On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 11:10:22PM -0400, Richard Aiken wrote:
> We need to agree on terms. In the context of this specific
> discussion, when I say "culture" this is shorthand for "the culture
> possessed by each biologically distinct sophont race which evolved
> on a separate homeworld prior to contact with other sophont races."
>
> Is this also what you mean? Because sometimes your use of "culture"
> seems to mean something a bit different.

It is not what I mean, because your meaning assumes exactly what I'm
arguing against: that there *exists* a single, shared culture between
all individuals of a biologically distinct sophont race.

I'm using culture in the ordinary sense of the word to refer to the
shared behaviours, social norms and morals, relevant history, and
assumptions within some population subgroup to which a person belongs.
Every individual will have differing cultural environment to some
extent, but typically there will be more or less sharp divisions
between groups that can be identified as "cultural boundaries".

Those boundaries will exist both within a sophont race and between
sophont races.  I don't believe that the latter differences are
necessarily greater than the former.  That should be especially true
in such a vast settled space, with thousands of years of coexistence
between races in various parts of it.

I wrote quite a lot of responses to sections of your post, and so rest
assured that I did actually read it all.  I agreed with some and
disagreed with other parts.  After re-reading, I think the relevant
point is just the following though:

> [...] But it does show the general trend of thought on the
> matter. It's hard to think that all of those authors are wrong.

It's not hard at all.  Given the huge volume of fantasy and science
fiction authors who openly use races as allegorical stand-ins for
human behavioural tendencies, why would they even care about this
question?

I'm not even saying that race == culture == government in science
fiction is wrong in any objective sense.  How could it be?  It's
fiction, and people can write whatever fiction they like.  It's just
that to me it seems cheap and superficial, and it grates on me every
time I see it used.  That includes rather a lot of Traveller.

- Tim