The Culture v's 40kverse

[comicshorse]

Well how would they feel about the tremendous loss of life? Amusing perhaps?

I'd say they'd be horrified but not shocked. And also decide the IoM needs some serious help in getting over this appalling way of doing things ( Calling SC....)

[Tiki Snakes]

Jseah I guess you've chosen to go with the view that Chaos can just corrupt anyone at any time with no tangible cause? It's understandable from a narrative perspective, even if it isn't really how Chaos works.

Chaos can't simply corrupt anyone at any time with no cause. At least not outside of the warp. However, if you're thoughts or actions are in line with the values of one of the relevant Chaos Gods, that's usually cause enough.

[MLai]

Forum Explorer, #199: Not entirely. It looked like you were making an appeal to majority and tradition which is a logical fallacy. Basically the argument everyone does/did it does not make it right. Or that's the way we've always done it also does not make it right. It doesn't make it wrong but that argument in of itself is invalid.

Oh please. I was simply saying that your viewpoint that humans should be the highest moral agents in their own civilization, is a viewpoint opposed by 85% of all humans on Earth, and that percentage grows higher as you go back further in time. That is a statement of fact, not an argument. That should be explicit enough for you.

[Oracle_Hunter]

It seems to me that The Culture is far more likely to listen than any normal 40k faction. They might ask for an explanation first, and maybe read a few Eldar minds to be sure they're serious (since jseah's already written in a decision that the situation is dire enough to warrant violating that privacy rule), but I doubt a Mind would dismiss something with that kind of historical evidence backing it up.

The big question, then, is whether The Culture's reaction to Eldar Farseer knowledge can be predicted by an Eldar Farseer. If it can, then I'd say this option instantly becomes the front runner by a large margin rather than a long shot.

The hitch is that the Eldar would have no way to know how reasonable The Culture is compared to the rest of the WH40K Universe; this is why what seems like the optimal approach is unlikely to be followed.

* * *

As a rule, Farseers specialize in "fate" and "destiny" -style predictions as opposed to "I know you know" sort of mind games. The lowest-level of prediction (and Fate Manipulation) I know of is battlefield-level in which a Farseer can increase the likelihood of armor deflecting shots or of wounds being fatal. In general they keep an eye out for big threats to their Craftworlds and then try to figure out a way to remove that threat with a minimal expenditure of Eldar lives. Could they predict the effect of contacting The Culture? Perhaps, but it would likely be in broad sweeps -- with an eye to any possible future that would endanger a Craftworld (such as a Corrupted Ship ripping open the Infinity Circuit of a Craftworld and drinking its souls for Slaanesh, after learning its location from the mind of the Eldar messenger).

[Tyndmyr]

Really? That's awful writing

If a Mind has so much spare capacity that it uses the vast majority of its abilities on simulating hypothetical dimensions for fun, how can they possibly be inferior to meat that has a hard time understand the world around it? War, of all things, is best left to machines as far as strategy and even tactics go. Hell, a Mind should be able to simulate every possible state of a war (and several impossible ones!) if it can otherwise simulate entire ships full of people for realistic interaction.

What next? Are there genius people out there who are equal to minds when it comes to arithmetic? Or identifying prime numbers?

Here's the issue. Minds are essentially giant computers. Minds also tend to be pretty synonymous with ships. In a ship vs ship battle, a mind would smoke a human ridiculously fast, because they can act and react vastly, vastly faster than a human.

If you're looking at a Mind's avatar(humanoid-like units the mind can use to sort of act as a human), reaction time gets limited somewhat by physical necessities like communication time with the mind, plus of course, physical limitations on the avatar(ie, it may take time to block something with your arm). So, an avatar may or may not outperform a human depending on the human and the circumstances. Avatars generally need to be fairly close to the ship for lag reasons(imagine an avatar being controlled from mars...lag would be a real issue).

Note that computers today already are ridiculously faster than humans, and are amazingly better than us at some tasks(like rapid number crunching), but are much, much less good at understanding the world around them. Human brains are extremely efficient at sorting out relevant input and making decisions, often subconciously, and our brains do store a staggering amount of data. So, even in a future where computers are a lot better, it's reasonable for us to equal them in areas where they suck hard now.

Strategy isn't a reaction-time based task, mostly, so on the grand strategy level, humans are actually pretty good.

@Forum Explorer -- Again, I'd worry about losing my Humanity if I were "upgraded" to being a God-like Mind. Sure, it'd be fun to be on top but that is hardly a good criteria for determining whether a society is good or virtuous.

This is an in-world concern as well. It's one reason that not everyone has opted to augment themselves(a few people refuse to accept any augments at all). People vary. Some, like me, are going to gleefully bolt additional things into their brain. Some'll look at that in horror. The degree of modification someone will accept before worrying about it compromising their identity varies.

Seeing as the entire point of the Overman is someone who rejects slave morality and epitomizes the Will to Power, I somewhat doubt the Culture would have much room for a genuine Overman. Without the ability to conquer or achieve in any meaningful way, and with a value system which is practically the definition of the Last Man, the Culture in fact seems like the complete antithesis of the idea of the Overman.

People with a drive for real conquest(assuming a sim, etc is insufficient) are something the culture doesn't need a lot of, true. Their society isn't really built around conquest. However, sometimes these people do end up in Contact(often one of it's special divisions), which is responsible for making contact with external, alien cultures. The Culture doesn't dominate the galaxy...it's a notable player, but only one among many, and there's a near endless supply of more minor players. There's definitely a niche here for those who wish to pursue it.

And you don't HAVE to stay in the culture. You can just leave. People do all the time. It's not a monolithic world, or one of complete unity.

While I love being called mentally slow I was actually referring to Yime Nsokyi's situation in Surface Detail

Humans are tricked by minds. Humans also participated in tricking Minds, though. It's not really a "people are meatpuppets for minds" issue, so much as it is that Minds are people too. Different from humans in many ways, sure, but still chars in their own rights, and ones that are close enough to humanity that we can relate to them.

Note that yes, SC totally does engage in trickery and shady practices. This is not in any way limited to Minds in SC.

[The Glyphstone]

Jseah I guess you've chosen to go with the view that Chaos can just corrupt anyone at any time with no tangible cause? It's understandable from a narrative perspective, even if it isn't really how Chaos works.

No tangible visible cause from the writing Mind's perspective, at least. It is possible for Chaos to target susceptible individuals with dreams, or instance, since any non-Blank human is at least fractionally psychic - presumably the corrupted people in the narrative were those who accepted, acted on, or were interested in the tiny tidbits of temptation offered to them in dreams. So it's not 100% canon, but it isn't canon-breaking either...a good enough story so far that I'm willing to accept the grey zone involved.


Also, for you armchair philosophers who really should be in a different thread,
Play Nice, people. It's getting a bit heated in here, and I don't think anyone actually wants to tip it over into a thread lock. Burble.

[Forum Explorer]

Oh please. I was simply saying that your viewpoint that humans should be the highest moral agents in their own civilization, is a viewpoint opposed by 85% of all humans on Earth, and that percentage grows higher as you go back further in time. That is a statement of fact, not an argument. That should be explicit enough for you.

Then link it instead of shooting a statistic off with nothing to back it up. And if it isn't an argument then you shouldn't have brought it up in the first place, at least not without it being in support of an argument.

As is it's the viewpoint is opposed by 85% of all humans on Earth. Yes well so what?

[Oracle_Hunter]

So, I'm hearing a lot of different things about the capabilities and activities of Minds. Perhaps y'all can help me here.

What Can Minds Do?

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From what I've read they seem capable of:
- Conducting internal simulations up to modeling an entire Universe in 12 dimensions (for fun!)
- Conducting external simulations that are indistinguishable from reality the involve managing multiple personae and environments up to the scale of a Ship.
- Making sophisticated policy recommendations on the scale of civilizations and for centuries in the future
- Control Ships in real-time over interstellar distances in combat situations
- Manage the upkeep, development and protection of habitats up to the size of Dyson "Spheres"
- Create novel personae and insert them into meat or artificial bodies of tremendous physical capabilities

And, of course, do all these things simultaneously. If so, then I can see absolutely no reason why these Minds should not simply do everything. Wars, in particular, require intricate planning, dispassionate reasoning, and elaborate simulations in order to be conducted properly -- all things that Minds should be better at doing than any meat-based brain. With FTL Comms a single Mind could get information in real time and accurately (and instantly!) simulate all permutations of the battle before selecting the one with the highest chance of success. It could even do this on the tactical level in multiple theaters if it were willing to stop simulating imaginary Universes for fun.

It is laughable that anyone in such a Universe would think that meatbags would be better suited as Generals or Scientists since intuition is merely a sloppy shortcut used when you don't have time to run proper simulations. Or are Minds actually far less capable than this? If so, what are their limits?

What Do Minds Do?

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From what I've read it seems that the responsibilities/duties that Minds undertake are as follows:
- Administering habitats up to the size of Dyson "Spheres" including dispensing justice, providing advice, managing resources, and overseeing public works
- Planning foreign policy missions including elaborate subterfuges designed to fundamentally alter alien civilizations
- Evaluating and resolving threats to The Culture including coordinating and controlling offensive and defensive units

While it is true the "Democracy" rules The Culture I have to wonder who would bother to disagree with The Minds on important matters (e.g. war, civilization manipulation) when they have the capability to simulate entire Universes for fun and can therefore figure out how likely a given course of action is to work. Indeed, when things go really bad I can't help but wonder if the Minds won't cut the slow-thinking organics out of the loop entirely in order to respond quickly to imminent danger. If they don't, then they surely risk greater loss of life in order to keep up the niceties of their "Democracy" in which only unimportant minorities disagree with important decisions and conveniently self-deport themselves rather than try and change the opinions of the Minds.

Of course, if Minds don't do all this, then why not? They have the capabilities to make sounder decisions than any organic brain due to their ability to simulate possible outcomes with incredible fidelity. Are they willing to let things be mismanaged -- perhaps catastrophically -- simply because less-capable individuals need autonomy? Would the Minds be willing to let their civilization collapse to preserve that autonomy?

So yeah, any clarity would be appreciated

[Brother Oni]

Strategy isn't a reaction-time based task, mostly, so on the grand strategy level, humans are actually pretty good.

This is not to mention that the Culture humans are likely to be both much smarter and more knowledgeable than we Earth humans.

[Tyndmyr]

So, I'm hearing a lot of different things about the capabilities and activities of Minds. Perhaps y'all can help me here.

First off, like people, minds vary. So, there will be some variations in capabilities.

What Can Minds Do?
From what I've read they seem capable of:
- Conducting internal simulations up to modeling an entire Universe in 12 dimensions (for fun!)

Oh, yes, complex simulations are definitely a thing. Strictly speaking, a mind is not necessary to perform them, as non self-aware computers are perfectly capable of running simulations.(Surface Detail definitely covers this)

That said, modeling the entire universe in 12 dimensions means very little about capabilities unless we're discussing the resolution of the model.

- Conducting external simulations that are indistinguishable from reality the involve managing multiple personae and environments up to the scale of a Ship.

I've not read a book yet with this in it...but yes, Minds typically ARE ships, so controlling an areas the size of a ship is...by definition, within their ability.

- Making sophisticated policy recommendations on the scale of civilizations and for centuries in the future

They can. There's a good idea of opinion in here, though, and agreement is not guaranteed. So, it's sort of like people.

- Control Ships in real-time over interstellar distances in combat situations

Again, the Minds typically ARE the ships, so distances are not necessarily a problem. But yes, they are absolutely capable of controlling a ship in real time in a combat situation(and for them, real time is EXTREMELY rapid in this circumstance).

- Manage the upkeep, development and protection of habitats up to the size of Dyson "Spheres"

Yes. At least, some do. Habs vary wildly in size and composition, and it would be extremely rare for a single Mind to be in complete control of a hab(Surface detail has an example w/regards to the Bulbatian, but that's a non-Culture mind, so hey...). Typically, Minds will vote on decisions and work together(mostly). Again, not unlike how people organize things.

- Create novel personae and insert them into meat or artificial bodies of tremendous physical capabilities

Avatars as such are almost invariably linked back to the ship. Since digitized personalities can be copied, yes...you could inherently copy and/or modify a personality(mind or human, or otherwise) and stick it into a new body.

And, of course, do all these things simultaneously. If so, then I can see absolutely no reason why these Minds should not simply do everything. Wars, in particular, require intricate planning, dispassionate reasoning, and elaborate simulations in order to be conducted properly -- all things that Minds should be better at doing than any meat-based brain.

Yes, but that's not necessarily ALL a war requires.

Also, you're missing that humans are a wee bit more capable as well. The whole "randomly make a new body" thing? There's nothing that stops people from doing that as well(and in fact, it does occur)

With FTL Comms a single Mind could get information in real time and accurately (and instantly!) simulate all permutations of the battle before selecting the one with the highest chance of success. It could even do this on the tactical level in multiple theaters if it were willing to stop simulating imaginary Universes for fun.

Again, the ability to have some fragmentation(a single mind controlling 12 micro-ships is a thing) doesn't mean it's indefinite. In each case, the ships involved have some physical proximity. Multiple theaters is a different thing. Distances in space are unimaginably vast. Just because you can have reasonable remote control over multiple ships in orbit around one planet doesn't mean you can have the same control over multiple ships in different star systems.

It is laughable that anyone in such a Universe would think that meatbags would be better suited as Generals or Scientists since intuition is merely a sloppy shortcut used when you don't have time to run proper simulations. Or are Minds actually far less capable than this? If so, what are their limits?

Like humans, their limits vary. Minds are *usually* smarter than humans, at least, in areas of direct computation. How much so depends on the Mind and human being compared. Seriously, go race a calculator at addition..you'll lose. That doesn't mean the calculator is gonna trump you at art.

Intelligence is not a single metric.

What Do Minds Do?

Like humans, mostly whatever they want to.

From what I've read it seems that the responsibilities/duties that Minds undertake are as follows:
- Administering habitats up to the size of Dyson "Spheres" including dispensing justice, providing advice, managing resources, and overseeing public works

Humans also do this. But yeah, Minds do this too.

- Planning foreign policy missions including elaborate subterfuges designed to fundamentally alter alien civilizations

See above.

- Evaluating and resolving threats to The Culture including coordinating and controlling offensive and defensive units

See above.

While it is true the "Democracy" rules The Culture I have to wonder who would bother to disagree with The Minds on important matters (e.g. war, civilization manipulation) when they have the capability to simulate entire Universes for fun and can therefore figure out how likely a given course of action is to work. Indeed, when things go really bad I can't help but wonder if the Minds won't cut the slow-thinking organics out of the loop entirely in order to respond quickly to imminent danger. If they don't, then they surely risk greater loss of life in order to keep up the niceties of their "Democracy" in which only unimportant minorities disagree with important decisions and conveniently self-deport themselves rather than try and change the opinions of the Minds.

Look, it's basically America, set far in a sci-fi future, following it's ideals, in a similarly advanced "world" of other cultures. Against some, the Culture is as overwhelming as the US is vis Terribadistan. And, like America, nobody agrees on how exactly things should work(even if they agree on broad generalities).

You're over-simplifying minds vs humanoids dramatically. In fact, you should probably read the books.

Of course, if Minds don't do all this, then why not? They have the capabilities to make sounder decisions than any organic brain due to their ability to simulate possible outcomes with incredible fidelity.

My laptop can simulate flying with incredibly fidelity in microsoft flight sim. This does not mean I should shove out the pilot, and set my laptop in the chair.

[Oracle_Hunter]

My laptop can simulate flying with incredibly fidelity in microsoft flight sim. This does not mean I should shove out the pilot, and set my laptop in the chair.

So... Minds aren't true Intelligences then? I was operating under the assumption that Minds had at least the capabilities of human brains and since we trust Pilots (with human brains) to fly planes, why wouldn't we also trust Minds to do so?

What I'm saying is that analogy is extremely suspect. Are Minds as capable as Petey here or not? If they're not then what's the big deal: Minds are just as limited as human brains in terms of processing speed and scope and we should no more trust them to run a Hab than we would trust a single guy to do so.

[Urpriest]

While I don't know precisely what the "simulating the entire universe in all 12 dimensions" refers to, I'd like to point out that in reality the people who do model the universe in 12 dimensions (F-theorists) don't use a whole lot of computational power, compared to say, people who model supernovae, or heck even me. While doubtless the Culture's grasp of F-theory is better than ours, it's still likely a much simpler computational job than something like chess.

[Tyndmyr]

So... Minds aren't true Intelligences then? I was operating under the assumption that Minds had at least the capabilities of human brains and since we trust Pilots (with human brains) to fly planes, why wouldn't we also trust Minds to do so?

Minds are classified as true intelligences, yes.

But you're treating intelligence as if it's a single property. It's not. Just because someone is very, very good at X does not mean they are good at Y. This is especially true when comparing between different forms of life.

There's a type of spider that, with a single glance, can memorize a maze with dozens of twists and turns, then go navigate that maze perfectly. I can't do that as well...but my brain size is thousands of times larger than the spider, and I absolutely crush it at other tasks.

What I'm saying is that analogy is extremely suspect. Are Minds as capable as Petey here or not? If they're not then what's the big deal: Minds are just as limited as human brains in terms of processing speed and scope and we should no more trust them to run a Hab than we would trust a single guy to do so.

Petey, at his height, is generally more powerful than Minds are portrayed as. Petey when he's running a single starship only(instead of being a hivemind), is a much better analogy, but probably less powerful than a Mind simply by virtue of Minds existing in a higher tech version of Shlock Mercernary.

[comicshorse]

Oracle Hunter if you do want to try one of the novels (and they are in my opinion excellent). I'd recommend 'Consider Phlebas' as a way in. The main character is staunchly anti-Culture to the extent of risking his life fighting for the Idirans against the Culture because he genuinely believes the Culture are a bigger threat to the growth and development of life in the Galaxy.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Petey, at his height, is generally more powerful than Minds are portrayed as. Petey when he's running a single starship only(instead of being a hivemind), is a much better analogy, but probably less powerful than a Mind simply by virtue of Minds existing in a higher tech version of Shlock Mercernary.

...so the best that a post-Singularity society can produce in AI is less intelligent than Petey?

Now The Culture doesn't make any sense at all

[Forum Explorer]

...so the best that a post-Singularity society can produce in AI is less intelligent than Petey?

Now The Culture doesn't make any sense at all

Considering how little detail is given in how they made an AI as intelligent as Petey it could easily be the other way around.

[jseah]

No tangible visible cause from the writing Mind's perspective, at least. It is possible for Chaos to target susceptible individuals with dreams, or instance, since any non-Blank human is at least fractionally psychic - presumably the corrupted people in the narrative were those who accepted, acted on, or were interested in the tiny tidbits of temptation offered to them in dreams. So it's not 100% canon, but it isn't canon-breaking either...a good enough story so far that I'm willing to accept the grey zone involved.

XD

Yeah, it's Slaanesh and yes, I did go with the interpretation that Chaos strikes randomly. I left it open though so it's gonna be dreams now.
EDIT: although I will continue with the interpretation that Chaos contaminations are more likely the more you lean towards Chaos-behaviour. Which the Culture certainly has alot of.

The reason for CB, UM's massively higher rate (3 stds over Culture base, which is 8 stds over IoM base) is of course again, due to Slaanesh. I hope I dropped enough clues as to why though. =D

They would only read the Eldars mind with that Eldars permission.
For a society with no laws, this is the closest thing they have to one and is considered to be the only real privacy

I decided that when faced with an existential threat, the Culture would accept the use of more immoral practices. I don't have a canon source for this since in their home universe, the Culture is never faced with an impending civilization ending attack.

Feel free to disagree however. I only think that it is reasonable that when pushed far enough, even the Culture would break some of its rules.

Having a -seemingly- unblockable Homogenizing Swarm or OCP attacking them, that has already demonstrated that it is very dangerous (they lost a ship with all hands and caused the deaths of a ton of Guardsmen... the IoM may not care, but the Culture does. Alot).
I think that counts as being pushed far enough.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Considering how little detail is given in how they made an AI as intelligent as Petey it could easily be the other way around.

Quite the opposite.

AIs in Schlock-verse are true intelligences but they are also computers. They store vast amounts of information, have the ability to rapidly search and process this information, and can even run simulations based on what they find. This permits them to react faster to events than humans (whose brains lack the capacity and efficient search capacity to do so) and to better project the outcomes of actions of people who rely on intuition. That said they lack the sort of ineffable Genius that permits organics the ability to remain ahead in fields such as government, science and (probably) art. Most importantly, this means that AIs, even the Fleetmind, are limited intelligences that have greater capacities in some areas and lesser in others. As a result they are used where they are strongest (e.g. spaceship combat) and not where they would be weaker (e.g. scientific innovation).

The Minds, on the other hand, are depicted as being so powerful that they can, together, run a galaxy-spanning civilization and still have plenty of free time to immerse themselves in elaborate simulations of imagined universes. This implies that they have spare capacity -- and capabilities -- to take on an even greater role in real-world events; it implies they do not have limits like Schlock-verse AIs would. Yet, from the above discussion, it appears their demonstrated capabilities are no greater than that of individual organics. Either they are high enough intelligences that you can trust them with running a civilization by themselves or they are weak enough that they really need organics to do all sorts of things that even contemporary computers should be better at doing.

[Tyndmyr]

...so the best that a post-Singularity society can produce in AI is less intelligent than Petey?

Now The Culture doesn't make any sense at all

It's...not really about the Singularity(and thus, post-Singularity isn't really relevant).

And power is not the same as intelligence at all. Petey runs a larger portion of the galaxy than the entire Culture does. Therefore, he is(assuming equivalent universes) rather more powerful. In terms of intelligence, yes, Petey is portrayed as ridiculously intelligent...but not quite perfect. However, there are a lot of similarities between the two, if you can get past that Schlock is a webcomic, and the other is decently hard sci fi.

At this point, it looks like you're just scraping for reasons to hate the Culture.

[jseah]

Part 3.5 (I don't call it part 4 because time doesn't advance)

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The Webway - Eldar Craftworld
"Farseer!"
F: "My colleagues and I have examined the runes for some time now and this emergency meeting is to report our findings.
...
Yes, it is important enough that we have gathered this many Craftworlds together. We need to decide what to do and act together. NOW.
We are faced with a new threat. This is completely unexpected and virtually all our old visions are now obsolete. Why we had not foreseen this is unknown but all of us agree that there was absolutely no warning of this unknown new player.
Shortly before this, we noticed that all the old visions could no longer be accessed. Our path into the future had seemingly been completely changed in every way. I'm sure all of you had already been told of this.
We have deduced from patching together our visions that the primary reason for this is the appearance of a new force in the galaxy. An extra galactic civilization has entered our galaxy and its future-path intersects with virtually everything. Despite the small number of near-future visions related to them, implying their size is currently incredibly tiny, it is unavoidable that they will touch *everything* in this galaxy. There are no futures in which this new arrival will not affect us in some way.
Our examinations of the future-paths indicate that this new arrival did not cause an increase in the non-Eldar branches of the future. They do not read the future, although down some future-paths, they gain the ability to do so.

Some of the future-paths spell complete disaster. In all of those, none of us survive. Not the IoM, not us, not even the Necrons. In all of those, only Chaos reigns supreme for all eternity through them. In one of the futures, not even Chaos survives; only the new arrival remains and the warp is completely shut off from the universe.
This is to be avoided at all costs.

Over the past weeks, it has become clear to us that this new player is as completely naive of this universe as we are naive of them. They have already encountered the touch of Chaos, or will soon do so, and their response to this is already outside our influence. Many of their decisions are outside our ability to influence beyond changing the times that they encounter other species or us. Of those, we have the ability to nudge them into contact with the other factions, but delaying them is nearly impossible and requires huge effort for only a short delay.
I repeat, there is no future for any faction where this new player do not contact them. They will eventually find us, we can only delay it slightly, or speed it greatly.

Additionally, their military ability is beyond compare. In any of the futures where war with them occurs, all conventional forces are defeated by them. All of our Craftworlds together could not stand against them. The IoM fleets, black crusades, Necron tombworlds, even the Tyranid fleets between the stars. NONE of them can even deflect their course. Any who stand against them militarily is destroyed or ignored. Ignored! This new player seems to dislike destroying things.

One of my colleagues described their battle ability as almost magical. It is his opinion that even the far-future Tyranid extra-galactic invasion will not pose more than a speedbump to them. At least we will not have to worry about surviving that, we are either dead or they will destroy it.

A side note. In virtually all the futures, the Dark Eldar are mostly destroyed or cease their... darkness. Yes, the Dark Eldar's days are limited whatever we do. That is one, if not good, at least not-bad event that will happen eventually.

There is no military solution to this new threat. But one may not be required. In a few rare future-paths..."
F pauses and meditates for a short time to calm emotions
"They are hopeful. Brighter, and calmer than any period we have witnessed. One vision of mine showed me a galaxy free from war, where we Eldar walked freely among the Imperium of Mankind without persecution. The IoM even...
...
No, I haven't been smoking anything. You saw my runes, would you deny what they say?

We have to realign our plans and change nearly all our responses. The Tau project can be safely abandoned. Any negative fallout from them would be too long in the coming, it is either overshadowed by more pressing concerns or will be solved by this newcomer.

Our main decision to make is whether we should contact them. They will soon spot one of our webway gates and a scout at one of the IoM Forge Worlds. This is unchangeable.
A major split of the future-paths lie only a short time ahead. Whether we decide to contact them will move us onto one branch or the other.

...
The majority of the Chaos-only ends are in the path where we do not contact them. Not all of them however. Even if we do contact them, there are still paths that lead to total Chaos, and those end with us dying first and they are a more brutal and total darkness than if we did not contact them.
The bright future-path I saw is nearly untraceable. Its probability is too small for me to see clearly. I cannot say down which path it lies, but I can confirm that it is only on one side of the split.

...
One of the non-Chaos futures involves the complete destruction of this new player. At the hands of Chaos. It is also rather unlikely, and the path is untraceable. It is rather more unlikely than the 'bright' future but exists on both sides of the split.
Some of the futures involves the resurrection of the God Emperor by this new player. How it will be achieved is impossible to tell. This new player has the ability to act below the limit of our visions and do that so fast that one vision was of the God Emperor as he is now, the next he is back at his full strength. After that... the future gets considerably more complicated. None of the Chaos-only endings lie down that path however, and in many of them, this new player is destroyed by the God Emperor. The 'bright' future does not lie down this path.
Yes, this ability is practically magical. It is also the primary reason why any military action stands zero chance of success.

...
No, the complete destruction of this player only ever happens at the hands of Chaos and not through military action. Somehow, Chaos corruption is able to destroy them instead of corrupting them.
All the endings where Chaos destroys them lie among Chaos-only endings. Some of them have chance-branches. The futures where Chaos destroys them are rather risky in that respect. "

Any questions that you wish to ask the farseer?

Currently, leaning towards contacting the Culture.

Assumptions

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1. Future sight sees the possiblities of the future. Future-paths refer to the chain of visions that describe a path through various branches. The lower probability of a future, the harder it is to trace.
1b. The Farseers are able to 'vision' on demand and focus on a time and place if they wish. This lets them 'vision' their way around the timeline to trace paths and branches. Obviously, they're highly practiced and very good at it. The lower probability some future 'vision' has of coming to pass, the harder it is to tell which other 'visions' lie in the past of that future 'vision', making them very very hard to track.

2. Future vision is 100% accurate. There are no false visions (although false interpretation is perfectly possible), all future-paths refer to a future that can happen provided the correct branches are taken. It is not comprehensive, however, so while it is impossible to make errors in future visions, the Eldar don't see everything and certainly not all combinations of branches. They may not see some branches or some futures, and they might only have a vague idea or partial list of needed actions to cause a certain future.
2b. A branch refers to a set of Eldar actions at a certain point. Obviously, no one else has branches unless they also have future vision. This is how they can tell the Culture has no future vision, since they don't see any Culture branches.
2c. Some branches are 'chance' branches, which means the factor that decides it is a small effect outside Eldar influence. This is basically chaos-theory (the one that small effects in the right places have major effects).

3. Visions are limited in spatial and time resolution. They cannot steal tech by visions nor discern the working process of anything more complicated than say a steam engine. Culture effectors work too fast and invisibly for them to detect. Culture FTL is also nearly incomprehensible, Eldar cannot track Culture vessels through hyperspace, they can only detect the rough position of their vessels relative to various worlds.
The large scale visions, like they used to try to discern what will happen to the galaxy, detects the overall minds in the galaxy. This is mostly war, because this is WH40K, but the visions are very sensitive to the emotions of the people concerned in the vision.

4. Eldar society has since stopped believing in a "good end". The fragment described by the main speaker depicts a flawless Culture victory. The IoM is reformed (slowly), the Eldar are in peaceful contact, Tau assimilated/reformed, Dark Eldar reformed (!) and rescued from their 'god'. Chaos shut off from the world, the Necrons/Tyranids/Orks totally destroyed.
In this far future, there is only peace. You probably understand why the rest of them are rather... skeptical. XD
EDIT: the next best future is mostly the same except that the Dark Eldar collapse from internal conflict when the Culture attempts reform.

[Oracle_Hunter]

At this point, it looks like you're just scraping for reasons to hate the Culture.

You're absolutely right. I just hate The Culture so much that I bring up facially irrelevant arguments to make myself feel better.

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The larger point is that I figured a civilization which has entities smart enough to be called "Minds" might actually use them for things that computers are good for. This is doubly true if the underlying "meat" culture is largely devoted to leisure rather than actually running the society, securing it from outside threats, or basically doing anything to support the larger civilization. Additionally, if the civilization apparently has the spare resources and expertise to blatantly meddle in other nations in particularly convoluted ways, I would expect these Minds to be hyper-competent at the sort of planning required to carry out such missions.

Instead it seems like the Minds are really good at doing "boring stuff" (i.e. running the civilization) which leaving all the "fun stuff" (i.e. messing with other civilizations) to the organics. Oh, but the Minds are still competent enough to engineer complicated plans for the organics to carry out even if the organics are highlighted in fields where computers really should be better.

In short: the more I hear about Minds the less I understand how The Culture is supposed to operate.

Do the organics have a post-scarcity life of leisure or do they need to work to make their society function? How are computers competent enough to run and keep stable an interstellar civilization still no better at conducting warfare than the smartest human? Who watches the watchmen?

EDIT:
@jseah -- good, but a small quibble. The Eldar are not unified and would never bring their Craftworlds together. At most they might coordinate action but each Craftworld has its own private agenda and would therefore likely act independently instead.

A rundown on Major Craftwords:

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Alaitoc -- Rigidly organized Craftworld that drives many of its members to leave for a time and explore the Galaxy as Outcasts. Kind of the Ultramarines of the Eldar, they espouse Traditional Eldar Values but nonetheless field a lot of "free-spirits" in the form of Outcasts who return in times of need.

Biel-tan -- an unusually warlike Craftworld that seeks to reclaim the glory of the fallen Eldar Empire without falling to the vices. They are primarily interested in retaking Maiden Worlds (abandoned Eldar terraforming products) and protecting Exodites (Eldar who have resettled on planets rather than staying on Craftworlds).

Iyanden -- a largely depopulated Craftworld after its Farseers failed to notice an impending Tyranid invasion before it was too late. They make heavy use of Wraith-soldiers -- constructs animated by the souls of powerful dead warriors -- which causes the other Craftworlds to view them as creeps. Their main concern is not being wiped out entirely.

Saim-Hann -- the most "free spirited" of the Eldar, they have largely abandoned the rigid Path system of the other Craftworlds and instead are broken up into a series of jet-bike riding clans. They don't have many bonds with the other Craftworlds and find closer kinship with the Exodites.

Ulthwe -- living dangerously close to the Eye of Terror they have the greatest and most Psykers of any Craftworld and are the most active in interfering with other races. It is rumored that their former chief Farseer (Eldrad Ulthran) was engaged in plans such as the Uplift of the Tau -- to give you an example of the scope of the plans that Ulthwe participates in.

Those are the big ones. The Harlequins, naturally, have their own plans and do not coordinate with anyone.

[Forum Explorer]

Part 3.5 (I don't call it part 4 because time doesn't advance)

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The Webway - Eldar Craftworld
"Farseer!"
F: "My colleagues and I have examined the runes for some time now and this emergency meeting is to report our findings.
...
Yes, it is important enough that we have gathered this many Craftworlds together. We need to decide what to do and act together. NOW.
We are faced with a new threat. This is completely unexpected and virtually all our old visions are now obsolete. Why we had not foreseen this is unknown but all of us agree that there was absolutely no warning of this unknown new player.
Shortly before this, we noticed that all the old visions could no longer be accessed. Our path into the future had seemingly been completely changed in every way. I'm sure all of you had already been told of this.
We have deduced from patching together our visions that the primary reason for this is the appearance of a new force in the galaxy. An extra galactic civilization has entered our galaxy and its future-path intersects with virtually everything. Despite the small number of near-future visions related to them, implying their size is currently incredibly tiny, it is unavoidable that they will touch *everything* in this galaxy. There are no futures in which this new arrival will not affect us in some way.
Our examinations of the future-paths indicate that this new arrival did not cause an increase in the non-Eldar branches of the future. They do not read the future, although down some future-paths, they gain the ability to do so.

Some of the future-paths spell complete disaster. In all of those, none of us survive. Not the IoM, not us, not even the Necrons. In all of those, only Chaos reigns supreme for all eternity through them. In one of the futures, not even Chaos survives; only the new arrival remains and the warp is completely shut off from the universe.
This is to be avoided at all costs.

Over the past weeks, it has become clear to us that this new player is as completely naive of this universe as we are naive of them. They have already encountered the touch of Chaos, or will soon do so, and their response to this is already outside our influence. Many of their decisions are outside our ability to influence beyond changing the times that they encounter other species or us. Of those, we have the ability to nudge them into contact with the other factions, but delaying them is nearly impossible and requires huge effort for only a short delay.
I repeat, there is no future for any faction where this new player do not contact them. They will eventually find us, we can only delay it slightly, or speed it greatly.

Additionally, their military ability is beyond compare. In any of the futures where war with them occurs, all conventional forces are defeated by them. All of our Craftworlds together could not stand against them. The IoM fleets, black crusades, Necron tombworlds, even the Tyranid fleets between the stars. NONE of them can even deflect their course. Any who stand against them militarily is destroyed or ignored. Ignored! This new player seems to dislike destroying things.

One of my colleagues described their battle ability as almost magical. It is his opinion that even the far-future Tyranid extra-galactic invasion will not pose more than a speedbump to them. At least we will not have to worry about surviving that, we are either dead or they will destroy it.

A side note. In virtually all the futures, the Dark Eldar are mostly destroyed or cease their... darkness. Yes, the Dark Eldar's days are limited whatever we do. That is one, if not good, at least not-bad event that will happen eventually.

There is no military solution to this new threat. But one may not be required. In a few rare future-paths..."
F pauses and meditates for a short time to calm emotions
"They are hopeful. Brighter, and calmer than any period we have witnessed. One vision of mine showed me a galaxy free from war, where we Eldar walked freely among the Imperium of Mankind without persecution. The IoM even...
...
No, I haven't been smoking anything. You saw my runes, would you deny what they say?

We have to realign our plans and change nearly all our responses. The Tau project can be safely abandoned. Any negative fallout from them would be too long in the coming, it is either overshadowed by more pressing concerns or will be solved by this newcomer.

Our main decision to make is whether we should contact them. They will soon spot one of our webway gates and a scout at one of the IoM Forge Worlds. This is unchangeable.
A major split of the future-paths lie only a short time ahead. Whether we decide to contact them will move us onto one branch or the other.

...
The majority of the Chaos-only ends are in the path where we do not contact them. Not all of them however. Even if we do contact them, there are still paths that lead to total Chaos, and those end with us dying first and they are a more brutal and total darkness than if we did not contact them.
The bright future-path I saw is nearly untraceable. Its probability is too small for me to see clearly. I cannot say down which path it lies, but I can confirm that it is only on one side of the split.

...
One of the non-Chaos futures involves the complete destruction of this new player. At the hands of Chaos. It is also rather unlikely, and the path is untraceable. It is rather more unlikely than the 'bright' future but exists on both sides of the split.
Some of the futures involves the resurrection of the God Emperor by this new player. How it will be achieved is impossible to tell. This new player has the ability to act below the limit of our visions and do that so fast that one vision was of the God Emperor as he is now, the next he is back at his full strength. After that... the future gets considerably more complicated. None of the Chaos-only endings lie down that path however, and in many of them, this new player is destroyed by the God Emperor. The 'bright' future does not lie down this path.
Yes, this ability is practically magical. It is also the primary reason why any military action stands zero chance of success.

...
No, the complete destruction of this player only ever happens at the hands of Chaos and not through military action. Somehow, Chaos corruption is able to destroy them instead of corrupting them.
All the endings where Chaos destroys them lie among Chaos-only endings. Some of them have chance-branches. The futures where Chaos destroys them are rather risky in that respect. "

Any questions that you wish to ask the farseer?

Currently, leaning towards contacting the Culture.

Assumptions

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1. Future sight sees the possiblities of the future. Future-paths refer to the chain of visions that describe a path through various branches. The lower probability of a future, the harder it is to trace.
1b. The Farseers are able to 'vision' on demand and focus on a time and place if they wish. This lets them 'vision' their way around the timeline to trace paths and branches. Obviously, they're highly practiced and very good at it. The lower probability some future 'vision' has of coming to pass, the harder it is to tell which other 'visions' lie in the past of that future 'vision', making them very very hard to track.

2. Future vision is 100% accurate. There are no false visions (although false interpretation is perfectly possible), all future-paths refer to a future that can happen provided the correct branches are taken. It is not comprehensive, however, so while it is impossible to make errors in future visions, the Eldar don't see everything and certainly not all combinations of branches. They may not see some branches or some futures, and they might only have a vague idea or partial list of needed actions to cause a certain future.
2b. A branch refers to a set of Eldar actions at a certain point. Obviously, no one else has branches unless they also have future vision. This is how they can tell the Culture has no future vision, since they don't see any Culture branches.
2c. Some branches are 'chance' branches, which means the factor that decides it is a small effect outside Eldar influence. This is basically chaos-theory (the one that small effects in the right places have major effects).

3. Visions are limited in spatial and time resolution. They cannot steal tech by visions nor discern the working process of anything more complicated than say a steam engine. Culture effectors work too fast and invisibly for them to detect. Culture FTL is also nearly incomprehensible, Eldar cannot track Culture vessels through hyperspace, they can only detect the rough position of their vessels relative to various worlds.
The large scale visions, like they used to try to discern what will happen to the galaxy, detects the overall minds in the galaxy. This is mostly war, because this is WH40K, but the visions are very sensitive to the emotions of the people concerned in the vision.

4. Eldar society has since stopped believing in a "good end". The fragment described by the main speaker depicts a flawless Culture victory. The IoM is reformed (slowly), the Eldar are in peaceful contact, Tau assimilated/reformed, Dark Eldar reformed (!) and rescued from their 'god'. Chaos shut off from the world, the Necrons/Tyranids/Orks totally destroyed.
In this far future, there is only peace. You probably understand why the rest of them are rather... skeptical. XD
EDIT: the next best future is mostly the same except that the Dark Eldar collapse from internal conflict when the Culture attempts reform.

The "No I haven't been smoking anything." line should be dropped. The Eldar generally will not indulge in any drugs unless that's a permitted part of their path. A big thing about the Eldar is denying Slaanash through rigid disipline.

On Dark Eldar relations it's a little weird. They have helped each other before but at the same time they hate and envy each other. Redeeming the Dark Eldar would be very challenging as they actually have a physical dependence on eating the souls of other races. The more painful death the stronger the result.

[Brother Oni]

In short: the more I hear about Minds the less I understand how The Culture is supposed to operate.

Both the Minds and the organics have a say in important matters and it's a partnership rather than one extremely powerful faction dominating the other and only letting them think they have a say.

I also think you have a misconception that the Culture is divided up as Minds versus organics, when it's more like factions of Minds and organics, versus other factions of Minds and organics.

Remember Minds are equal citizens of the Culture, just as the people are.

How are computers competent enough to run and keep stable an interstellar civilization still no better at conducting warfare than the smartest human?

As pointed out before, the actual combat is better handled by Minds, but the actual strategy is something that beings less able at pure number crunching can be equally good at.
Just because you arrive at the answer faster than the other guy doesn't make his answer any less right.

Being able to run flawless simulations isn't the be-all and end-all of predicting the events of warfare since all it does is churn out probabilities and likely scenarios.

Who watches the watchmen

It's obvious - they watch each other and various Minds have been punished for breaking the Culture's laws (for example, the Mind Grey Area, now known as The Meatf***er).

[Soras Teva Gee]

How are computers competent enough to run and keep stable an interstellar civilization still no better at conducting warfare than the smartest human?

Are you familiar with the game of Go?

While simpler then Chess to learn, unlike Chess it has defied competentant simulation by computer. Unlike Chess where computers can compete with the best in the world, computer Go tops out at somewhere around a good amateur level. At least some of the reason is that due to board size the number of possible games of Go are several orders of magnitude beyond the number possible Chess games.

Yet Go is simpler for a human to learn and thus far far more easily mastered. Humans have a certain capacity to act without complete data in ways that are not understood and therefore easily simulated.

Now consider that anything real life is infinitely more complicated then any game.

Also consider the dubious nature of the idea of "Intelligence" if you will. It is not if you will simply a linear stat one can boost. Using technology one can achieve high speeds for things like computation and from there do any number of things... but its not suited for everything.

How do you number and value say "creativity" as something other then purely random? Is it improved by upping the RAM, the Processor, or the Hardrive?

I consider "superhuman intelligence" to be a pretty meaningless concept for much this reason. Okay they might processor better or faster, but that won't help cover an actual lack of critical data and give you better models of probability to choose the highest probability of. But this is (loosely) like comparing the same driver in two different cars. Genuine superhuman intellect should be well, inconceivable.

At a meta level for fiction that means an author cannot actually write such an entity. Instance of are either faking and its purely random storytelling fiat or something a human could have reasoned because a human did reason it.

So it is more then completely legit that a certain especially talented humans could stand with the Minds in certain areas. Particularly certain complex activities like war where complete analysis is impossible so one has to guess.

Nor is there some sort of obligatory relationship where a Mind is sooo smart it must be capable of something. Such cases may exist, like for regular things that don't require creativity like maintenance and production.... which is what the AI side of the Culture does.

[Water_Bear]

Hm, well I was originally introduced to the Culture by Eliezer Yudkowsky's writings on AIs and general post-singularity / post-scarcity utopia stuff, so I would have figured the Minds had a realistically large edge over humans.

Let's face it, any way you slice it the Minds ought to be about as far beyond a human being cognitively as a human is beyond a tapeworm; even if both have brains operating at Bremermann's Limit and data storage capacity at the Bekenstein Bound, the sheer size advantage of a ship's computer over a skull-enclosed brain will mean an orders of magnitude difference in power. Make that a neuron v digital divide as well, and you're head will spin with the implications of that large a difference in raw processing power and data storage.

Now, obviously raw power isn't everything, but it smells of narrative convenience to say that humans are just better at strategic thinking even when digital uploads of human brains are fairly common. Why can't (or more accurately, won't) the Minds reorganize their thoughts in such a way as to be better strategists while still taking advantage of their massive brainpower advantage? Can't they just run a "human brain emulator" the same way they simulate entire universes, and end up with the equivalent of millions of subjective years of better-than-human strategic thought?

(I'm heeding the mods and will no longer participate in philosophical discussions in this thread. So yeah, less of that.)

[Soras Teva Gee]

Now, obviously raw power isn't everything, but it smells of narrative convenience to say that humans are just better at strategic thinking even when digital uploads of human brains are fairly common. Why can't (or more accurately, won't) the Minds reorganize their thoughts in such a way as to be better strategists while still taking advantage of their massive brainpower advantage? Can't they just run a "human brain emulator" the same way they simulate entire universes, and end up with the equivalent of millions of subjective years of better-than-human strategic thought?

(I'm heeding the mods and will no longer participate in philosophical discussions in this thread. So yeah, less of that.)

Everything is narrative convenience.

And maybe they do I'm not an expert on it. Maybe they simply judged that if they have people available who can do the job there's no reason to not take advantage of it.

For that matter if they run a complete emulation then they've created a new person with the full rights that implies, ergo its still a human doing it.

And the Minds are reaping the benefits of their processing of course, simply being involved does that.

[Shadow of the Sun]

There are people in the novels called Referers. They're people who can match the Minds in a certain field. This sounds completely implausible, but the justification is reasonably sensible:

In a civilization with 30 trillion people, someone even if from straight probability is going to be right all the time.

Also, worth noting: the Culture, while feared, is not the only civilization with that level of power and there are civilizations mentioned that outpower them, if I recall correctly. The Morthanveld, for example, are at the same tech level and power as the Culture, have in a single habitat more people than the Culture's entire population, and don't have full rights for AI. So, if you ever somehow get sucked into the fiction Nexus and end up in the Cultureverse, you might want to move there, Oracle_Hunter.

[jseah]

Will get around to retconning stuff eventually. For now, I shall just note that I find it interesting that the quibbles are all with Eldar behaviour and not about the future vision mechanics I assumed.

Did I somehow guess it all correctly? I find that hard to believe.

[Selrahc]

Did I somehow guess it all correctly? I find that hard to believe.

Eldar are very rarely a viewpoint race, they are a mysterious shadowy background presence. We haven't been given a set of rules for the exact way it works. Your proposed rules seem to fit with what we know, IMO.

[MLai]

I think the Culture-hater's main philosophical objection to the Culture is that in a perfect society, a utopia, there is nothing for the Overman to do. The concept of the Overman is meaningless in a hypothetical world with no flaws to correct, no injustices to overcome, no responsibility to inherit, no contributions left unmade in a society which is free of degradation, free of possible improvement, or the need for maintenance. Philosophically speaking, ofc. Because there are still specific day-to-day minutiae that need to be attended to (such as meddling with barbarian civilizations), but not in the existential grand scheme of things because the Minds offer the perfect safety net.

Now, Culture-philes have already said "Go read the novels, because it's not as black-&-white as that." But we humans like to paint things in broad generalities, such as with political parties. The haters are not necessarily hating the Culture as it truly is, but are rather hating a simplified caricature of it.

I shall just note that I find it interesting that the quibbles are all with Eldar behaviour and not about the future vision mechanics I assumed.
Did I somehow guess it all correctly? I find that hard to believe.

While playing the Eldar campaigns in DOW1 and DOW2, I've always had the impression that when the GW Eldar mutter about "the tangled skeins of fate," they pretty much base their fortune-telling mechanics on what is described in the Dune novels. So if that's where you got your inspiration from, then it's pretty accurate.

Great fanfic btw. Carry on!