This is not the first time I've read articles attempting to paint the Culture as a dystopia. I think the best counter is to quote the author's own words, describing how he felt about it, from an interview he did with CNN [1]:

CNN: Would you like to live in the Culture [the society he has created]?

Iain M. Banks: Good grief yes, heck, yeah, oh it's my secular heaven ... Yes, I would, absolutely. Again it comes down to wish fulfillment. I haven't done a study and taken lots of replies across a cross-section of humanity to find out what would be their personal utopia. It's mine, I thought of it, and I'm going home with it -- absolutely, it's great.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/15/iain.banks/ind...

"Special Contact" isn't what they're called. The name is "Special Circumstances".

And the novels point out that the reason you're reading about them, and that's always the situation, is that these are the interesting stories.

So that means you're getting a glimpse of the culture only in the same sense that a James Bond movie tells you about England.

You'd like to think you're seeing Tinker Tailor but you're seeing James Bond. This is a dramatisation of an edge case.

We see brief glimpses in Player of Games (at its very start) and perhaps Inversions (the story about when they were kids) but mostly it's all SC all the time.

I adore Banks' universe, but recall reading some notes from him years ago, as tialaramex indicated, that 'all the interesting stuff happens at the edge' given utopias are, almost by definition, pretty tedious.

Even though there's a good amount of utopia-description in the novels, I'd still be wary about extrapolating too much from what are primarily stories of exceptions.

(One might suggest, in response to TFA's expectation there'd be more arseholes in the Culture, that one of the most important things a utopian Culture would ensure is a robust education for all its citizens -- but I realise some popular contemporary earth-bound cultures may take that as a subtle dig.)

> we need more fiction examples of positive AI superintelligence

I'd rate the Eschaton series by Charlie Stross (sadly only two books ever published in that series, and it's unlikely we'll ever see a third) - Singularity Sky & Iron Sunrise - in this category.

I think Accelerando might fit, too.

I think the general reading that the Culture may be an over-controlled dystopia was fully intended as visible by Banks. Often as the viewpoint of a non-Culture... culture that's interacting. It's part of what makes the books so delightful. They invite you to see things multiple ways.

Not totally related, but I wanted to make a question. Iam sure this post will host quite a lot of Culture fans. With which novel should I start with The Culture? The main two candidates are Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games.

Good attempt, but I would still jump into that sugar cage in a heartbeat (of one of my multiple redundant blood pumping organs).

It feels refreshing to see someone sort of agreeing with something I've been saying for years.

I do feel the writer is missing one important aspect though: self-governance and having the decisions of humans matter. Horza Gobulchul was right. By relying on machines to do our decisions for us and having them take control of society, we lose a large part of what makes us human.

The Idirans were right all along.

> But one of my hobbies is “oppositional reading” – deliberately interpreting

> novels counter to the obvious / intended reading. And it’s not so clear to me

> that the Culture is all it is cracked up to be.

It's not clear to me that reading the Culture series as an "ambiguous" utopia is counter to the intended reading. There is a multitude of instances in the books that show clearly the downsides of living in a utopia where every possible want is met. The drudgery and boredom of living in a "perfect" world is a constant theme throughout the stories. In one tale, the entire crew of a spaceship deliberately infect themselves with the common cold just to feel something. In another story, people turn off their safeguards and go rafting on a lava stream, causing themselves intense pain and even dying, only so they can finally experience some real excitement.

> In Excession, it’s explained that Minds do rarely drift far enough to go rogue

> and are destroyed by the Culture. In other words, these superhuman minds have

> not solved alignment, and they cannot/will not inspect each other to determine

> misalignment before malicious action is taken.

The Culture doesn't even seem very interested in dealing with minds that do go rogue. In the same novel - Excession -, the GSV Grey Area openly violates Culture ethics, and nobody (or noship) seems to feel compelled to do anything about it.

I'm a big Culture fan, and I don't know what to make of this article.

Many of the points seem to be hallucinated. Either the author has a poor memory and an active imagination or there has been some poor-quality LLM input.

Examples

> There are apparently no sociopaths – Culture has to recruit an outsider when they need one

Banks describes several ways how such individuals are managed - such as offering full immersion level VR to satisfy extreme megalomania.

> We also see that there are a number of Eccentrics, Minds that don’t fully share the values of Culture. They’re not that rare, about 1% of the population.

I don't believe that 1% figure is mentioned anywhere. I'd be surprised if it was. Eccentrics seem to be much rarer than that.

> We even see GSV Absconding with Style stockpile resources without general knowledge of the other Minds.

This name is made up, and not by Banks. A Google search for "absconding with style" has only a few hits - mainly this article.

I could go on...

This reminds me of the thought of Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher and historian of ideas; utopian philosophies often conclude that there if there is a "right" way to live, i.e. a maximally rational way of life, then utopia will consist of everyone converging on this lifestyle. For a certain type of person, this monistic vision of life annihilates pluralism, optionality, and genuine diversity. Berlin himself espoused value pluralism, the idea that there are an infinite number of fundamental human values and ideals for which once can be deeply committed but can also be at conflict and mutually exclusive with one another.

> There are apparently no sociopaths – Culture has to recruit an outsider when they need one

Eh, I mean Gurgeh was borderline, and a number of other Culture characters are extremely maladjusted (particularly the drones, actually).

> But the existence of post-scarcity in-vitro development means you could raise an army of clones if you wanted, and would be free to isolate them and indoctrinate similar beliefs. The fact that grabby citizens haven’t overrun Culture shows that these actions are blocked, either tacitly or overtly.

Or just that that would be an absolutely _bizarre_ thing to do and that someone unstable enough to do it probably wouldn't last long.

> and would be free to isolate them and indoctrinate similar beliefs

IIRC that sort of thing _wouldn't_ be allowed; the Culture was pretty big on individual rights. You wouldn't go to jail, but you would get a drone that would stop you from doing it.

> or is interested in simulating sentient life.

There are at least two storylines about that and significant discussion of the ethics (the Culture at best doesn't approve and may see it as a crime).

> The Minds are perfectly capable of creating avatars which would be more effective than any of the characters shown.

Again, it's explicitly mentioned at least once that the minds struggle with doing extremely nasty stuff (which makes sense; there's definitely _some_ alignment going on), and that SC is a tool for that.

I don't disagree that you can read the Culture as a dystopia (though it's a lot less obvious a reading than it would be for, say the Star Trek Federation, which could easily be read as a military junta with good PR), but most of their points aren't particularly compelling.

As someone recently starting (and coming near the end of) the Culture series, I oftem find myself thinking about the course of action humanity might choose if AGI is reached. Frankly, I think the popular sentiment and path of least resistance will be 'let the Minds handle everything' a la Culture.

What I find interesting about the Culture as a literary and philosophical concept is that it forces you to choose whether material superabundance and unrestricted freedom is enough to be happy.

Right now with our current civilization we still need to work and have at least some restrictive social structures, because distribution of scarce resources is still a thing; working within these constraints is where all contemporary culture and politics comes from. So at the moment it's still possible to "dodge the question" (although less and less so as time goes on), but once you have the Culture you can no longer do so. You have to choose if you can be happy inside the system of unlimited freedom where you can choose total hedonism or try to construct some kind of meaning for yourself, or if you will "go Horza" and demand deliberately worse social structures to try and force the meaning back in from without (note one of the other comments in this thread saying "the Idirans were right").

I really enjoyed the Culture novels but my takeaway was similar to OP's. The citizens are essentially pets that the Minds really like and take care of. They have almost no real agency though besides what the Minds will humor.

The Culture would continue to chug along with our with out the humans, the minds would just be bored until they created some other race to entertain themselves with.

I'm less cynical, in that I don't expect the future culture to utterly abandon itself into pure sensualism with nil effort or assumed responsibility, as depicted in the series.

Basing that on namely a) social signaling will still matter; rich people past and present don't all collectively do nothing, b) solving cheap energy and automation doesn't mean there are no more secrets of the universe to reveal, and we are wired to appreciate novelty (hello, Star Trek), c) some people opt for "simple living" today to varying degrees, which usually evokes working outdoors, in other words we may opt to do things we don't "have to" (this may overlap with religious fervor), d) environmental influence (not determinism), by which I mean, a large demographic of the population could shift it's attention to scientific, exploratory or innovative efforts. I think most who go this direction are not exceptional, they just grew up in environments that fostered those interests.

My wish is that we create institutions in preparation for the coming full-auto/UBI society that allow any of us access to the tools needed to collaborate on lofty scientific undertakings. We are not all going to turn to pithy artisanal crafts and art; not everyone has that temperament. Most people are pretty social, many like to build things that provide another kind of utility. But we need to give each other permission and materials.

Absent that, you get the Culture. If we can't get meaning, we'll numb ourselves. You can quibble that even this will meet and end one day (like, fully colonizing the Universe and understanding its secrets), but who cares. The Universe will also end one day. Kick that can down the road.