Utopia, a poll (with other completely unconnected question)

[andrewducker]

"The Culture" in this case refers to the space-faring civilisation in Iain Banks' awesome series of novels.

[Poll #1792224]

Comments

[andrewducker]

The Culture does appear to have very strong rules on the reading of minds by Minds.
I'm not convinced it does. It has a taboo on it (hence the ship nicknamed "Meatfucker"), but no actual rules, as far as I remember.

And yes, I agree. I don't think that it stands up, because it's not important enough to the story for Iain Banks to have thought about it.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

And this is perhaps the nub of my point about weak rights.

I read the book refering to Grey Area has having quite strong rules and if I were a Culture ship I'd be thinking "Rightho, no matter how extreme the situation is the one thing I don't ever, ever do is read someone else's mind. That be the Law."

You're taking a slightly different view and calling it a taboo. Still a very strong normative structure but not quite as the same as the view that I took.

The texture of the norms and their enforcement seems a bit vague and a bit retrospective.

And that's okay because pretty much all we're dealing with are bruised feelilngs and I'd take a vague discomfort over the rules governing how much my feelings are allowed to be bruised over a world where it's perfectly legal for me to starve to death and someone currently actually is but still, it upsets the jurist in me.