I'm not so sure about the author's thesis. One quote alone explains it, "it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence." If indeed Musk believes this, then his actions now matter not at all, except insofar as it either helps or harms the birth of "digital superintelligence". This is a similar "ends justify the means" argument to the "effective altruists" and the general idea to "not miss the forest for the trees", the forest being long-term viability of humanity, the trees being individual well-being.
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.
hsshhshshjk · 44m ago
> it increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.
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?
So I guess it's just super intelligent turtles all the way down?
0_gravitas · 2h ago
I've said before that Musk must have read Surface Detail and assumed Veppers was some kind of 'tragic hero'.
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.)
kelseyfrog · 56m ago
There was a large section of The Boys viewership that didn't understand that Homelander was a bad guy until season four, or that Walter White was Breaking Bad's biggest villain.
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.
alabastervlog · 1h ago
> It is remarkable because Banks, as much as I love his writing, is __rarely subtle__ about his beliefs and who the "good guys" are.
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.
jiggawatts · 1h ago
Ironically the author of this article missed the key theme that runs throughout the Culture novels: Humans are mere pets in a world where superhuman artificial intelligence exists.
Anyone that wants this future for humanity, wants to be a pet, simple as that.
0_gravitas · 1h ago
Calling it _the_ key theme is stretching it quite a bit imo
euroderf · 36m ago
Agreed. The Minds keep us as pets if you want to view it that way, but they have their own "Society of Minds" to keep each other amused and engaged, and it takes very little of their bandwidth to maintain human concentrations and the general regional-galactical operating environment.
jiggawatts · 35m ago
Unlike everything else like the sex changing, it’s in every book and is a plot element instead of mere “background colour”.
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…
theothertimcook · 2h ago
“If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks,”
aloisdg · 2h ago
I guest Musk cant difference between anarchism and libertarianism
jbu · 48m ago
“That's libertarians for you — anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.” - Kim Stanley Robinson
krapp · 1h ago
To be fair, I've always considered libertarians to be, for the most part, anarchists who won't commit.
euroderf · 31m ago
This seems fair+true. "Libertarian anarchists" is like "jumbo olives".. they want to build their castles in the sky in a free-floating environment that is only free in the particular way that they want; violators will be persecuted.
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?
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.)
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.
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.
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…
Anarchosyndicalism or GTFO. YMMV.