _is_ a thing, but Veppers is almost comically villainous. Like, he all but indulges in Bond-villain-style "have I mentioned that I'm evil" monologuing. He's _awful_.
(I actually think he's likely Banks' most objectionable antagonist.)
During peacetime, making such an argument justifies the selfish and destructive action they wanted to take anyway. The framing of the assertion is impossible to make an objective assessment of the success of an action, since such an assessment may take a hundred, or a thousand, years. So really there is no way for anyone to judge whether an act is good or bad in this framework, leaving it only as a matter of judgement of the actor. In this sense, Musk's invocation of Banks is simple megalomania with more steps.
Isn't this just a restatement of Christianity? Created by an unknowable, all powerful deity with the goal of becoming one with that deity during the rapture?
Ironically, many of the alien species in Banks's novels have "sublimation" as their goal. Their idea is to transcend space and time. https://theculture.fandom.com/wiki/The_Sublimed
So I guess it's just super intelligent turtles all the way down?
Yeah, honestly most Nerd Religion (EA, LessWrong-style 'rationality', etc), is basically just reheated Christianity. Notably, Roko's Basilisk (you should work for the furtherance of magic robots at all costs, lest a future omnipotent magic robot torture a perfect replica of you forever for not doing so) is just a restatement of Pascal's wager, with all the attendant problems.
You can appreciate the overall Banks vision without agreeing on every particular political stance.
Anyone that wants this future for humanity, wants to be a pet, simple as that.
All of the big decisions are made by the Minds, and every time a human thinks they’re doing something of their own accord, it is implied (or explicitly stated) that they’re being manipulated by a Mind.
Several of the novels state this outright, including mentioning that Marain, the language of the culture, was explicitly designed to “guide” the thoughts of its human speakers in the “right way” as decided by the Minds that worked on its design. Handcuffs for the human mind so integrated that nobody even realises they’re shackled.
The humans aren’t prisoners, they’re pets allowed to roam “outside”, but they’re not the agents of their future in any real sense.
PS: Horrific betrayal by a highly trusted character in a position of father-like authority is a running theme in Banks’ works. The more utopian and idealistic the scenario, the greater the horror the reader can experience when that is shattered by the realisation that it was all a manipulation. The Wasp Factory, one of his earlier works, makes this the most explicit with the betrayal of the protagonist’s sexual identity by their own father, but since that book Banks has learned to make this theme less explicit and more implicit, waiting for the reader to discover it on their own and have the “Oh. Ohhhh! Oh God.” moment. Clearly many people missed it in the later Culture books…
There are other books too where people leave the culture (including entire worlds) and do whatever. Banks is careful to write very meaningful agency into the culture to make it a utopia rather than some paternalistic pet thing.
The only case where that kind of doesn't apply is special circumstances and the interesting times gang, which are heavily controversial within the culture and are explicitly pointed out as solutions that exist outside the normal moral fabric of society.
The direct analogy is a pet that ran away into the forest.
This is the “exception that proves the rule”.
I think you're overstating this. Especially considering that Marain is spoken both by humans and minds. In Banks' own words:
> Marain is a synthetic language created towards the very beginning of the Culture with the specific intention of providing a means of expression which would be a culturally inclusive and as encompassingly comprehensive in its technical and representational possibilities as practically achievable - a language, in short, that would appeal to poets, pedants, engineers and programmers alike.
I get how it can be dystopian to people who live for competition or just need to feel useful but we need to adapt if AI is going to be better than us at any jobs to feel fulfilled with recreation and hobbies. It's doable, retirees have to face this situation with a bunch of additional stress they don't have in the Culture
Let's assume you have everything in the Culture except the ASIs. So you have full blown Drexlerian nanotechnology, access to all the technology more or less possible out to the limits of physical law. Energy is functionally infinite, and if you want basically anything to be produced you simply order it from the AI equivalent of ChatGPT today and it is directly manufactured from base chemical feedstocks and delivered to you by a simple automaton. Food, clothes, furniture, any sort of electronics. Homes are extremely plentiful and similarly require ~ no effort to obtain, since they are just snapped together from atomically perfect panels. When you're done with something, it gets recycled back to feedstocks to be made into something else.
Okay. Now what? You're free to love who you like, befriend who you like. But nothing you do matters really for anyone else beyond sentimental value, since nothing you do effects whether they live or die (you're all functionally immortal after all, plausibly you can backup your consciousness and get resleeved if something truly catastrophic was to happen to you). There's no scarcity, no need to horde things, you play games and amuse yourself in whatever little hobbies delight you, and you socialize with those who you care to.
What exactly is the grand thing that you think people are going to be doing in that scenario that they can't do in the Culture?
It seems apparent that for the overwhelmingly enormous majority of people the Culture is identical to the case where there are no Minds, because to whatever extent some tiny portion of humans needs to make some sort of major decisions in a post-scarcity world with no Minds, 99.9999+% of people will not be among them. We see mostly people interacting with Special Circumstances (a tiny fraction of the overall population) and most of those who live on GSVs etc managed by Minds in SC themselves are also just going about their days and not involved with whatever machinations the Minds have going on.
Like, what is the problem that ASI really introduces here for regular people? And in a world where you are indeed free to leave the Culture (as we've seen) if you really want to, and there's plenty of variety in how smaller groups in the Culture live their lives, what exactly is missing? There is no oppression, no brutality, no war, disease, famine, poverty, or want and you're free to do as you like except kill people without their consent and/or otherwise hurt others. What more freedom do you really want?
I understand the first one but that's something people need to get over, it's already a part of being old or having a handicap that makes you unemployable, I think future generations will grow up without equating hard work with ethics
Culture Minds have far more respect for individual self-determination than any human power structure that has ever existed. I don't weep at all for the 1% of humans who lose the ability to dominate the lives of other humans. The other 99% of humans lose nothing and gain enormous freedom.
Anarchosyndicalism or GTFO. YMMV.
(Pedantically, there's a lot of overlap between anarchists and left-libertarians, but the terms tainted enough now that no-one much really considers themselves a left-libertarian anymore.)