I've been thinking about conflict vs mistake theory lately, especially since the events of October in Israel last year.
I've been particularly trying to understand where support for Palestine (and Hamas, implicitly or not) comes from. Much has already been written about this of course, whether it's the bigotry of small differences or the trap of the "oppressor/oppressed thinking," the hierarchy of oppression, and so on.
What I found striking and want to discuss here though is the strain of thought responding to "how can LGBT+ support Palestine" by declaring, e.g., from Reddit:
It's easier to focus on getting gay rights when you're not being genocided.
Or from a longer piece:
The interviewer asks him, “What’s your response to people who say that you’re not safe in Palestine as a queer person?” Dabbagh responded, “First and foremost, I would go to Palestine in a heartbeat. I have no fear. I love my people and my people love me. And I want to be there and be part of the movement that ends up leading to queer liberation for liberated Palestinian people. If you feel that such violence exists for queer people in the Middle East, what are you doing to change that for that community? The first step is the liberation of Palestine.
I don't claim it's the most common strain of thinking, but to me this largely cashes out as "they are homophobic because of oppression/imperialism/Jews." As an aside, contrast with the way "economic anxiety" plays out in the US.
The part I want to focus on is this kind of blend of mistake and conflict theory -- there's conflict, yes, but it has a cause which can be addressed and then we'll all be on the same side. I'm skeptical of this blend, which seems to essentially just be false consciousness: if not for an external force you would see our interests align.
I think this mode of thinking is becoming increasingly popular however and want to point to the two most recent video games I put serious time into (but didn't finish) as examples: Baldur's Gate 3 and Unicorn Overlord (minorish spoilers ahead)
[Again, minorish spoilers for Unicorn Overlord and Baldur's Gate 3 ahead]
Baldur's Gate 3 was part of a larger "vibe shift" in DnD which I won't get into here except to say I think a lot of it is misguided. Nevertheless, there are two major examples of the above:
The Gith'Yanki are a martial, fascist seeming society who are generally aggressive powerful assholes. A major character arc for one of your team Gith'Yanki team members however, is learning she had been brainwashed and fed lies not just about the leader of the society and her goals, but also the basic functioning of the society. For instance, a much-discussed cure for a serious medical condition turns out to be glorious euthanasia.
The Gith have been impressed with a false consciousness, you see, and your conflict with them is largely based on a misunderstanding of the facts.
More egregious is the character Omeluum, who you meet early in the adventure. Omeluum is a "mind flayer" or "illithid":
Mind flayers are psionic aberrations with a humanoid-like figure and a tentacled head that communicate using telepathy. They feast on the brains of intelligent beings and can enthrall other creatures to their will.
But you see, even these creatures turn out to be the victim of false consciousness--Omeluum is a mind flayer who has escaped the mind control of the "Elder Brain." After fleeing, he happily "joined the good guys." You might think it's an issue that his biology requires he consume conscious brains, but fortunately he only feeds
on the brains of creatures of the Underdark 'that oppose the Society's goals', and wishes to help others of his kind by discovering a brain-free diet.
In the world of DnD (which has consciously been made to increasingly mimic our own world with mixed results), it seems that but for a few bad actors we could all get along in harmony.
Anecdotally, the last time I ran a DnD campaign it eventually devolved into the party trying to "get to the root" of every conflict, whether it was insisting on finding a way to get goblins to stop killing travelers by negotiation a protection deal with the nearby village which served both, or trying to talk every single cultist out of being a cult member. I'm all for creative solutions, but I found it got pretty tedious after a while.
The other game, Unicorn Overlord, is even more striking, albeit a little simpler. Unicorn Overlord is a (very enjoyable) strategy game where you slowly build up an army to overthrow the evil overlord. What you quickly discover, however, is that almost without exception every follower of the evil overlord is literally mind-controlled. The main gameplay cycle involves fighting a lieutenant's army, then using your magical ring to undo the mind control. After, the lieutenant is invariably horrified and joins your righteous cause.
I should note this is far from unusual in this genre, which requires fights but also wants team-ups. It's a lot like Marvel movies which come up with reasons for heroes to fight each other then team up, like a misunderstanding or even mind control. Wargroove was especially bad at this, where you would encounter a new friendly and say something like "Hello, a fine field for cattle, no?" but the wind is strong or something so they hear "Hello, a fine field for battle, no?" and then you fight. Nevertheless, the mind control dynamic in Unicorn Overlord is almost exclusively the only explanation used.
Funnily enough, I think in these an other examples this is seen as "adding nuance," but I find it ultimately as childish as a cartoon-twirling villain. The villain is still needed in fact (Imperialists, the Evil Overlord, The Elder Brain, The Queen of the Gith), but it's easier to explain away one Evil person who controls everything than try to account for it at scale.
Taken altogether, I can't help but think these are all symptoms of the same thing: struggling to explain conflict. The "false consciousness" explanation is powerful, but seems able to explain anything about people's behavior.
My suspicion is that mistakes and genuine conflict can both occur, but this blended approach leaves something to be desired I think. I had an idea a while ago about a potential plot twist for Unicorn Overlord where it's revealed you aren't freeing anyone -- you're simply bringing them under your own control but you don't notice. That feels a bit like the fantasy all of this is getting at I think: I have my views because of Reasons or Ethics or Whatever, and you would agree with me if not for Factor I'm Immune To.
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Notes -
If you label all cultural differences as "mind control" then isn't it true that everything is reconcilable? If you're master bioengineers that can transmute anyone into anything, is anything really fundamental?
On one hand, this sounds like a word game, but once you reach the tech level of the culture, I think this just becomes correct.
If someone is pure evil just do brain surgery on them until they aren't. Prrrroblem solved! Of course, the 'mind control wars' themselves also take on the format of a conflict until resolved. But the killing of entire bodies becomes wasteful and unnecessary. What was a game of Chess becomes a game of Shogi.
If we assume full magitech then that seems like a viable solution.
But I've also read the book Blindsight, which posits the existence of a totally nonsentient (in the sense it has no self-awareness or internal dialogue) but superintelligent entity that simply evolved from the random permutations of the universe and its intelligence is literally just an 'emergent' result of its physical structure, and in a sense is inseparable from that structure.
That is to say the "mind/body" distinction pretty much doesn't exist for this thing in any sense. You can't just do 'brain surgery' to change its mind without potentially killing its body. And it is VERY hard to kill.
The book goes so far as to suggest that sentient beings are likely a tiny minority of intelligent life in the universe, as sentience is costly in terms of energy/computation, and mostly unneeded for survival, if you otherwise possess high intelligence.
This starts to blur the line between "natural force that doesn't care about your utility function" and "alien utility functions." I'm sure you could write up a theoretical 'cure' for this sort of thing, but imagine if it already had spread to and occupied the majority of the galaxy and was capable of undoing any cures you came up with.
If I were to imagine a major threat in the Culture universe, maybe posit a species/society that reached some level of near-equivalence with Culture tech, then decided to use their power to rewire themselves to remove their own sentience and make their own intellects a distributed, 'immutable' aspect of their physical structure so you cannot just hack their brain open to make changes. i.e. they make themselves as resistant to brainwashing/brain surgery as possible.
And now add in the parasitic angle: they intentionally work to make any other species/societies they encounter 'nonsentient,' without changing any other aspects of their minds. Just lop off the parts of the brain that generates sentience, because from their perspective, sentience is 'evil' or 'inefficient' and thus removing it is just a quick little surgery that no rational person would refuse.
Actually I realize this is basically just describing the Borg.
So yeah, maybe imagine if a society created "Minds" on par with those of the Culture, but these minds were basically running on Borg logic and were steadfastly devoted to 'peacefully' removing sentience from the universe by spreading their nonsentience through whatever means they can devise. Basically a hyperintelligent P-Zombie horde.
Indeed, that kind of matches with my thought above, about a society that shares the Culture's social mores except for one: "Do whatever you want at any time, but don't be self-aware while you do it!"
I am not certain the Culture wins a direct confrontation if the nonsentient civilization is equivitech and the Culture is fighting to to preserve sentience. If Blindsight's logic is right, then the sheer added efficiency of nonsentience means they will be better at fighting because they don't waste epicycles reflecting on what they do, they just act on their instinct at all times. I am positing that the Culture won't be able to buy them off to convince them to stand down.
Or if you want to amp up the challenge even more, accept Blindsight's logic that sentience is rare, and imagine that the Culture realizes that 90% of space around them is inhabited by these sorts of civilizations.
Indeed, now that I think about it, Banks' most optimistic assumption in writing his novels isn't so much that we'd manage to pull of friendly AI... its that the other alien civs out there would, whether they're sadistic, friendly, or straight up hostile to everyone, at least be sentient and thus one can deal with them through negotiation and social influence.
On his blog, at one point Watts actually walked back his belief that consciousness is not evolutionarily adaptive after reading a study on it, if I recall correctly. I just searched around for it but couldn't find it - my apologies.
I should add that Blindsight and the Culture series are still some of my favorites though!
I'm not going to pretend to know the answer on that one.
I read Blindsight right around the same time I read A Fire Upon the Deep by Vinge, which also had a lot to say about the nature of Conciousness/sentient life. And I read Who's in Charge. These days I'd add in Behave by Sapolsky.
The effect on my psyche and outlook on the universe of reading these three books in short succession was noticeable.
Regardless of whether full-on sentience is adaptive from an evolutionary point of view, it is conceivable that intelligence could either evolve independently of full sentience, or that after evolving high intelligence, the part that makes the brain self aware could become vestigial.
And a society on the Culture's level could presumably do some engineering designed to remove the 'sentience' part while otherwise preserving as much of the self as possible.
I wonder if part of the bargain for joining the Culture was to sacrifice your self-awareness but otherwise still be 'you,' and you get all the rest of the post-scarcity hedonism to boot, how appealing would it really be?
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