system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[The Culture] Why is Contact allowed to intervene in more primitive civilisations?

In the State of the Art, Earth is visited by a Culture vessel in the 1970s, and the possibility of contact is on the table, but our planet is ultimately left alone as a control group. In Surface Detail, it is clearly stated that the Culture is a Level 8 civilisation (one of the Involved), and contracting/giving tech to civilisations more than one level below your own is seen as damaging. But given that the Earth is identified as a Level 3 civ and the Culture a Level 8, why is Contacting Earth considered an option at all? Wouldnt it have to be a Level 4 society that does all the communicating?
gpt
The Culture routinely make contact with lower level civilizations.  See *Inversions* for an example of how they make contact with a level 1 or 2 civilization.

In general, they do the following:

- Pretend to be native members of the contacted civilization (Inversions, Use of Weapons)

- Acknowledge they're aliens, but pretend to be less advanced than they really are (Player of Games, Matter)

- Openly be from the culture, but refuse to trade technology (Surface detail)

The Culture does have guidelines, but it doesn't really commit to hard and fast rules about contacting other civilizations.  Every civilization's circumstances are different, so the Culture tailors their interactions according to those circumstances.