Quote Originally Posted by PairO'Dice Lost View Post
Unrelated to the current Tau discussion: here's an essay I found by Iain M. Banks that provides a bit more detail on the Culture from both an in-universe (for those not as familiar with the series) and an out-of-universe (for those with philosophical disagreements with the Culture) perspective.
Thanks for the link

I am greatly amused than Banks does not even raise, let alone address, the issue as to why there are any meatpuppets in The Culture at all. He makes a big deal about how dangerous it is to live in space (hence making it impossible for "hegemonies" to stomp out dissent yet producing Perfect Socialism ) but doesn't stop to consider that the vacuum of space is a lot less dangerous for entities that don't need to breathe or eat and are comparatively easy to harden against radiation.

Oh, and that some manner of education is sufficient to convince the meatpuppets that they need to work hard to maintain their level of hedonism even though everything is taken care of by machines. Handy that