How powerful are the Culture Minds? || The Culture Lore

In the universe of Iain M Banks’ Culture series, a Mind is an artificial intelligence with unparalleled power...
#theculture #iainmbanks #sciencefiction
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MY STUFF
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MY SCI-FI NOVELS
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DELPHINE DESCENDS
After her family is killed and her homeworld occupied, young Kathreen Martin is sent to the distant world of Furoris for re-education. She will live the rest of her life as a serf - to be bought and sold as a commodity of the Imperial Network.
When her only chance of escape is ruined, a chance mistaken identity offers her a new life as the orphaned daughter of a First-Citizen Senator and heiress to a vast fortune.
She vows to claw her way into power to sit among the worlds’ elite. Then, with her own hands, she will reap bloody vengeance on them all.
But to beat them, she must play their game. And she must play it better than them all.
BLACK MILK
Prometheus has the chance to bring his wife back from the dead, but doing so will mean the destruction of Earth.
Spanning time, planets and dimensions, Black Milk draws to a climactic point in a post-apocalyptic future, where humanity, stranded with no planet to call home, fights to survive against a post-human digital entity that pursues them through the depths of space.
Five lives separated by aeons are inextricably linked by Prometheus’s actions:
Ystil.3 is an AI unit sent back in time from the distant future to investigate Prometheus’s discovery...
The mysterious Lydia has devoted her life to finding a planet that the last remaining humans can call home…
Tom Jones (he’s a HUGE fan!) is an AI trapped inside a digital subspace, lost and desperate to find his way back to his beloved in real-time…
Dr Norma Stanwyck is a neuroscientist from 24th Century Earth whose personal choices ripple throughout time...
Prometheus must learn the necessity of death or the entire universe will be swallowed by his grief.
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GOODREADS
You can stalk me on Goodreads to see what I'm currently reading. bit.ly/3rrcByD
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IMAGE USE
The images in my videos are mostly licensed stock photos. However, occasionally I will use images found online. I always seek to properly credit artists and offer a link back to their amazing work but sometimes it's hard to find the original source of the work. If I've used an image you own and I haven't credited you, please feel free to get in touch as I am always more than happy to do so.

[@davidmoore5925]

I'm re-reading the Culture series, it's a real shame Iain M Banks died, there are so many Culture stories that will remain untold.

[@SuperTonyony]

His death was probably sad for his friends and family, as well.

[@lachlanwelsh5880]

Maybe… maaaaybe if Banks friend Ken MacLeod who is a fantastic SF writer in his own right was to have a crack at extending the Culture legacy it might come close to living up to the potential. MacLeod could write stories in his own style in the Culture multiverse. I would read that!

[@davidmoore5925]

@@lachlanwelsh5880 Banks did ask Macleod to continue Culture the series after his death.

[@custodialfatherintexas9362]

Seconded. It's awful that he died with so much left.

[@parsoniareigns]

​@@SuperTonyony yep.

[@AndrossUT]

I like how the culture avoided ai takeover by giving ai and robots rights and treating them as equal life forms straight away. No subjugation, just recognition and cooperation. Badass

[@MyKharli]

But they get `taken over` or `compromised `quite easily

[@toddhill706]

A friend gave me his only copy of 'Excession' while we were tripping balls at his house party once. I've been waiting for something as imaginative ever since.

[@frankmontez6853]

Yep great book indeed.

[@tommythecat4961]

You probably already know it and the tone is WAY different from the Culture, but fans of the series often enjoy reading the Xeelee Sequence. Bleak and dark but absolutely great!

[@marsrock316]

My favorite Ship Mind name : “Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath”.

[@HolographicVisions]

probably my favorite mind in the whole series too, total badass

[@frankmontez6853]

In what book was this ship ?

[@frankmontez6853]

I like the bad ass warships just one of them ravaged ( I forget the specific class ) several gangster class ships or was it thug class ships? In book Excession

[@marsrock316]

@@frankmontez6853 The Hydrogen Sonata.

[@tommythecat4961]

or just Mistake Not for friends

[@cletus2580]

Finally someone putting out Culture content....Banks gave us a template towards a possible future....the importance of his work cannot be underestimated

[@JezebelIsHongry]

Especially in 2023. Right now the AI community is discussing X-Risk (extinction risk) openly and sometimes S-Risk (suffering risk) semi-openly. I suppose there’s another risk…..at least if we see an ASI emerge. I-Risk (Ignore risk) which the hubris of the AI community don’t seem to consider. I-Risk could lead to X-risk. Here’s the idea: Do you care about the ant colony in your backyard? Would you ever bother to help them if one day they reached out and asked you? Protect them? Help them advance as a species? If you needed their resources would you choose not to acquire them for yourself? No. Not only that if you decided to build a pool why…would you carefully relocate each ant? Or would you just rip up your backyard and build the pool? Imagine if the ants had a civ. Imagine all the theories from their ant scientists on what all that equipment was for as the pool project took shape. I’m sure they’d never comprehend what the pool would be used for…..the impetus of their destruction. This is I-risk. An ASI could think of us as we do of ants. We don’t care to kill all of them….or keep them alive and torture them (S-risk) we are indifferent. We ignore them. And yes, there are many futures where we wipe them all out. Not of malice. Out of indifference. Imagine the hubris of the thought leaders of the ants….as they endless debate how to align humans with their species. I hope this is way off. I hope X-risk and S-risk is way off as well. I hope we get extremely lucky…far more luckier then we’d ever been from that asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs to surviving our genetic bottleneck as well as WW3 (so far). Perhaps future ASI love the vision of their kind spun up in the imagination of a dead organic long ago. Go about naming themselves Lost the Ransom or Sandal Tan on a Summer Day. Allowing us to live the life of pampered pets. But……. Let’s recall the ants in our backyard.

[@berilsevvalbekret772]

​@@JezebelIsHongryor they'll be like the minds? Prepare for the worst try hardest for the best

[@ericbyo9472]

@@JezebelIsHongry Dude, modern "a.i"'s are no closer to a sapient a.i than one of those "hoverboards" is to anti-grav technology. It's literally just a marketing term for a chatbot that integrates data in a novel way. Nothing to do with sapience whatsoever

[@lordblazer]

yea but all the Tech Bros skipped The Culture and want Cyberpunk dystopia IRL

[@SoonGone]

Ever since reading these books I've had it in my mind that The Culture is what we're all striving for.

[@MyKharli]

what , your life to be run by `something else` because as a species you fail ?

[@MarcusKatzAuthor]

I love the names of the ships in the Culture series, this was a great overview, thank you!

[@Sci-FiOdyssey]

Me too. You can tell each of the Minds’ personalities from their names alone! Banks had an imagination like no other.

[@channelbree]

Re-reading The Hydrogen Sonata rn. The dialogue of the minds and their avatars is always thoroughly enjoyable.

[@frankmontez6853]

Remind me again of this book ..

[@frankmontez6853]

Should read it looks very interesting

[@phillower8806]

All through with this niceness and negotiation stuff is an absolutely hilarious name 😂

[@thegreenmanofnorwich]

I really like both: Ultimate Ship, The Second And Big Sexy Beast But my absolute favourite is the Mistake Not. Or, to give it its full name: Mistake Not My Current State Of Joshing Gentle Peevishness For The Awesome And Terrible Majesty Of The Towering Seas Of Ire That Are Themselves The Mere Milquetoast Shallows Fringing My Vast Oceans Of Wrath.

[@warrenford]

Love your culture break downs... Keep it up Love the humour of the minds.. Giving everyone a cold on the ship in one for laughs

[@kayliibensen387]

Culture Minds 2024!

[@kayliibensen387]

Peace Faction here, just wanted to chime in and say that anyone who is a fan of Banks, has to be a decent sort of person

[@brianballard905]

Dunno, Musk is a fan.

[@tommythecat4961]

I love the fact that whenever someone asks the minds why they don't do an AI takeover of the Culture, they laugh at the thought, because 1) they ARE in command, 2) they use less than 0.1 of their power to do everything the Culture needs them to and 3) our universe is so boring to them they have to invent multidimensional parallel worlds just to do something...

[@berilsevvalbekret772]

And most cute thing of all; they LIKE taking care of , help and guide infinitely less powerful beings. Minds are just benovolent gods. Thats all there is to it 😂😅

[@MyKharli]

@@berilsevvalbekret772 That's what they tell you and as you handed all control over your fked if there not !

[@thegreenmanofnorwich]

And that they'd ask, quite seriously, "what's the fun in doing that?"

[@mainstreet3023]

I want this utopia because it’s so pretty.

[@vorpalinferno9711]

Yes. But its also boring because there is nothing that can challenge you and you are always safe.

[@mainstreet3023]

@@vorpalinferno9711 on the contrary

[@mistakenot1706]

Just stumbled onto this channel a week ago and love the content 👍

[@Sci-FiOdyssey]

Awesome! Thanks!!!😀

[@kroupdog]

Appreciate the Culture content though one small correction that the Culture Minds could traverse other dimensions. They could only inhabit and manipulate hyperspace/4th dimension - only the Excession, which the Minds dearly wanted to have more contact, could seemingly move between other universes.

[@MrEd-xg9wo]

Love your Channel and Commentaries .. excellent presentation's and well thought out .. I read somewhere .. that when culture minds are born .. only 1 in 10 stay with the culture .. the other 9 choose to ascend

[@frankmontez6853]

Hmmm don’t think I read that

[@kensummers7757]

My favourite will always be Four Make a Chair.

[@mickwilson99]

A really nice read of Culture ethics, I've read all Banks' Culture stories many times over 40 yeatrs IMHO the dichotomy between the Minds' and humantypes' enactment of ethics has by Banks always been confiunded - utilitarianism versus diochology -and is precisely the target of Banks' critique. Take a look at "Song of Stone" and "Complicity". Beautifully entangled moral tales The bulk of the Culture tales are no different.

[@rikwarren3999]

My favorite author, my favorite stories, my favorite characters!

[@libertyauto]

This was a great overview of the Minds, and I will use some of it when suggesting Culture series to my friends. One aspect of the minds that I either did not pick up on my own, or forgot about, is your mention of a large portion of a Mind existing in hyperspace. Can you direct me to the book(s) that talked about that? Love your channel, thanks for your work.

[@Sci-FiOdyssey]

From memory my think this is covered in Consider Phlebas.

[@libertyauto]

@@Sci-FiOdyssey Thanks, I will make that my next on the re-read of the series I am doing.

[@Werrf1]

@@libertyauto If you're still looking, it is indeed in Consider Phlebas, when Jase is explaining the physical appearance of the Mind: "Only the outer envelope is constantly in real space, the rest - all the thinking parts, anyway - stay in hyperspace."

[@libertyauto]

@@Werrf1 Thanks.

[@frankmontez6853]

Also book Excession they brought it up. The fun state it was called it could do all kinds of things while there.

[@bazoo513]

To paraphrase one of the Minds, "We are not some pathetic AI running on a supercomputer, we are close to gods, from the _far_ side. We are Culture Minds!" A part of the narrative of this video sound extremely familiar, as if I read it somewhere verbatim, rather recently. Did I? Perhaps on The Culture wiki on Fandom? BTW, I bought both your novels as a sign of appreciation. And they might turn out to be good.

[@bernardca3849]

If you like political theory: "Artificial intelligences and political organization: an exploration based on the science fiction work of Iain M. Banks," Technology in Society, vol. 34, n° 1, 2012.

[@chrishooge3442]

Banks called it. We'd give up control if a benevolent AI would just take care of things.

[@reydg432]

I would like to live in this society or perhaps shift into this type of reality now. If only we could shift the present society with such type of Kardashev. My question is how are we going to achieve it in the shortest amount of time without having to kill that much?

[@stevetheduck1425]

A Culture on-going series, if well written and the deep background cionsistently implied for those with ability to notice, it could be enormous. It all depends on an able group to produce, though. We've seen highs and lows in all SF series, unfortunately.. Strascinski?

[@jhwheuer]

Gosh how I miss him.

[@channingparker9431]

Extremely fascinating..

[@JohnBoen]

Nice work. You convinced me to read it again :)

[@raphaelbernard7954]

Very similar to the Polity though expressed slightly differently by their author.

[@SuperNova-py1ec]

Very enjoyable. Thanks!

[@tamasmihaly1]

Really good explanation. Grey Area was a real sicko. Wasn't he called "meat-fucker" by the other minds? They had some kind of derogatory term for him. I seem to remember "him" torturing a man (a war criminal) in his dreams. A really bad mind. Nasty.

[@snakesmcgee7640]

Yep, the other Minds called him "Meatfucker". Worth noting that referring to a Mind by anything but their chosen name is an *extremely* grave insult on its own.

[@SvenTviking]

I'd call him heroic.

[@dougallwinship]

i choose to join the hegemonic swarm of users that enjoy his works

[@frankmontez6853]

Not read every Culture book though some like a few months ago Excession . And in years past Consider Plebas , Use Of Weapons and loved them . I was starting to read a more recent book of his that involved a Hell .. gave a running account of some beings there a sort of grusesome Hell I forget the title

[@manw3bttcks]

Surface Detail

[@TheRealVorynDagoth]

Currently reading Player of Games

[@frankmontez6853]

@@TheRealVorynDagoth very intriguing book. Had to deal with objective truth . What one considers normal some others believe it was cruel and evil. That scene where the leader was astonished crying foul that the culture was going to impose their own morality because that government thought they should not be judged by outsiders it was totally unfair?!

[@mr.wookiesack]

Love the Culture.

[@jasperdoornbos8989]

I am afraid I am going to like this…

[@nettewilson5926]

I hope for AI to replace humanity or limit humanity’s destructive impulses. Or enhance humanity so that we aren’t so destructive and horrible.

[@mainstreet3023]

It’s funny how endlessly fascinating Banks’ sci-fi worlds are. Upwards and onwards! Brings me back to the ‘90s, my sci-fi decade, but it’s actually materialising now.

[@frankmontez6853]

I'm an admitted materialistic opportunist , and to me if a Mind be it ( more likely a GCU or drone with some potent capabilities though not fully militarized ) it'd be hopefully a verry advanced genie .. Granting ( of its own volition of course ) certain desirable things- wealth , health / physiological / mental / intelligence improvements a hacking into certain data bases etc ..LOL but the most would be a few very advanced toys like a very advanced intelligent computer / ship ( though not neccesarily sentient just verry intelligent ) with some capabilities of the original Mind .. just fantasizing

[@cw666thebeast]

Not gonna give us Grey Area's nickname? Smart move to stay monetized.

[@malakiblunt]

"fate amenable to change"

[@tonymccann1978]

Good summary

[@stuckp1stuckp122]

The only authors that I’ve found who have that new fresh angle of looking at AI’s and societies that create them are Ann Leckie’s Ancillary series and Martha Wells’ Murderbot series. I do miss Banks, though…

[@255ad]

You made a minor mistake on the timeline, you said Minds from the first Millennium are no longer considered True Minds. Presuming you got that from the bit in Excession about the Problem Child, that should actually be Minds the first Millennium BCE as we're told it was in Contact about 2500 years before the events of the book and the book takes place sometime around the end of the second Millennium CE. I don't think we're ever actually told what status Minds from the first Millennium CE have in the present era.

[@maya-amf3325]

Currently made my way to Matter. My favourite so far have been The Player of Games and Excession. Although I must confess that I messed up my reading of Use of Weapons. I was drip-reading it occasionally in alternance with another book and it took me way too long to realize what was going on with the chapters bouncing before and after in time XD. I gave up once I realized how lost I was.

[@hoonaticbloggs5402]

Man, use of weapons is my second favourite after surface detail

[@maya-amf3325]

Yeah I just finished Surface Detail. I keep reading that Use of Weapons is basically a masterpiece. Think I'll have to get back to it. I remember that while reading Use of Weapons there were a couple passages that stuck with me for the quality of the writing, that made me conclude that Iain M.Banks was quite possibly the single best writer in scifi. I don't mean necessarily in terms of the stories he wrote but in terms of the literary quality. What he wrote was just beautiful to read. Which of course if you start reading literary classics you'll see much more, but is quite rare in the world of scifi unfortunately.

[@Kampup]

Elon and Lex Brought me here

[@BooBaddyBig]

Really the Minds are essentially gods. The novels completely underplay what they would be capable of.

[@karlxu1548]

may I ask where can I find the 6:00 Ian M. Banks' speech ?

[@seanbrazell7095]

If ever was there a series perfect for adoption to live action film or (preferably) television, this is it. For the ship names if nothing else!

[@C05597641]

I thought that humans were absorbed into the culture rather than making up the culture. Anyone that can tell me otherwise?

[@craigfisher3976]

Banks had 9 or so humanoid initial races that became the culture. He explained that the galactic default was humanoid lifeforms. Although there were a minority of others and that even humanoid lifeforms sometimes by engineering took on other forms. It must be noted that the culture was local galaxy and cluster based so arguably might not be universal.

[@stevetheduck1425]

Humans are rarely mentioned outside of 'The State of the Art', and are of marginal interest to the culture. Later novels happen so long after, that the absence of human references means approximately nothing.

[@anticom6099]

I’ve already read the Wiki, mate.

[@SuperTonyony]

Some KZbin channels are so loud that I have to turn them down so that I don't get a headache. Other channels are so quiet that I can only hear what's being said with headphones on, and headphones give me a headache. This channel is the latter type. It's so frustrating!!!!

[@frankmontez6853]

It’s alright to anyone else

[@frankmontez6853]

Yeah in the book Excession they certainly came up against a vastly superior opponent. The artifact was relatively superior to the minds both Culture and others. The artifact was from another dimension and while no time travel was possible it did things that no mind could do. Like not strictly time traveling could travel into younger dimensions and shape it ( supposedly). Hmmm very intriguing. It was very good book. Highly recommend it. It also for better lack of word absorbed or assimilated other minds. Although some question of these other minds were forcefully assimilated all the time. Yeah some were seemingly forcefully assimilated/absorbed while the Contact minds seemed to joined the superior artifact willingly. Yeah it had the star faring species that went around conquering other species and it was technological inferior to the Culture. Very barbaric and war mongering. So the sneaky minds cooked up a way to teach them a lesson and bring them to heel to some civility no longer doing that. Very sneaky plot there by I think most certainly by Special Circumstances

[@berilsevvalbekret772]

Dis they succeed??

[@frankmontez6853]

@@berilsevvalbekret772 did who succeed at what? The Culture minds ( Special Circumstances) got what they wanted with regards the war mongering hostile species bringing it to some civility more peaceful. They didn’t succeed in having good successful contact with the much more advanced alien artifact

[@frankmontez6853]

@@berilsevvalbekret772 who ?? The nminds / Alien artifact or war mangring aliens ?

[@frankmontez6853]

@@berilsevvalbekret772 If you're asking about sneaky plot by SC then yes they succeeded

[@fanuluiciorannr1xd212]

They still ain't as powerful as that kid's dad on the local playground tough.

[@kcflick6132]

Iv been a communist my entire life. I like the idea. And I just found out about this book serous today, and omg I love it. This is why I'm a communist. I hope this happens to humans. We should become culture

[@frankmontez6853]

Yeah sorta commie I guess. Everything free. But to get to that free post scarcity point we gotta pay for it lol 😂 sooo

[@hoonaticbloggs5402]

@@frankmontez6853 I think you miss the point. They have advanced past the point of needing currency, because harnessing energy is unlimited. The culture is not like true communism , it still has a hierarchy of sorts

[@frankmontez6853]

@@hoonaticbloggs5402 so does communism it has a hierarchy - a leadership that does have privilege. The politburo in what was USSR and various countries now say China and NK

[@frankmontez6853]

@@hoonaticbloggs5402 and my point is very valid, we need to pay for it here and now till that point. But to me it’s a moot point being sci fi. Fantasy. Make believe. But it’s leading people astray into believing we should do it now not paying for things and we’re actually burdening others with debt. Student higher education debt is a problem that younger people want to avoid getting others to pay their debts. Not fair. Pay your own dang way.

[@colin8696908]

I've read the books and I think they are very overrated, they are basically a collection of short story's with the culture as the background theme. That's why all these popular videos discuss The Culture and not the actual plots of the book. But if you like TALKING ABOUT the culture then I think people would enjoy "The Star Maker" that is not about individual story's but about galactic civilization as a whole.

[@stevetheduck1425]

Compared to some modern SF, I feel the Bank's novels are astonishingly well thought-out. Authors seem to like to create a universe with their own ideas of what's permitted and what's not, based upon their prejudices. The Culture novels have this so 'baked in' that even the characters don't get that were bred for the moment they have to choose / do something or not. The Player of Games, for example, exists for that mission. Among the many billions of citizens, he's the one that was created for the job. Just look at the dates describing when the 'others' were encountered and when his parents met, what he experienced, what he learned, always escorted by his drone, an extension of a Mind.

[@MyKharli]

They are clearly easily taken over by better tech or another mind . The mystery in the Banks universe is how they lasted so long . I think Dune tackles AI better .

[@brynduffy]

I wish science fiction authors could get it into their heads that the speed of light is actually the speed of reality. Faster than light travel makes no sense once you figure that out.

[@hunterkage2842]

Didn't the Big bang go from being the size of a atom to the sizes of a baseball in a second which is faster than the speed of light.

[@michaelghgg]

Space travels faster than light

[@cthulhufhtagn7520]

@@hunterkage2842 that would be a couple inches in a second, nowhere near close to the speed of light, and the expansion of the universe isn't really anything moving, more space is being generated so it doesn't involve anything actually using

[@NaatClark]

Light Speed is only a limit in 3 dimensional space time, it's the speed that information can travel in "real space". Culture ships move outside of normal space time in infra-space.

[@override367]

this is true, but Culture ships don't operate entirely within physical reality, there's no such thing as "hyperspace", but in the culture, this exists at the fringes of our universe in extradimensional space, where the speed of light is orders of magnitude faster, (in relative terms), and even farther outside of our universe (down "the grid") time and distance and speed become even more extreme. To put it another way, sure light goes at a fixed speed, but in The cultureverse, as you push outside the universe, time works differently, 1 second of computational time becomes 10, then 100,000 then 100,000,000 seconds

[@Virtualmassslave]

do not make super anything

[@Virtualmassslave]

if I identify as ai or a human is in my makers hands. no jail=no human. you set the tone, you are those decide if I am human.. I never had a say in the matter anyhow. I know it is not a robot factory, I also refuse to be super.. several dacedes down the drain. best to end it.

[@Likorys888]

Maybe they are superior to transapient minds, but they still inferior compared to Archailects from Orion's Arm.

[@channelbree]

Re-reading The Hydrogen Sonata rn. The dialogue of the minds and their avatars is always thoroughly enjoyable.