Iain M. Banks, The Culture Series
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ส.ค. 2024
- Dive into the mesmerizing world of the Culture, a vast interstellar society envisioned by the brilliant Iain M. Banks. We explore a civilization where technology, ethics, and freedom intertwine, offering both utopian dreams and challenging dilemmas. From the symbiotic relationship between organic beings and the super-intelligent AIs known as Minds, to the moral debates within the covert arm of Special Circumstances, the Culture is a testament to the vastness of human imagination.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
04:12 - Overview of the Culture
09:32 - The Political Structure
13:42 - Social Structure and Culture
18:38 - Technological Aspects
22:36 - Ethical and Philosophical Foundations
26:51 - The Culture in the Context of Science Fiction
Thank you for listening!
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#theculture #IanMBanks #ScienceFiction #free #space #civilisation #ai - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
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Ugh, I want to be a part of The Culture.
Me too!!
Ditto. F current earth.
Sign me up. Finally no more people racist against us dumb blondes...
My fellow transhumanists, unite!
and if you disagree with the culture you can just go live in a system with at least a few trillion people that will completely agree with you and the culture will provide you need anyway
I knew Ian...he was a regular customer of the restaurant I managed in Edinburgh. Such a lovely guy. We both played the game Civilization and would talk about strategies often. Sad loss.
Thanks for leaving your comment, a loss indeed
You may hsve changed my life with that comment I'll probably look to play that game got any tips?
Get out! Really!?! Now there’s a man I would’ve loved to have had discussions with! He was a brilliant writer whom I’m a big fan of, and we lost him too soon. I’m sorry you lost your friend.
I gobbled up the whole series in just a few weeks. These videos are like mini vacations back home.
I do love the Culture books, and am glad to see it disseminated more widely. Kudos
Thank you! I love it too
AI generated scripts, voiceover, and imagery are so weird. Still, glad to see more content on the culture.
How do you know the script is AI? How do I get AI script?
There are a lot of cliches in the text.
Expressions that I would personally try to avoid in order to not sound so glib and rehashed.
Really, when you think about what an AI does this outcome is to be expected… it “reads” all the other documents on the subject/adjacent subjects and uses them.
No real, truly original insight.
Just a clever re-hashing.
But like the other commenter said - that’s ok, it is nice to see more Culture related content!
Got to meet Banks once, lovely intresting man.
It's been a while, but I came away from the Culture books with the impression that they actively divert nascent cultures towards 'compatible' values and ethics, if for no other reason than to avoid future conflict with the Culture (a preoccupation after the Idaran Wars?), if not to reduce suffering generally. Special Circumstances are the pragmatists who manage 'reality' clandestinely while the rest of the Culture debate ethics in a general way. SC has a checkered reputation within the Culture, non?
It's culture-style utopia ... or broke. The next 20 years will define whether we ascend or crash back to fire-lit medieval levels of living permanently.
Essentially, this century will determine our entire species future.
Delusion of grandeur.
Is it believable that you should be born into such a time? I mean, are we in a simulation and should you think it more likely if you live a more extraordinary life? I’m not sure I’m convinced by the simulation idea, as there might be other possible ways reality is not what it seems, beyond a simulation. Maybe things are too strange for our minds to even consider?
@@alistaircrookes5825 If we are in a simulation, I think its an itch for disorder and spiraling chaos that being here is scratching. Like a holiday to the past from somewhere advanced, possible not even human. :)
Narrator said “in a galaxy far, far away, exists the Culture”
that’s not true. The Culture exists in the Milky Way and encounters Earth at some point.
If only this could be our future. Out of the many very bad options, this would be the 1 in a million good outcome
Well put
Let's wait for another 10 000 years....
This was actually a really great video. However, I did notice that there were some repetitive topics, but great job overall.
Thank you for the feedback, will do better next video!
Interesting, thanks for the great video. I have been trying to find a series that takes a different perspective on galactic civilizations and the ethics of AI. I think I may have to start reading this series. Thanks!
Glad you enjoyed it! Consider subscribing for other scifi series
Nothing else I have read comes close. These books have had an inestimable impact on my thinking.
The BBC adapted one of Iains’ short stories into an audio version. Worth listening to if it’s still available.
I have read all the Culture novels, a few twice, and it just struck me that the Culture is the future of the world created by Samuel R. Daleny in his masterpiece novel "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand."
I've read all The Culture books and loved them but I'm still stuck with an impression that struck me early on that on at least one level The Culture is a brilliantly clever and sometimes vicious caricature of the British middle classes ?
That is a most interesting viewpoint, and I can see where it comes from. The British middle classes not living in fear like their working class compatriots. However, that may be about to change, as they do not control our AI future..
Thank you for this homage to a great author and a brilliant series. Funny, insightful and enduring. ❤
Orbitals do NOT encircle stars, those are ringworlds(which the Culture has a few, if I remember correctly) but MUCH smaller rings that orbit around stars. The closest thing most people may be familiar with are the Halo rings in HALO...
In the culture series I believe Orbitals are space habitats in the shape of a ring, or ring world ie the Halo rings
@@TheOrbitalArrayIn the Culture orbitals are a catch all term for all kinds of large scale non terrestrial mostly non mobile megastructures with populations far in excess of the millions or multiple millions of individual culture citizens - biological and human equivalent AI drones etc - that might live on a typical Culture ship and it's Mind. That's why he had to actually invent a way of expressing the losses incurred in the destruction of an Orbital in the series: "gigadeath"! RIP Iian M. Banks!! 👋😔
Elysuim?
@@geraldpaznokaitis1431 Ahhh, I forgot about that one, though I think orbitals are 'usually' hundreds of times larger. Woops, I just tried to look up the exact size of Elysuim, and realized that I had totally forgot that it has spokes... Ringworlds and orbitals normally do not have spokes, and they usually do not have roofs, either... They keep their air in with gravity and tall walls. When i looked it up, it said that the design of Elysuim was based on the 'Stanford Torus'. The torus is 1.8KM in diameter and designed to house 10,000 to 140,000 permanent residents. So that sounds about right. Halo rings were 30,000KM in diameter for the largest, and 10,000KM for the smallest ones. Culture Orbitals were 4,000,000KM in diameter(calculated from their stated 24 hour rotation rate and 1G gravity. So I was WAY off in my Hundreds of times estimate... A halo ring is somewhere in the range of 10,000 times larger, and an orbital around 2,000,000 times larger...
For comparison, a ringworld is 300,000,000KM in diameter, so around 166,666,666 times bigger than Elysuim...
So, yea, this really do not compare
P.S. There is also Luna Base from "Starship Troopers"(the movie), which seems to be around 4,000KM in diameter. It was a ring that circled the moon about 300KM above the surface...
Also, 'The Book of Boba Fett" showed the Glavis Ringworld, which I THINK is a very small (but real) ringworld...
Rings are a great deal bigger than elysium which is basically a particularly large stanford torus. @@geraldpaznokaitis1431
I am glad I found this channel.
Thanks!
Thank you ! Much appreciated 🦾
Thank you so much for making this. It’s terrific!
Thank you for your feedback
Please 🙏 some higher entity send me to this reality of the Culture. I do not want to live in this reality anymore.
I am that higher entity, and i won't grant you that wish.
@@_h1tman_
Lil bro thinks he's funny.
Video seems confused with ringworld. Orbitals don't "encircle" stars.
my dreams and hopes
Great art!
Was this composed by an artificial intelligence? The way it jumps from concept to concept faster than a person would usually write made me wonder, combined with how it kept circling back to stress some points like it was satisfying a user's requests for what to cover.
People who see this might expect the books to focus on the utopia when really most pages are devoted to the more grimy problems they're having with lesser civs or major threats. Great stuff though. If a porn star rode on one of the Culture spaceships they'd exclaim, "it's so big!" (Big ships.) Also, the Culture's avatars are better than the ones in Avatar.
My earlier videos have some inconsistencies which hopefully will be fixed in the upcoming videos, please forgive the content
Also an AI like response 😅
🔥
I never got the sense that the Culture "spanned galaxies" as stated in this video.
Special circumstances 🌠
The Culture books rule!
This is the kind of series just begging to be adapted to a live action streaming series. The ship names ALONE make it so!
There's no movie tv exec or Hollywood producer alive smart enough to be aware of let alone understand any of what banks was trying to do an adaptation would be doomed before it ever began
Just no, there isn't a commercial producer alive who'd, "get it."
@@nicolassalamanca8051 @Eris123451 The team that produced The Expanse or The BSG reboot certainly could.
But a nerdy game created would.
Do you think we'll ever get there?
Did ah, um , a mind write the dialogue?
Which book has the swarm ? The all consuming civilization that eats planets and civilizations? I’ve read most culture books and I’ve heard of them
13:00 uh…ok…we’ve covered this ground already - I’m bored.
Get into some specifics or some interesting dilemmas….please…
16:30 what does love look like? It kinda looks like a Victoria Secret catalog, where all the models have weird lower rib cages….
oh dear
Sounds like the future
Nah we won't get there imaginary people in the sky and greed will make sure of that
@@nicolassalamanca8051 There is no such thing as greed. There are no scientific work on this
Who is the narrator?
--
AI narrator
I do not agree that the Culture is in a galaxy far far away, In his short stories it is obvious that the Culture knows of humans on Earth.
20:00
As Delany explained, certain cultures with lack of diversity can descend into "Cultural Fugue" where the society spirals into chaos. I wonder how the Culture avoids this.
Believe it or not the voice over is AI.
😊👍
"an equal utopia with no formal governance" except that with the minds ans 'special circumstances' it does have leadership and elites that do or can manipulate and control the rest. it is not different than what we already have. scarcity may be eradicated but inequality cannot be eliminated.
Narration sounds like another form of Western Imperial dialect but in a modified modern form of Anglo-Saxon-sphere utopian mindset. Makes me gag in it's cult-like style...
How?
That would be impossible to achieve without taking away the human of the human. What makes you ask, if it's worthily if the ones "enjoying" this reality are not even us, but some heavily genetically altered new type of hominid
Is that a problem? What's wrong with that evolving beyond human?
@@Dave_of_Mordorit's an ideal that requires faith in something beyond human
@@Grazzmazzium What do you mean by that? Why does it "requires faith in something beyond human"? From my pov, having a more in-depth understanding of our biology can help us go beyond being human. Are you talking about religion? If you are, then I think we're done here since you and I have different values, and we're not going to convince each other
@@Dave_of_Mordor for all we know, there is no intelligence beyond human, and thinking we can conceptualize one as humans is inherently faulty
@@Dave_of_Mordor did I reply? It's not showing mine
nice job getting an ai to do the art, the script, and the voice, i guess its fitting for the subject matter.
I'm weirdly OK with an AI speaking on Iain M. Banks...tbh he was if not the first, certainly one of the best Sci Fi writers to put what we Humans consider as thought, deed, and action in artificial life,
Knife missiles actually talking back and forth to their Avatar in *"The Hydrogen Sonata"* is one of my favorite Sci Fi moments and a scene which is constantly re-read,
The future Banks painted is in the most part hopeful(cough cough poor everliving soldier Zakalwe etc cough) in the way the vastly more intelligent and powerful AI Minds treat their Human creators.
This feels AI generated. It repeats many of the same items that a human editor wouldn't.
This is my 2nd video ever , it gets better after this :)
@@TheOrbitalArray It seemed like the entire thing - text, voice, images and soundtrack - were all AI generated. I thought it was a magnificent way to inform about the Culture. Very well done!
Perhaps a few Culture minds have TH-cam accounts. Wouldn't that be fun?
I like your reviews normally but I have to ask. This review is so whitewashed it’s a little repulsive. As I consider reading these novels I’d like to know if the material (the books themselves) are this diversity narrow, or is that perception a by-product of your review? If that sounds insulting to you I apologize in advance. This is not my intention
I don't want to be cared for as if I were a PET to a machine.
This was written by a proto-mind
there is a lot of violence in the Culture Series
I haven't read it but what kind of violence?
Your music is annoying and distracting.
The culture sounds like a nightmare.
I'm really intrigued as to your reasoning care to elaborate please?
@@nicolassalamanca8051 Well just like your "greed" comment, kids in the US are condition to believe any egalitarian, stable or fair society to be bad
The culture's moral limitations are obvious to me because the author himself doesn't truly understand morality.
Democracy is a form of moral relativism. Anarchy cannot be achieved under moral relativism. Another word for anarchy is god's government. Under god's government, morality is objective, and god is the arbitor of right and wrong.
Basic moral principles are simple. Non-aggression principle. Self-defense principle. 7 deadly sins(Don't steal, don't rape, don't murder, ...).
Full ramifications of morality have yet to be fleshed out, but the basic principles are simple. Jesus christ was killed by rulers because he was actively teaching objective moral principles.
If I was the founder of the culture, its goal would be to learn, grow, and build on top of objective moral foundation.
This whole crappy, biased, generative imagery is kind of ironic to see, as you hear such descriptions of the Minds and the Culture.
I was never a fan. Underneath the ‘complexity’ of the culture is a childish view of humanity and identity.
The books were tedious and substituted volume for substance.
I was about to ask how were the books.
You saved me tons of hours from feeling out if the book i'm currently reading is good or not. Thank you!
5 mins in, i had a feeling i was listening to some propaganda shoved down my ear canals.
10 mins in, i had to stop the vid, suspecting the books were made by some immature writer. LOL!
@@noiJadisCailleach Glad I could help!
"Good scifi isnt about the future, its about today IN the future" is a common phrase often used to explain why objectively bad scifi is popular.
Such scifi is 'good' only if you happen to share the author's worldview.
Then theres the bloat, the fluff, the pad, the endlessly tedious character development that does nothing but thicken the book. I dont care about the life story of an obnoxious non entity.
The best modern scifi imo are books that divide events or characters into chapters, that way I can just skip whole chunks of 50 or so pages at a time and lose nothing in the telling of the story.
In other words, I can do while reading what an editor should have done before publishing.
I'm intrigued by your views care to elaborate on why you think its a childish view of humanity and identity? I've read matter phlebas player of games and currently going through use of weapons
Liked all of them except phlebas which i *hated*
We seem not have read the same books then or perhaps you're thinking of a different Ian M. Banks or perhaps you didn't really understand them or then again perhaps you haven't even read them in the first place ?
Your loss, then :\
@@noiJadisCailleach
This is the most cringe thing I've tried to watch in recent memory. I would rather just buy the book and read it than watch this to find out if I want to first. The culture The culture ahh the culture 😂
Oh look, AI art in a video. Bye bye