Of more interest is the discussion thread on Hacker News regarding cryonics. There’s a lot of cached responses and misinformation going around on both sides.
Look at it like a cryptographer: Is putting a brain in liquid nitrogen a secure erasure method against all future attacks from a determined opponent with lots of resources? Would you trust your financial data to such a method of data erasure?
It’s really, really saddening that he of all people has been an outspoken deathist and now it’s depriving him of any chance whatsoever. (Well, except for hypothetical ultra-remote reconstruction by FAI or something.)
In the Culture novels, he has all humans just sorta choosing to die after a millennium of life, despite there being absolutely no reason for humans to die since available resources are unlimited, almost all other problems solved, aging irrelevant, and clear upgrade paths available (like growing into a Mind).
Its not entirely clear cut. He has had characters from outside the culture describing it as a ‘fashion’ and a sign of the culture’s decadence. And the characters we do see ending their lives are generally doing it for reasons of psychological trauma.
Either way, thinking a thousand years in the culture is enough doesn’t mean he thinks 70 years on earth is enough. Has he ever made a direct comment about cryonics? I can’t find any. So its still possible eh would eb open to it given up to date information.
And the characters we do see ending their lives are generally doing it for reasons of psychological trauma.
Stories would tend to focus on characters who are interested or involved in traumatically interesting events, so not sure how much one could infer from that.
Either way, thinking a thousand years in the culture is enough doesn’t mean he thinks 70 years on earth is enough.
A thousand years instead of 70 is just deathism with a slightly different n.
A thousand years instead of 70 is just deathism with a slightly different n.
Eh, I kinda agree with you in a sense, but I’d say there’s still a qualitative difference if one has successfully moved away from the deathist assumption that the current status quo for life-span durations is also roughly the optimal life-span duration.
A thousand years instead of 70 is just deathism with a slightly different n.
Then some form of deathism may be the truth anyway.
On the other hand, I can’t remember Banks ever suggesting that organics in the Culture would want to die after a thousand years, only that if they wanted to die they would be able to. I don’t think the later is incompatible with anti-deathism—is Lazarus Long a deathist, after all?
EDIT: On the gripping hand, there’s also a substantial bit of business in the Culture about subliming.
Instead of arguing on in this vein, I know that he’s made comments in the past about how he believes death is a natural part of life. I just can’t find the right interview now that “Iain Banks death” and variants are nearly-meaningless search terms.
now that “Iain Banks death” and variants are nearly-meaningless search terms
If you want to search the past, go to google, search, click “Search tools,” “Any time,” “Custom range...” and fill in the “To” field with a date, such as “2008.”
On the other hand, I can’t remember Banks ever suggesting that organics in the Culture would want to die after a thousand years, only that if they wanted to die they would be able to. I don’t think the later is incompatible with anti-deathism—is Lazarus Long a deathist, after all?
I don’t recall seeing any people who are supposed to be older than a thousand years without mechanics like cryostorage/scanning; if you present a world in which pretty much everyone does want to die after a trivial time period, you’re presenting a deathist world and you may well hold deathist views.
EDIT: On the gripping hand, there’s also a substantial bit of business in the Culture about subliming.
Philosophy, again; death is regarded as part of life, and nothing, including the universe, lasts forever. It is seen as bad manners to try and pretend that death is somehow not natural; instead death is seen as giving shape to life.
While burial, cremation and other—to us—conventional forms of body disposal are not unknown in the Culture, the most common form of funeral involves the deceased—usually surrounded by friends—being visited by a Displacement Drone, which—using the technique of near-instantaneous transmission of a remotely induced singularity via hyperspace—removes the corpse from its last resting place and deposits it in the core of the relevant system’s sun, from where the component particles of the cadaver start a million-year migration to the star’s surface, to shine—possibly—long after the Culture itself is history.
None of this, of course, is compulsory (nothing in the Culture is compulsory). Some people choose biological immortality; others have their personality transcribed into AIs and die happy feeling they continue to exist elsewhere; others again go into Storage, to be woken in more (or less) interesting times, or only every decade, or century, or aeon, or over exponentially increasing intervals, or only when it looks like something really different is happening....
I’m on the fence as to whether or not this really constitutes full-blown deathism or just a belief that sentient beings should be permitted to cause their own death.
I suspect that any cultural norm inconsistent with treating the death of important life forms as an event to be eradicated from the world is at least an enabler to “deathism” as defined locally.
Hopefully he’ll get around to doing some sort of “where I wanted to take the Culture series; ideas which I may have spun into novels” brain dump, before he dies.
Iain (sometimes M.) Banks is dying of terminal gall bladder cancer.
Of more interest is the discussion thread on Hacker News regarding cryonics. There’s a lot of cached responses and misinformation going around on both sides.
Great point I saw in the discussion:
It’s really, really saddening that he of all people has been an outspoken deathist and now it’s depriving him of any chance whatsoever. (Well, except for hypothetical ultra-remote reconstruction by FAI or something.)
Where has he been an outspoken deathist?
In the Culture novels, he has all humans just sorta choosing to die after a millennium of life, despite there being absolutely no reason for humans to die since available resources are unlimited, almost all other problems solved, aging irrelevant, and clear upgrade paths available (like growing into a Mind).
Its not entirely clear cut. He has had characters from outside the culture describing it as a ‘fashion’ and a sign of the culture’s decadence. And the characters we do see ending their lives are generally doing it for reasons of psychological trauma.
Either way, thinking a thousand years in the culture is enough doesn’t mean he thinks 70 years on earth is enough. Has he ever made a direct comment about cryonics? I can’t find any. So its still possible eh would eb open to it given up to date information.
Stories would tend to focus on characters who are interested or involved in traumatically interesting events, so not sure how much one could infer from that.
A thousand years instead of 70 is just deathism with a slightly different n.
Eh, I kinda agree with you in a sense, but I’d say there’s still a qualitative difference if one has successfully moved away from the deathist assumption that the current status quo for life-span durations is also roughly the optimal life-span duration.
Then some form of deathism may be the truth anyway.
On the other hand, I can’t remember Banks ever suggesting that organics in the Culture would want to die after a thousand years, only that if they wanted to die they would be able to. I don’t think the later is incompatible with anti-deathism—is Lazarus Long a deathist, after all?
EDIT: On the gripping hand, there’s also a substantial bit of business in the Culture about subliming.
Instead of arguing on in this vein, I know that he’s made comments in the past about how he believes death is a natural part of life. I just can’t find the right interview now that “Iain Banks death” and variants are nearly-meaningless search terms.
If you want to search the past, go to google, search, click “Search tools,” “Any time,” “Custom range...” and fill in the “To” field with a date, such as “2008.”
I don’t recall seeing any people who are supposed to be older than a thousand years without mechanics like cryostorage/scanning; if you present a world in which pretty much everyone does want to die after a trivial time period, you’re presenting a deathist world and you may well hold deathist views.
About not subliming, specifically.
Such a character appears in the latest Culture novel, “The Hydrogen Sonata”. But he is stated to be extremely unusual.
IIRC, most inchoate Minds sublime during construction, but I could be wrong about that.
“A Few Notes on the Culture”:
I’m on the fence as to whether or not this really constitutes full-blown deathism or just a belief that sentient beings should be permitted to cause their own death.
I suspect that any cultural norm inconsistent with treating the death of important life forms as an event to be eradicated from the world is at least an enabler to “deathism” as defined locally.
There seems to be some appeal to nature floating around in it, at the very least.
Sure, death is natural. So is Ophiocordyceps, but that doesn’t mean I want parasitic mind-altering fungi in my life.
Hopefully he’ll get around to doing some sort of “where I wanted to take the Culture series; ideas which I may have spun into novels” brain dump, before he dies.