I should have been more clear, I meant that it failed to achieve the stated goals of its creators, not that it didn't have an impact. I actually think the other girls defining and achieving success on their own terms outside the intention of the primer's creators is one of the more interesting things about the story, especially how that sort of reflects back into their original thesis about transgressiveness.
But anyway, I would say that what happened with nell was what they hoped would happen, and the book attributes that success to the bonds with people through the primer. What happens with the other girls is impressive & impactful, but not expected and so "failed" by the standards of those who made it for a specific purpose.
Oh yes, I agree with that completely. I think the whole idea of raising someone a specific way making them an entrepreneur or whatever is ah, misguided, to be polite, both in aims and possibility. If you have wealth and want to raise someone to be an entrepreneur, it is very easy to do that: give them some wealth and tell them to keep spending it until they succeed. Bam, entrepreneurship achieved, because "entrepreneurship" is just having the resources and social connections to fail as many times as is required to succeed. Entrepreneurship is a possibility of social position, not a mindset, so it can't be taught. You can teach people to work hard, to think creatively, to never give up, all things that are inappropriately considered synonymous with entrepreneurship, and I would consider that to be raising them well. But that is not sufficient to become an entrepreneur, you need resources.
My main objection is to the idea a couple of other people have raised here (and I've seen raised elsewhere when TYLIP/LLMs are discussed) that the book says children raised by the Primer are bad/poorly raised/broken without a 1-1 human connection, and therefore it's silly/Torment Nexus to be interested in the idea. I can see you don't believe that's what the book says, but even so I agree that people should have a response for this criticism, because it will always come when you take inspiration from science fiction. I saw someone say it about the neural lace and Neuralink, for example, which is probably the dumbest one I've seen because of how unambiguously good the neural lace is in the Culture. A much better criticism is that Musk is Veppers, that the entire idea of the Culture is opposed to him and people like him, and that Iain Banks would hate his guts.
But anyway, I would say that what happened with nell was what they hoped would happen, and the book attributes that success to the bonds with people through the primer. What happens with the other girls is impressive & impactful, but not expected and so "failed" by the standards of those who made it for a specific purpose.