[Pamar]

In general I'd suggest reading "The player of Games" by Banks. A Culture novel that explores why would someone care about being good at "boardgames" in a universe where even the dumbest appliance could easily outperform any human.

[JabavuAdams]

One thing that Banks never addressed in his Culture novels was humans wanting to become Minds. I mean if I live in a society where there are humanoids and Minds, then I want to be a Mind, with a stream-of-consciousness that includes the transition. Wouldn't this be true of many people who are in to science?

[saalweachter]

Didn't the Minds manipulate culture to channel their charges in various directions (ie, against war-like tendencies)? Maybe ascension was one of the thought-patterns they engineered out.

[Filligree]

They did. It isn't explicitly stated, to the best of my knowledge, but the Minds are smart enough that they could easily have done that—and were shown to engineer other parts of the society, such as their deathism.

Humanity has very limited purpose in the Culture. On the surface, it looks nice, but they're effectively pets. Their willingness to ascend was cut off right along with their willingness to live.

All of which is done by social engineering. If you want to go the intelligence-enhancement route, they'll help. They just make sure that very few people do.

[david-given]

That's true, but it's also rather deceptive. Humans are the fundamental core of the Culture; its basic purpose is to look after human-scale people, and this shapes everything it does --- the Culture's a bit suspicious of ascension because they feel it's an abandonment of their responsibilities. Humans are, in effect, the Minds' religion.

And dying is just one of several end-of-life events you can pick, if you want to (including opting out entirely). Naturally it's the one we tend to focus on, because it's the only one we currently have, but the Culture's got lots.

[JabavuAdams]

Right, this is where things break down. It's fictional universe, after all.

What are the negative effects of having more Minds? Resource depletion?

If your cat suddenly tells you that what it wants more than anything is to learn General Relativity, then either you're having a psychotic episode, or you have to question how benevolent and ethical your coddling is for your fuzzy wuzzy slave animal.

[JabavuAdams]

Intolerable.

[david-given]

It's mentioned a few times - a common end-of-life event is to have your consciousness merged into a Mind. (Possibly with your friends.)

It's also mentioned that you can have your mind transferred into a drone busy, and vice versa, but it's seen as terribly gauche.

[JabavuAdams]

Forgot about this. I guess it's more about the relative frequencies. The books, of course, aren't a representative cross-section of the society.

The manners as laws thing is cute, but I don't see it working without invasive non-consensual modification of humans.

E.g. from my own perspective, if I live in a world where there are humans and human-created demigods, then obviously I want to be one of the demigods. Not to enslave the humans, but to look inside of black holes, to travel between stars, to fully understand how biology works, etc.

So not everyone wants to be a scientist or engineer, but wouldn't almost all engineers and scientists want to wield the very best mental and technological tools of their civilization?

[taneq]

I think there's some mention at one point of humans who've augmented themselves to the point of being Mind-like, but by that stage they aren't really human any more.

[RyanZAG]

The only way for that to happen would be to build a mind, and then allow a human conscious control over it. In effect, slavery of a mind by a human. The minds would not allow that, so I'd say you'd be out of luck.