Consider Phlebas

by Iain M. Banks

“Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot,”

The Minds that the Culture’s factory craft, safe Orbitals and larger GSVs were now producing were some of the most sophisticated collections of matter in the galaxy. They were so intelligent that no human was capable of understanding just how smart they were (and the machines themselves were incapable of describing it to such a limited form of life).

Besides, it left the humans in the Culture free to take care of the things that really mattered in life, such as sports, games, romance, studying dead languages, barbarian societies and impossible problems, and climbing high mountains without the aid of a safety harness.

Still, the underlying point held; experience as well as common sense indicated that the most reliable method of avoiding self-extinction was not to equip oneself with the means to accomplish it in the first place.

“Damn,” Balveda said into the shadows. “No aces up your sleeve?” “No sleeves, Perosteck.”