Autonomy

Autonomy with evidence

Local authority paired with portable evidence, plural review, explicit acceptance, appeal, and revocation.

The Culture

Iain M. Banks's Culture is a fictional post-scarcity society in which artificial Minds coordinate material abundance while biological people enjoy extraordinary autonomy. Its unresolved governance problem is precisely its success: when the most capable decision-makers are benevolent superintelligences, everyday freedom can coexist with intervention abroad and authority that ordinary beneficiaries are poorly equipped to review.

Can radical personal autonomy remain genuine when social abundance and strategic judgment depend on benevolent but unreviewably capable artificial Minds?