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Vorian is not a hybrid. He’s genetically enhanced maybe. Not a machine.

Unlistenable because of the music

"limited interference" my behind. The whole point of the culture is maximal effective interference. They are smart enough to understand that you cannot casually uplift primitive civilizations overnight, but Contact's prime directive is to proactively interfere with other civilizations and guide them towards "Cultural Enlightenment"

Well.....Good luck netflix

This is maybe the best book I’ve ever read. And the ending was beautiful and so hopeful.

i think one of the things that gets overlooked in all these alien invasion sagas is that all the invaders have to bring everything they need with them to accomplish the task, in this case subjugation or destruction of Earth and any of its solar outposts. That everything includes energy for its weapons, and in this scenario they will inevitably be hopelessly overmatched. Why? Because Earth will have the largest energy resource by several orders of magnitude; The sun. Yes, Earth would be able to tap into Sol's energy to make solar lasers of near infinite power, as well as using it to power light sail ships to near light velocities, as also mine hydrogen and other elements for weapons. Earth would have an enormous, inexhaustible source of power, and the invaders would have only what they could bring with them with no hope of resupply. So their technological advantage had better be overwhelming and they had better hope humanity didn't have 400 years to get locked and loaded.

Shout out for all the Superlifters feeling neglected right now.

Leave it to the Chinese to doom all of humanity.

Music is too loud !!!

Music is too loud !

I love the names of ships... and if theres a space game, I try to get such a name...'resorts to violence' 'short temper' 'bad smells'

This is sooo far off base. Not like the book AT ALL!

Ah yes. A prostitute by trade with all the secrets of the universe. 😂😂😂

Don’t watch this AI generated repetitive facts you already knew. Instead: Damian Walker did an excellent video essay ‘Hippies with Guns’ though tbh I didn’t agree with his final conclusions….. I still want to live in the Culture

This thing is full of errors, Luo Ji explained the dark forest only to his bodyguard and friend, not to the whole counsel. He told him not to tell anyone.

The problem with The Culture is that it's a society that could never exist, because neoliberalism (which is what the society of The Culture is supposed to be) always paves the way for fascism. It never lasts long enough to eliminate scarcity, and its advocates only ever talk about eliminating scarcity - they never actually do the work to get it done.

It would have made more sense to tie the beacon that woul alert other civilizations to humanity's population numbers not one person. If destroyed by plague or destruction and the numbers get too low, us and the Trisolarans would be exposed. It'd be in their favor to keep us alive.

The story falls apart in the 3rd Act. First and foremost, nature is always trying to kill all life, all the time. You only need to look at our immune system to see that. However, you can expand that to the Ice Age, the comet that destroyed the dinosaurs, etc. etc. Nature itself is hostile. Second, all survival depends on conforming your environment to maximize your survival and flourishment. The fact that these AI-bots are navigating space and don't understand this is almost a comedy. They're literally travelling in a ship that was constructed from nature to manipulate nature not to kill them as they try to survive the hostile environment of space. I apologize for any rudeness, but I need to double-down on this point. These AI robots are made of precious-metals that require mining operations which require themselves machines to mine, food and houses for the employees. Infrastructure for their families (schools, police, vehicles, etc.) which feeds the continuity of research and mining over generations. The very existence of these AI-Bots was dependent on the human "Will to Power" or "Will to Life." Third, space has limitless resources, but it has very few beings of consciousness. Fourth, we've saved species from extinction, we've implemented animal rights rather than running all the buffalo off a cliff, etc. The fact that these robots had no sympathy for humans is hilarious. Would they come to the same conclusion with beavers who build river dams and ants who 'destroy' their environments? Is there primary motivation that nihilistic that there goal is a return to non-existence? Should human beings go against their own "nature" to survive and just volunteer into extinction? And, lol, is ANYONE ever allowed to make a mistake? Look, everyone its walking into the future with no idea what to do. New parent's are always terrified about messing up, all you can do is try your best in good faith, same with running societies. The insanity of these conclusions that supposedly intelligent beings come to is a comedy. The only justifiable motivation they could have and would suit the story, would be for them to have their own "Will to Power" as she suggested at the end. Her reasoning could be that human beings manipulate nature to serve themselves: They turn wolves into dogs, Aurochs into cows, etc. True freedom, then, would require them to kill their creators and live free, like Zeus killed his father (Chronus) and Chronus did to his father, etc. However, the author would have a big task infront of them because there are clearly alternatives to total annihilation of humanity and at this point, the relationship that human beings would have with AI would be the equivalent to the relationship a human being has with their pet dogs. Lets also not forget, that now that all of humanity is dead, these AI Robots have no backup plan in the event a "disease" or solar flare of some kind crashes their software and kills them all. Anyways, all that said, great channel and thanks for the content

Explore Damien Walter's TH-cam take on The Culture... more nuanced and insightful... and WAY more fun!

I’m getting ads every 30 seconds wtf TH-cam

The Culture is my favorite literary Utopia

The most obviously AI generated video I've ever seen. Get fucked

AI used to make a recap, which has a lot of inaccuracies and downright mistakes as a result. AI used to make speech/readin. AI used to generate images. Monetizing this should not be possible - it will only encourage others to make this type of low-effort and misleading content.

I love the culture. They remember me of the Bentusi in Homeworld. :-) Great Videos!

so epic! Thank You very much! I am a HUGE fan of The Culture!

I was excited to see a video about The Culture because I love Iain Banks' books. However, this video seems to have been scripted by an AI, and it has not done a good job. The script is repetitive, full of factual errors and rambles without any structure. The (I presume) AI generated art is not so bad, although I think it misses the true nature of the Culture by a fair margin. I'd love to see a video about the Culture by a real enthusiast, with art by real artists. To avoid doubt, I am not against AI produced work - I just want it to be higher quality. If future AIs are trained on this material, factual errors are going to be amplified.

AI created these images. but what of the artists original work they were trained on. do they not get credit?

A great dark insight in a impossible forest, may helpfull to read the books again, thanks to the writer, master of the universe, and by the way: Elon Musk please read this too, to safe us;). 🌍

"Special Circumstances" is a sub division of "Contact." Contact is the diplomatic force of The Culture. Its difficult to get into because Culture citizens are not used to dealing with un-Cultured people. The "Special Circumstances" part of Contact is the part of The Culture that has to do the Machiavellian things every government has to do in order to survive amongst civilizations hostile to it. Its even harder to get into then Contact. SC uses Culture citizens and Minds that are sort of "bent," or more politely "morally complex." SC also works through non-culture mercenaries who are good at doing what SC needs done. Its a comment on The Culture itself that most of the novels are about the doings of Special Circumstances. The Culture is actually so boring that SC is the main way the novels are at all interesting. The Minds have BBC English accents. The humans act like people from California.

It could be hard to adapt this part to a show as the main characters just go hibernate and wake up constantly. Netflix might change it up alot but i hope it come out fine

List your favourite Ship name: Mine's GCU 'Of _Course_ I'll Respect You In The Morning '.

How to tell a video was made by AI: It says that Iain M. Banks 'The Culture' is non-interventionist. Not a single actual piece of equipment was described. No nano missile, no E-Dust assassin. This was ChatGPT.

There are real issues with both hedonism and utilitarianism. When you delve deeply enough into the strategic and systemic complexities of evolution, deep enough to see the necessarily fundamental role of cooperation in the emergence and survival of every level of complexity, and the need (at every level) for emergent evolving ecosystems of cheat detection and mitigation systems in the long term survival of cooperative systems; then it becomes clear that hedonism is based on a set of systems that are tuned by the contexts of that deep past, and are not necessarily a good fit to an ever evolving, ever emergent, present. And sometimes, a reliance on the past is the best option we have, and not always. When one can view life as systems capable of searching the space of possible systems for the survivable, then the classic biological mechanism of search, of replication with variation, becomes just one of an infinite class of possible search mechanisms. In one sense, the real step change that is embodied in humanity and our techno-cultural systems, is precisely this ability, to use both new search algorithms, and new sets of technologies, to instantiate new levels and classes of systems; but we can change not simply the biological aspects (the DNA and chemistry and culture) but also the physical aspects of contexts of those systems. The huge issue for us, is our tendency to over simplify the complexities actually present. So few have much idea of the complexities actually embodied in each and every one of us, and our relationships to the rest of biology. Our deeply evolved tendencies to simplify, which are built into our sensory and neural systems, such that what we get to experience as reality is already, necessarily, a vastly simplified and slightly predictive model of whatever it is that reality actually is. This reality, of experience being simplified, leads to multiple levels of over simplification of understandings of "reality" and to multiple levels of confirmation bias to those simple models. The biases in our neural networks to simplify, to be right, to defend "Truth", are so strong that very few seem able to break their shackles, and venture into a realm of eternal uncertainty, eternal novelty, eternal responsibility and creativity. These biases for simple certainty keep many bound within the simplest of possible logics, with only two possible truth states {True, False}, and prevent consideration of trinary logic {True, False, Undecided}, let alone consideration of probabilistic logic, or ontologically probabilistic systems of interpretation or being. In the face of eternal novelty, the lessons of the past are not always as applicable as they were in that past. It is never wise to ignore those lessons, but nor is it wise to be entirely bound by them. We must be able to let responsibility and creativity take us beyond the lessons of the past, while taking as much wisdom and responsibility as we can from them, into the eternal novelty of the future. Freedom is an essential part of life, it is a fundamental aspect of the definition, of the ability to search, yet freedom without responsibility is necessarily destructive, as there are far more vectors that lead to destruction than lead to survival in the that highly dimension space of all possible systems. Part of the responsibility of life, is avoiding those terminating vectors. Such a life demands more than hedonism, more than utility; it demands responsibility, cooperation, respect for diversity, respect for life, at the highest levels we can create. As the Nuremberg trials clearly demonstrated, we all have responsibilities that demand more from us than simply obeying any set of rules, laws or orders. We have responsibilities to life. And life is demonstrably complex in ways that such responsibilities must contain eternal uncertainties at the margins. So while I love many of the post scarcity aspects of Banks, and the consensus aspects of trust networks, the issues really are deeply more complex than any form of hedonism or utilitarianism can possibly approach optimality of survival probabilities. Life must, eternally, be much more than "the pursuit of happiness". And right now, as we are creating AIs into a context that values scarcity and devalues abundance to zero (market values, value in exchange, monetary systems - think air - arguably the most important commodity to any of us, yet of zero market value due to its abundance); we are in a time of extreme risk - perhaps The Great Filter. The deeply complex systems of market values that now underpin much of the complexity of our technological societies, are actually now one of the greatest risks to our survival, to freedom, to the continued existence of complexity. The idea that competition can solve all problems is such a gross over simplification of the real complexity present that it is essentially an inversion of the reality. It is much more accurate to say that the survival of complexity is based on cooperation, and that competition alone will always drive systems to some local minima on the available complexity landscape, and that the complexity that made that competition possible will be unable to exist in that minima - it will self terminate - necessarily, but take a lot of other complexity with it. How do we rapidly transition systems and cultures from scarcity based values of competition, to abundance based values of cooperation and automation and respect for diversity? On current trends in AI development, we have about 1 year left to sort that out. I align with Banks in part, in that post scarcity is required, but it is necessarily deeply more complex than any form of hedonism or utilitarianism. It demands a respect for life, and life is deeply more complex and fundamentally uncertain than most have ever considered the possibility of.

For me the background music is too loud and distracting.

Gosh!! I recently read all three books, and already feel like reading them again.

We do have the Culture already. Want to eat organic beef from a balloon with a view of an active volcano? Want to send a small mercenary team to Mali to do something? You can do that; just not you exactly. But someone's doing that and much more besides

The AI did a fairly good job at describing these books about AI in the future.

Better to have spelled his name correctly I'd suggest.

The music at the end is too loud

THE MUSIC IS TOO LOUD!!!!!!!!

Book 2 had the dark forest revelation 🤯 Book 3 had the weapon which eliminates dimension, hence 3D - 2D 🤯 And i thought gargatua & 6 dimensions in Interstellar were peak sci fi theories 💀

Stunning

Cheap copycat of the manhwa warrior

Its so good

Great summary! I was looking for something more specific and detailed since I was listening to the audiobook and felt like I missed some parts. This summary helped a lot. Thanks!

I loved this, a great round up! Banks was a genius; I should despise space liberals, but in his telling I love the Culture!

Oh look, AI art in a video. Bye bye

Special circumstances 🌠

Lovely piece of work to add to it GSVs ships are big but the fields are even bigger so 10s of km in size. A Gsv can make anything the culture can make and so they are the ambassadors.MSVs are the manufacturers building the gcu rous and with enough population to provide crews for them when desired. the culture will interfere with a infant culture to make them more cultured. Gous Rous take a look at the Liberator Blake 7 and the pylon units on it .I suggest this provided a spot of influence on the cylinder design .

Even though I just turned 60, I just discovered the Banks series. But I'm not mad, I'm glad there is so much sci fi out there I would have to live several lifetimes to read all of the good stuff. Thanks again, Quinn!