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Perhaps worst of all—and had their design permitted such a thing, those electronic brains would now have felt dismay
spaciobatics
spectographic
exosocio
Horza knew that Idirans hated to appear either over-inquisitive or under-informed.
Did life in your great Utopia really get so boring you needed a war?”
They’re on the side of life—boring, old-fashioned, biological life; smelly, fallible and short-sighted, God knows, but real life. You’re ruled by your machines.
“Empathize with stupidity and you’re halfway to thinking like an idiot,”
Special Circumstances had always been the Contact section’s moral espionage weapon, the very cutting edge of the Culture’s interfering diplomatic policy, the elite of the elite, in a society which abhorred elitism.
novae
suzerainty.
the Culture had placed its bets—long before the Idiran war had been envisaged—on the machine rather than the human brain. This was because the Culture saw itself as being a self-consciously rational society; and machines, even sentient ones, were more capable of achieving this desired state as well as more efficient at using it once they had. That was good enough for the Culture.
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.
discovery by the Culture’s Minds that some humans were actually capable of matching and occasionally beating their record for accurately assessing a given set of facts would lead to machine indignation and blown circuits, but this was not the case.
It fascinated those Minds that such a puny and chaotic collection of mental faculties could by some sleight of neuron produce an answer to a problem which was as good as theirs.
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.
Horza had disagreed, genuinely annoyed that the woman could use even something so obviously a testament to the power of intelligence and hard work as an argument for her own system of irrational belief.
“Kraiklyn, you stupid motherfucking son of a bitch’s bastard!” Lamm screamed.
He started to shut off the pain signals, like a weary servant picking up the litter of breakables after an employer’s destructive rage.
They were human, but that word covered so many different species throughout the galaxy it was a continuing subject for debate who was and who wasn’t human.
The Culture was every single individual human and machine in it, not one thing. Just as it could not imprison itself with laws, impoverish itself with money or misguide itself with leaders, so it would not misrepresent itself with signs.
Horza recalled that the Culture’s attitude to somebody who believed in an omnipotent God was to pity them, and to take no more notice of the substance of their faith than one would take of the ramblings of somebody claiming to be Emperor of the Universe. The nature of the belief wasn’t totally irrelevant—along with the person’s background and upbringing, it might tell you something about what had gone wrong with them—but you didn’t take their views seriously.
The Idirans knew better, and Horza, while not agreeing with everything the Idirans stood for, respected their beliefs. Their whole way of life, almost their every thought, was illuminated, guided and governed by their single religion/philosophy: a belief in order, place and a kind of holy rationality.
“Fuck your soul, stranger,” Mr. First laughed. “You’d better hope there’s no such thing.
“Damage—the game banned everywhere. Tonight, in that unprepossessing building across the square under the dome, they’ll gather: the Players of the Eve of Destruction . . . the most select group of rich psychotics in the human galaxy, here to play the game that is to real life what soap opera is to high tragedy.
scatological
Horza sat down on what was either an over-designed seat or a rather unimaginative piece of sculpture.
