It's a democracy. Every mind in the hive mind may speak it's opinion and all minds can deliberate. The best idea is ALWAYS chosen. Minds that don't have a strong opinion can deliberate.

It's terrifying not because it forces you to do anything but because it shows you that you are wrong. You no longer have an ego, you are no longer allowed to be comfortably ignorant.

Make a Hive Mind a stalker. The thing is in love with one of your characters, and it will stop at nothing until it assimilates him. And because it's a Hive Mind, it can have a reach of an entire universe, so nowhere is safe.

>>52009083
What is a drop of rain compared to the storm?

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>>52009083
What about a hive mind that is born out of fear? Like one you could at anytime find yourself joining because of you left your mind open through emotions?

For instance if villager was merged with the conciousness then came home and scared his wife, who therein falls into the same trap.

Someone else could probably come up with better thematic use of this, But what I'm trying to describe is a hivemind born out of reaction to the world, preying on the fears of life to sustain itself.

The hive mind in the universe i've been writing is a collection of the consciousness of N long runs of then universe (as in, get to the end of the universe, force a big bang and go again trying to fix things). It argues with itself often, has agents that are working for and against it mostly for shits and giggles, and is batshit insane.

It's a hive mind because the newest iteration has all of the memories of the previous iteration, so it basically knows what it's going to do next and plans around it.

End goal is to rig a universe in such a way that it's creation never comes to pass.

Hive minds are only scary if they want to assimilate you because they are used by the author as an anti gommie propaganda.

If they don't want to assimilate you, they are, on thier own, no scarier than an ant hill.

There is no "we". It is truly a single identity, controlling countless specialized bodies. Face it once, and it will know you forever. It is intelligent but not sentient.

>>52009452
Unless you make the process of being incorporated into the hivemind so blissful and euphoric that people assimilate voluntarily.

Imagine never being alone again.

Imagine having a family that will always love and care and protect you.

Imagine the peace you would feel knowing you'd never have to worry or think for yourself ever again.

Seriously, I can see traumatised people going and seeking this shit out.

>>52010020
I'm terrified by the prospect of people being in my head, borg style hivemind (even with euphoria) would make me super unhappy.

>>52009452
Ant hills are scary bro, some of them will fuck your day up.

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>>52009083

>>52009260
What part of "terrifying" did you not understand?

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>>52010020
>sacrificing your freedom
>sacrificing your privacy
>sacrificing all that for an illusion of comradery
I want antispirals to fucking leave

>>52009083
Blindsight had one, by Peter Watts. The Scramblers civilization.

Technically ants are hive mind by mechanism, each with it's own mindish, but working together by design of process, so... giant fuck off ants?

>>52010303
The antispirals weren't a hivemind though, they just decided that they needed to put themselves into stasis so the universe wouldn't kill itself for the inhabitants being too badass

>>52009083
The hive all have individual minds but they are subservient to the mother queen and will do anything FOR MOTHER! as well as the queen having access to their knowledge and being able to assume control if she wishes.

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>>52010311

>>52010305
They weren't a hivemind, they were appendages of Rorschach.

>>52010377
Yup. Terrifying.

>>52010356
Reminder that Simon/Lagann killed an entire species in one hit.

>>52010303
>thinking your individuality is worth sacrificing the entire universe
Anti-Spirals were right, if malevolent about it. Kamina was the biggest danger to the universe.

>>52010412
>Giving up your individualism and drive in order to Frankenstein a universe into forever life

everything beautiful must fade.... eternity only cheapens the beauty... what's the point in living if you cannot die...

Kamina was probably the best thing to happen to the universe, their efforts give it a chance to die, as well as the time to live.

>>52010290
What part of democracy isn't scary?

>>52010427
That's a horribly selfish thing to inflict on the universe you fucking nihilistic narcissist.

>>52010442
I'm not Nihilist. I never said life was pointless. i just believe eternity stuck to suffer stasis is less... well, fun. If you only have the one life to live, would you not want to live it to the fullest? Is the end of something not the beginning of something else? Is someone on life support, not living life, but alive forever kinda more pointless than to live life?

I think it's terribly selfish to demand stasis of the universe in order to preserve it.

>>52010466
But if they DON'T stasis the universe, it'll turn badass. Do you have any idea what happens when universes get too badass? They blow up, anon

>>52010466
There's a difference between "living life" and "pulling matter out of nothing culminating in spiral nemesis." The ending had Simon leave Rossiu in charge because he knew Rossiu was strong enough to accept the challenge of having the maximum amount of people living while also subduing the advance of Spiral Nemesis. The universe gets to exist and thrive without the Anti-Spirals now, with them spreading into the stars to help the other spiral races embrace life without falling into the trap of abusing Spiral Power.

>>52010487
I don't see a problem. The universe is meant to blow up bro, might as well live till then.

>>52010493
so you admit, running the risk of blowing the shit out of the universe is preferable to stasis under the anti-serial? Because what the what spirals did was let the universe survive indefinitely, and what kamina and simon did was free us from that bondage. To me there isn't a difference.

It's also based on the conjecture of the anti-spirals, whom are assholes, and might be lying or exaggerating to keep themselves in power. Which, in the end, doesn't matter, as they oppressed and destroyed countless life in order to achieve their goals. Which, to me, invalidates the good they were trying to achieve.

It's a very interesting dichotomy of thought to be honest.

I've been working on a race of psudo-machines that are a collective concousness of organic and synthetic beings that exist in digitally constructed bodies. They have claimed several galaxies worth of races, them all being driven and forced to the same mentality of these monsters. Now they use their knowledge to troll and mess with our galaxy.
They use their production line bodies to remain anonymous, allowing them to commit horrendous atrocities and do it all for the sake of humour. They're also deathly smart, able to hack every single device in our galaxy the second they arrived.

>>52010575
Oh hey i use those too! I love the idea of AI and organics blending perfectly.

I'm;
>>52009368
and what you described is basically the tech responsible for it's existence. It's not the only being in universe that has a hive mind as well, there are also AI constructs al la Mass effect's geth (who are individuals but work together to run a physical body). Even AI's that learned to 'imprint' themselves on organics to effectively merge with them.

They're friendly though.

>>52010539
>running the risk of blowing the shit out of the universe is preferable to stasis under the anti-serial?
>It's a very interesting dichotomy of thought to be honest.
It's not a fucking dichotomy! You don't have to go hard on either! Don't blow up the universe by not using Spiral Power, but still live regardless. There is a middle road here! Just because stasis by Anti-Spirals was shit doesn't make advancing Spiral Nemesis is the "meant to be." They fucking state they're going to carve their own path!

> the conjecture of the anti-spirals, whom are assholes, and might be lying or exaggerating to keep themselves in power.
THEY'RE NOT IN POWER. They're not dominating other races they're smacking their shit before they become a problem for the universe. Lordgenome was the dominator, for the same goddamn purpose, to protect his people from the Anti-Spirals. Did you miss the entire fucking passing the torch meaning there?

>as they oppressed and destroyed countless life in order to achieve their goals. Which, to me, invalidates the good they were trying to achieve.
The Anti-Spirals overreacted but that doesn't negate their reasoning. Protecting the entire universe was their goals, and one race wanting to be so amazing they'd risk the rest of them was exactly the fucking problem they saw. You're exactly what they feared and YOU'RE PROVING THE ANTI-SPIRALS RIGHT.

>>52010663
Oh trust me, these guys, though playful, defiently aren't friendly. The orignal base for them ws built on the negative stereotypes of 4chan, people who use anonimity to do and say whatever they want, even killing thousands of people 'just for the sake of it'.

When their freedom is eventually threatened though, by the Galactic order developing a device that can perminently isolate them to a single body and make them killable. They take poorly to this and commit a war against the galaxy. They are selfish petulant and childish, but they ade also one of the most powerful races in the universe.

>>52009083
simple every being controlled is completely unaware that they are part of it and will brush off any attempts to convince them otherwise as just some crazy conspiracy theory. and will rationalize all there actions as something that they choose to do.

>>52010677
>>52010539
IF i'm remembering correctly, wasn't the vision of spiral-death the anti-spirals showed Simon and Co. inevitable so long as spiral life was allowed to exist regardless of measures taken to slow its progress?

>>52010677
you can oppress people by association. oppress people vicariously (as you actions are a detriment to their existence, but only because you forced someone else to be an asshole) The very fact that they will come around and nuke the every living shit of of shit is a form of oppression. They have the power to LITERALLY wipe peoples and planets that threaten THEM (the antispirals, the only proven thing). that's power bro. When you have to subjugate your people to prevent their destruction, something else but you is in power.

>You're exactly what they feared and YOU'RE PROVING THE ANTI-SPIRALS RIGHT.

I'm what they fear because i don't accept their truth. They chose to be destructive in their protection, and became arrogant and self defeating.

I also never said "purposefully have a the goal of ending the universe' i stated that we should live life and not fear the end of it. Which is what the antispirals were doing for an entire universe. Forcing an entire universe to fear death, and to prevent a universal death. I think it's terribly sad.

All probably so they didn't have competition as the top of the heap.

>>52010755
Could very well be made up, the only point of reference is the antisprials, they could be fabricating things.

>>52010768
The Anti-Spirals themselves never felt threatened, they felt the universe was threatened by allowing the Spiral races to abuse Spiral Power for their own ends. Seeing the Spiral Power well in the last half of the series, how the fuck can a race that can crush planets be fearful of what other spiral users can do? Because it's not what they can do to them, but what them doing means in the context of the greater universe.
>we should live life and not fear the end of it
That's how you burn out. You can live without being a fucking idiot about it. We're given nothing to contradict what the Anti-Spirals present and it fits the entire fucking theme of the show. For them to be deceitful would go against the entire meaning of the show. They're spiral races themselves and are just as capable of pursuing growth but were capable of realizing the destruction inevitable within it. You need people to take charge and keep some in line for the safety of the greater whole. Life isn't meant to be lead purely on your own desires, using Spiral Power to grant your own wishes. That's fucked up and that's why Simon let Nia stay dead. The Anti-Spirals were right, but still massive dicks about it.

>When you have to subjugate your people to prevent their destruction, something else but you is in power.
YES. Spiral Nemesis has no fucking counter. Why would you let anyone add to the total in the universe knowing it can never be undone?!

>>52009083
base it on the sjw

>>52010822
>YES. Spiral Nemesis has no fucking counter. Why would you let anyone add to the total in the universe knowing it can never be undone?!

you fuck what?

> The Anti-Spirals were right, but still massive dicks about it.

No no they weren't. They Stagnated everything to preserve themselves, and themselves alone. Anything else is justification for them being dickholes. There is not proof that the universe will end because of a spiral going out of control, only the anit-spiral conjecture. Which, from a position of power, you'll understand that those with power, especially Immense All Fucking That Shit Up power, means you can say what you and people will believe you.

The anitspirals feel threatened by all spiral life, because it will fucking end them, regardless of the means for the act.

Why would i want to live a life knowing it'll never end? Why would i want persistence over existence? Stagnation over motion? Safety over progress?

The anti spirals were wrong, humanity will do better. Tis better to love and have it lost, than never to love at all. Etc.

My drill will pierce the heavens.

>>52010921
You're a fucking psycho if you can't see why burning out is a bad fucking option. Worse yet your attitude would bring the universe down with you. That's fucking horrible.

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>>52009083
Wait...you haven't heard about the hive mind made of cranium rats?
Your legitimately afraid how smarter they get when their numbers increase. Beady eyes in the dark. Chanting high level spells. Coming from all sides. Starting to hear telepathic voices telling you how they'll relish on gnawing on your innards.

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>>52010311
>each with it's own mindish, but working together by design of process

>>52009083
Unity from Rick and Morty.

>>52010987
I don't think I'm /pol/ enough to understand this meme

>>52009083
Simple. A hivemind should be something like...communism taken to eldritch levels. Your individuality will serve the hive. Your skills will serve the hive and whether or not, YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED INTO THE HIVE. You are still yourself, but you cannot go against the hive and/or leave it.

All you can do is simply do what the hive wants, put your skills into good use for it and so on. You are still an individual, yet you cannot do certain things anymore. You are simply a glorified slave with more freedom than an actual slave. You simply cannot go against the hivemind and hive, nor leave the hivemind and hive.

>>52011012
>meme

There's no meme here to understand.

It's merely an illustration for a study that points out that ants aren't as simple/''hive-minded'' as originally thought, but cabable of seemingly selfish action, or in this case, inaction.

>>52011026
It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people.

>>52011047
Well at least there are some pluses with being assimilated into a hivemind.

You are never alone.

>>52010921
>There is not proof that the universe will end because of a spiral going out of control, only the anit-spiral conjecture
"Conjecture" that every spiral being in the universe instinctively intuits and accepts as unerring truth, even Lordgenome and Simon
Simon's philosophy wasn't "Spiral Nemesis can't happen" but instead "I'll try to make Spiral Nemesis not happen" and the Anti-Spiral doesn't want to make such a stupid gamble

>>52011059
That's not a plus.
Desolation is comfy, people aren't.

>>52009260
How can it terrify you with your wrongness? In a democracy the most popular idea wins and if the hive is always right then the majority (which most of the time you are part of) is always perfectly correct.

Now, if this democratic hive wasn't made of near omniscient beings who are almost always right and instead was made of mere mortals who are nearly always wrong but think they are right, THEN that could be terrifying. A horde of creatures who do stupid, terrible things but are convinced of their own infallibility by the chorus of un/misinformed voices in their head. Those few with the expertise or experience that could prove helpful being drowned out by ignorant and complacent, their body forced to do what they know is wrong to appease the solipsistic hive.

>>52010020
Seele go home.

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Nobody who is part of the hivemind realizes they're part of the hivemind. It's like a parasitic infection where the host's body is modified to believe everything happening is natural and right.

If an individual doesn't know, how can the narrator know he's not also part of the hivemind, subtly controlled at all times?

You can play on a person's fear of a lose of agency by creating a sinister undercurrent of doubt that they ever had agency at all.

>>52011750
Alex Jones' paranoid delusion about magic people computers?

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>>52011794
Might come off that way, but it does show that the idea is a real fear in people.

Imagine speaking to a member of the hivemind, and having them try to explain it. First, they would have to consider what being a hivemind is, and how that's at all different from a mind they can't understand. It's completely alien.

Most works of fiction depict it as being surrounded by voices, but that's just to make it easier for us to comprehend. It could just be that the individual feels as if they're responsbile for their own thoughts. You might demonstrate they act in unison, but they would deny it. They're not just a disposable drone. They have dreams and wants and likes all their own, even if those things just might be planted for the convience of the greater collective.

You go to a town of hiveminds and it looks like something out of a 50's sitcom where everyone is happy doing what they do because they're made to think that, and can't conceive it any other way because their mind is compromised.

It would place the hivemind outside human understanding, which is an important element in horror. Maybe not enough to make the players shit their pants, but it can make them feel uneasy.

>>52009083
Malkavians in the Old World of Darkness.

>>52010305
When humans form hives in his Echopraxia it's also pretty scary. Our psychology might adapt in weird ways, for instance it is implied that one hive has voluntarily made itself incapable of imagining its own death as the cozy biases that protect the human mind no longer applied.

>>52009083
Actual consciousness is just a shared hallucination of communal organisms that happen to function together as a mind.

>>52009083
The Zerg swarm after kerrigan took over did the hivemind idea pretty interestingly, in that all the brood controlers allow kerrigan to rule them as long as she was an effective controller.

>>52010305
Scrambles weren't hive mind, but with their level of intelligence it hardly matters.

>>52009083
I like the idea of a part time hive, which will disintegrate into its component individuals if there is enough cognitive dissonance. This means that in order to get a true Godmind up and running it must either be very in tune with reality (unlikely) or willing to warp it to preserve itself/its view of the world. Even those who opt to form hives if and when they are needed could be in trouble as if every brain has a right to secede from the hive surely every neuron has a right to leave the brain?

Individuality is a meme. Imagine every single person, from the lowliest drone digging trenches to the highest hive mother, all happy and sure of their shared goal and worthiness. Not "happy" because if they don't show the required amount of patriotism and happiness, the secret police will get them - but truly happy to be doing whatever they're born to do. Imagine being 100% fulfilled doing whatever you're doing, even digging shit 12 hours every day, and being happy for it.

>>52010377
>It came from the desert
Holy shit, my childhood just hit me hard.

>>52010303
>sacrifice
From your point of view, Anon, you didn't lose anything, you gained the dreams and hopes of ten thousand people, and ten thousand pair of hands to see them realised. You also gained the promise that they and you won't die until the entire Hive does. And perhaps you also gained some perspective about yours.

Hive minds are scary because they challenge notions about identity. To enhance the effect play up that angle; for example, have the Hive regularly "manifest" the people it has assimilated, perhaps with some apparently experimental variations or recombinations.

Or you could just make the Hive a complete asshole, an evil empire/cult/whatever who also happens to be a single mind spread over many bodies, making it inhumanly effective. You could use themes of possession, and have the Hive haunt even inorganic structures (this works especially well in a science fiction settings, because remote control).

Or you could make the Hive simply superior. The Hive is going to incorporate the entire Universe, perhaps even the Great Wheel. This might even be a good thing. Either way, your resistance is not only doomed but only exists because the Hive tolerates it, trying to take you without too much damage. But no matter what, resistance is futile.

The hive mind does not consider you to be alive. How could you possibly think and know things with only one set of senses? Obviously you are on the same level as cows or, at worse, bugs, maybe interesting to observe and look at, but when the new super-highway needs to be built, your desires are simply irrelevant. If the Hive is empathetic, it'll relocate you to somewhere it considers "suitable". If not, it'll just kill you, if it even considers you at all and doesn't just roll right over you.
It's not that attempts to communication will fail, they'll just be consider noises with no real meaning.
Hope that they're environmentalists. Hope they don't try and domesticate you. Hope they don't consider you delicious when cooked.
Though that makes me wonder, what would be the human equivalent of catnip?

>>52009083

unironically check edge of tomorrow

>>52012018
>town of hiveminds
But why would they be made to act out a 50's sitcom, Anon? They can be made to be happy doing any activity. Any body can manifest any personality and any skillset. Why not make it a town of industry or academia?

Make it look like such an iron dictatorship that not even propaganda is needed anymore. Everyone is defined mainly (for semi-individuals) or only (for mere drones) by their relationship with the Hive, and that is entirely up to the Hive to determine. If you want more complexity, you could still leave Hivelings limited individual agency and have their opinions influence the Hive.

>>52010768
>we should live life and not fear the end of it
Then you possibly deprive the joy of life to generations yet to come. Don't be selfish.

I had a fungal hive mind which due to its isolated existence didn't understand the basic idea of "otherness". The actual being was a mass of tendrils growing in a cave but it could spawn separate limbs which were individual myconids, but since they shared a conciousness it still saw them as itself.

It was discovered by an adventuring priest, but the hive mind didn't realize this thing was a distinct being separate from itself. The hive mind "collected" the priest like it would it's myconid limbs and began the digestion process to reuse the biomass. In doing so it began learning the priest's memories but since it was experiencing them in first person believed it had merely forgotten about the events.

It then started making myconids to capture and bring back the missing pieces of itself it saw in the priest's memories, causing mayhem in the neighboring area.

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>>52010020
But those ideas are false, implanted in your mind to try and make you more willing and subservient to whatever hive mind it is.

The Many asks you why you don't trust the feelings of the flesh, but so many of their grunts beg for death the moment you see them or try to urge you to run.

>>52010428
All of it, you fucking communist.

>>52009083
There was the Battery. Of course inspired by one of the few good metallica songs, it was a fungus related creature that concentrate amass and all share the same senses. The catch to them is one only of each have a single sense. One sees, one hears, one feels, one smells, one tastes, and one that has contemplation between all of them, the Processor. They all work without the Processor, but it takes longer.

Effectively, they group up, but heavily rely on each other.

They are amazingly coordinated, but with intelligence, a PC party can pick them apart. My PC's hated the fuckers.

>>52009260
This

Why do you hate our unity? We just want freedom.

>>52011012
NEETs.

>>52013971
>democracy
>not inherently communistic and anti-individualist
Autocracy is the only acceptable style of government.

>>52011236
That just sounds like how it works now.

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>>52009083
http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/486028564241d

All citizens have interchangeable parts, making it possible to not just link together individuals into temporary or permanent group organisms but also to reconstruct oneself within a wide range.

Joining together all individuals into a collective social mind has time and again proven to be a mistake, as demonstrated by the Gorca Pleroma around the time of the birth of Emple-Dokceticism. On the other hand unbridled individualism is not desirable for highly social beings. The modular equality solution to the dilemma is to make the individual and the self modular and interchangeable. This lowers or removes the barriers between individuals and enables enhanced altruism and understanding. When needed collective minds can be constructed, but they are viewed merely as temporary tools, and dismantle themselves after their purpose has been achieved. Pure individuality can also be reached, but is also regarded as merely a tool for the will to express itself. The typical state of an Emple-Dokcetic is being an assemblage of parts and subselves of different origins, a tool for the expression of the current transient (local) collective will. In the flow of Emple-Dokcetic society ideas, knowledge and goals flow fairly freely between the different temporary bodies and selves. Instead of having a self as an individual, Emple-Dokcetics view themselves as the current self, a transient tool that exists to fulfil its destiny.

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>>52016566
The principles of Emple-Dokceticism do not exist in any clear-cut form, but rather as a large corpus of myths and small essays by various entities that developed during the formative years and have been refined by continual re-telling. The corpus is sometimes called the Dok. Together they delineate everything from the story of how the ideology developed, the practicalities of modular living, the philosophy to the ethics of modular equality. The Dok is a pervasive and subtle influence, seldom explicitly referred to but widely known and often implicitly used as a shared cultural context. As the Emple-Dokcetics come into contact with more and more non-Emple-Dokcetic societies, various compilations and collections of the Dok have been produced.

Emple-Dokcetic government is largely a consensus government. Many decisions are simply made by millions of citizen-complexes acting in similar ways due to prevalent views, with no need for any decision process. In issues where wills and views are divided larger minds are formed by interlinking, exploring and debating the pros and cons internally before dissolving into consensus. Instead of relying on central planning they employ free markets, but as the agents blur the line between seller, buyer and government the effect is partially also a planned allocation of resources.

>>52010409
That's because Simon doesn't give a shit.

>>52009482
This. Group Minds > Hive Minds

>>52010428
Are you a retard?

>>52009083
It works through inception rather than domination. Everybody knows of it, but nobody thinks that they are part of it, despite them doing things that benefit the hivemind at their own expense, eventually leading them to become self destructive in the name of the hivemind, but doing so technically against their will willingly.

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>>52010428

>>52010958
DIE DIE BERK.

>>52010442
>horribly selfish thing
There's no such thing

>>52010739
Memetic hivemind? Subtly introducing an idea that then spreads and echoes quietly in their minds, is empowered and births and ideology and before you know it there's an entire horde perpetuating its wishes and working towards whatever its goals might be

>>52012490
MDMA

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Would someone be so kind as to tell me what the motherloving shit is going on in this thread

>>52009083

a hive mind only seems strange to us because we are individual beings and the idea of multiple bodies answering to a same consciousness seems alien to us. But we could consider ourselves a "hive-mind" of cells.

Picture the cells in your body. Each one lives and dies to keep the conglomerate functioning and healthy, putting its "personal" well-being behind. Some are specialized to fulfill certain roles, some are more dispensable than others, and together they create something far more complex than they could do by themselves. It the same concept on a larger scale

>>52009452
Someone never read Ender's Game.

>>52012257
This

Individuality and freedom are self-created and self-perpetuating memes that have created nothing but misery
The only reason anyone cares about them is because they can conceptualize it to begin with and conceive that in a hivemind their current wants and dreams and whatthefuckever wouldn't matter, but that's just it
They wouldn't because you wouldn't have any, you wouldn't miss what you never had to begin with, instead you'd have the collective goal and an actually feasible happiness in your part in it

>>52009083
>How do you make a hivemind that feels legitimately terrifying
I think by emphasizing the lack of individualism. It's not just that, like in collectivist cultures today, the group is elevated above the self but there is no self. When in combat the "individuals" of the hivemind make no active effort to avoid harm to themselves, continue despite harm being done and fall by the dozens with utter indifference. Even when captured or threatened they do not recoil simply because they have no understanding of death: they do not understand the end of their own existence because they do not comprehend their own existence. They only understand the hivemind, which continues with or without them. I'd say that could be pretty terrifying from a psychological angle. This is already part of every fictional hivemind, but it's all about emphasizing the right parts.

>>52020433
And your mind isn't even a singular, defined thing. Ever doubt yourself? Ever do something completely on instinct? Ever do something that seems like a good idea that you later really, really regret?

Also, meme that spreads itself is pretty much the definition of a culture or a religion. If that's a hive mind to you, people have been doing it ever since they were people.

>>52010891
Or /pol/, same basic idea.

>>52021103
>And your mind isn't even a singular, defined thing. Ever doubt yourself? Ever do something completely on instinct? Ever do something that seems like a good idea that you later really, really regret?
this sounds juicy playing out in a hivemind. "self-doubt" to a hive mind would be a small subsection (say 1%-5%) of it's "individuals" deciding on a different goal, with the rest of the components ruthlessly hunting them down for not agreeing with the overmind.

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>>52012257
>My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?

>>52020380
Oh, interesting discussions and a bit of lunacy. Basically what would happen if we stopped bitching at each other all the time.

>>52009083
One of the Star Wars expanded novel series had an insect race with a hive mind. What made it kind of freaky was that the species had a black-ops nest for doing dirty work, which by biology and the like could easily manipulate or make themselves invisible to the rest of the hive. Bit freaky having otherwise rational creatures just simply unable to see these black-ops members or realize the manipulations.

Though it does lead to scenes of "the Black Queen does not exist, you are all liars who will be executed..." "...she's right FUCKING THERE!" "Silence, liars, go away..."

>>52021426
As long as they are like this from birth and not forcibly augmented normal humans, there's no ethical problems with this.

The idea that there is something particularly holy about human form is silly. We are already augmenting ourselves through nutrition and culture, why not go further?

Brave New World was a utopia.

>>52021500
I think most people find the idea of being born for only one thing and without any choice in the matter uncomfortable - which is paradoxically opposing the fear that most people seem to have of their lives being absolutely pointless.

Humans are honestly pretty stupid.

>>52021500

>Brave New World was a utopia.

Not even close.

>>52021426
So Russians?

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>>52010428

So we have a lot of examples of 'many bodied, single goal' hiveminds that encompass the sacrifice of the self for the common good of the hive. You are a foot, a hand. There is a single 'queen' entity at some level (be it an actual individual, or a machination of information that produces a result) that sends out nervous signals to get things done.

But what about a hivemind where individuality IS retained, multiple goals are possible within the organization, yet everyone is still connected? I'm working on something, a machine or a painting, but with full access to the thoughts/opinions/advice of other machinists and painters, or even bakers or what-have-yous that I am free to ignore or adapt.

Or is that just a cyberpunk, hyper-active internet-in-my-head thing?

>>52009260
The only way I really see that being terrifying if you're on the bad end of this ruthless optimisation machine

>>52021798
It is better than what we have in reality...

>>52011236
>>52016541
yes, that is a major flaw of democracy.

>>52022646
>Or is that just a cyberpunk, hyper-active internet-in-my-head thing?


That's already beginning to be a thing, in the 1st world, anyhow. With almost everyone getting internet everywhere near civilization on their phones, and several influential internet sites which shall not be named having massive followings with associated cultures...

Just give it 10 more years or so. If we don't die from nukes, you just might see the "hyper-active internet-in-my-head" kind of hivemind.

>>52009083
The overlord of the hivemind literally controls their subjects. Every minion is just a wireless extension of the overmind, it doesn't think on it's own it's just a drone piloted by the overmind.

To make it extra spoopy, the overmind is only concerned with one thing; killing everything that isn't it. From strait up zerg rushes to trying to lure it's victims into a false sense of security.

I mostly just based it off of >>52011011 idea.

>>52009083
Tyranids. Need i say more?

>>52009083
Communism.

>>52023967
/thread

What about a hivemind that isn't really one at all but just a weird solipsistic perception of reality where each individual of the group sees every other individual literally as an extension of their self, their actions are your actions, their words are your words
Conversation would be perceived like external thinking, maybe they straight up say out loud all their thoughts

>>52011060
Are we all just gonna forget the part where Viral was doubting it, but everyone else was like "Yeah no, that's some instinctive fear I've always had as a Spiral Race that I only now realized what it actually was"? The Anti-Spiral were right, the Dai-Gurren just realized that's no reason to stasis everyone, simply live in Moderation. Simon saw the heights of Spiral Power, then the total lack, and decided instead to live a Middle Way.

>>52023986
Sounds pretty cool desu.

It's nice that I've thought of this just in time for this thread.

>>52009324

What is a thought compared to a mind?

>>52024316
What is a single drop of rain compared to rain? What is a single drop of rain compared to decades-long climate norms?

Nothing.

>>52024316
Our unity is full of wonder, which your tiny individualism cannot even conceive.

>>52024452
Do you not trust the feelings of the flesh? Our biology yearns to join with yours. We welcome you to our mass. But you puzzle us. Why do you serve our mother? How can you choose cold metal over the splendor of flesh? But you fear us. We hear your thoughts, and they rage for your brothers you believe dead. But they are not. They sing in our symphony of life. We offer another chance to join us. If you choose to lie down with the machine, we will rend you apart, and put you separate from the joy of the mass.

>>52024498

Resist. This is bigger than my little life, the lives of my men, and the lives of the people I was forced to kill. Resist. Humanity demands it. Resist.

>>52021500
>As long as they are like this from birth and not forcibly augmented normal humans, there's no ethical problems with this.
>Brave New World was a utopia.
But... didn't Brave New World do exactly that? They just shock therapy-d the babies into stupidity and stuck them into a factory or something, didn't they?

>>52024524
"We are many, and you are one. How can you hope to prevail against us?"

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>>52024272
All in all I feel like I've done a lot solid thinking here in my blog today, I never even realized how creative I can be

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>>52024524
...&%^&90We- We must desStroy the Von Braun... But before we can separate the Rickenbacker, we must remove the foul black eggs the Many has vomited on this deck... These eggs are an experiment of the Many, and will in time spawn the next generation of Annelid, which you will have NO hope of destroying(destroying).

Steel yourself for a struggle, human. They fear you, for you are my AVATAR.)*(^9^[[099%-2...

>>52021500
>As long as they are like this from birth and not forcibly augmented normal humans, there's no ethical problems with this.
You might not have any moral problems with it, but I can say with100% certainty there would be ethical problems.

>>52021426
That guy give me the chills.

Make it feel sorry for you. We are sorry for you after all. How can you handle being so alone? Doesn't it hurt?

>>52025283
He gave everyone the chills. Now compare him to the Civ:BE blandfest.

>>52009083
Make it Reddit. A communal area to share your consciousness. Depends on how it's perceived, it receives "upvotes" or "downvotes". Doing things that other likes feels good, their support is addicting. You start to stray away from things the consensus doesn't like, meanwhile doing positive things just to feel support for your ideas. Eventually, you get fully assembled into a circlejerk, and stop having individual thought, only going with the flow of everyone else. You're not entirely a part of a hivemind, but complying with the dominant ideology is second nature to you by this point, so you might as well be.

>>52025992
>what is vote manipulation

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>>52009083
In Berserk there is a monster called the sea god and its deal is everyone it eats grows back as one of its tentacles, which shape shift into the ex-person where it goes about living that person's life until the sea god decides to use it. In the comic it was played for laughs, but there was a moment where one of the tentacles' shape was changing and mid-change it said "Wait, I don't want to change yet, I still want to be me!"

It was interesting to think about, like it was a hive mind were the different parts of this monster's body were individuals who could argue and feel and had personalities, but when it was go time they all became one whether they wanted to or not. Might have potential if taken seriously

>>52009083
Individuals within the hive mind retain their sense of self, but all behave in the same way. More or less each individual is aware of this mass possession, but has no free will or self control.

They might go insane from this lack of free will and start wishing for death. Picture a young conscript of the hivemind in the first wave of an invading force charging you, and its battle cry is "I want to die".

>>52009083
I think a human geth would be pretty scary but also interesting. Being part of it means giving up a part of your own agency and acquiescing to consensus in all things, but it also means being exponentially more intelligent than without the rest of the collective. You're free to leave and be independent at any time, but you also have to accept the fact you're gonna be retarded by comparison again.

>>52027115
That would be a nicer way to play hive mind.

How about a group that willingly creates a hive mind by linking their brains to the cloud?

They'd do it to share their experiences like people do when they put their entire life on social media but if you wanted to politicize it, you could say they were doing it to end bigotry by making everyone understand the struggles of the oppressed by literally having them in their heads.

To add a horror element, any of them can jack any of the others and control their bodies. Think of a group of big egos and their lesser followers, like a twitter mob reimagined as an actual mob. I'd call them Inclusives.

>>52026164
That societies boogeyman. They suspect it exists bit it's impossible to prove with mere perception and the thought terrifies them.

>>52009083
People are only scared of the idea of a hivemind because they are attached to their own individuality (and I suppose a fear of the unknown too, probably). Make joining/being assimilated by a hivemind seem like a legit good idea, and people will terrify themselves with the realization that making the correct choice means sacrificing the individuality they value so much.

>>52023967
Communism is inheriently unhivemindy read the basics instead of cold war propaganda for once. It's basically about freedom without being an asshole.

>>52020271
>memetic hivemind
Isn't that just civilization?

All along... we were them.

>>52028351
There is no individual freedom in communism. None. Group is put above the individual. If you don't see it, if you don't understand how idiotic that is and how much misery was brought upon this world because if it, then you should kill yourself.

>>52028693
Well yeah we were the demons all along, never trust anyone not even yourself

Though in the case of that post I meant it more like a self-aware external will being the manipulator of the thoughts and concepts of the hive group, so Illuminati
So I guess even then it's already reality

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>>52028351

>Communism
>It's basically about freedom

>>52022208
If america were a pure democracy it wouldn't have elected Trump
Democracy is scary af tho

>>52030435
We would have had Hillary in '08

>>52029218
>>52030359
When nobody is free, everybody is.

>>52030435
Pure democracy is feasible now with technology, but also puts all the power into places and states with the most population. You would pretty much lose the representation of every small town and low population state, because they don't matter.

It would be interesting to have a hive mind that kept everyone in, but preferred certain individuals over others for various reasons. How would a hive mind structure itself if there was a large part of it that was constantly being ignored?

>>52021900
Cyкa ты пoгaнaя, пидopcкaя плeceнь, чтo б ты cpaть pтoм хoдил

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Already exists. And it's real.

We are a hivemind. A hivemind without a queen or king. A mindless hivemind.

What's more terrifying than a hivemind without a mind, just blindly moving forward with no vision of the future?

>>52030565
>puts all the power into places and states with the most population. You would pretty much lose the representation of every small town and low population state, because they don't matter.

I've always found that the most BS excuse. Direct democracy has someone in a city's vote matter exactly the same as someone in the country.

It's the electoral system we use now that skews votes and makes them not matter.

This bullshit argument only works if you believe, for some absurd reason, that everyone in every city all over the country will vote the same and everyone in the country votes exactly the same. That's idiotic.

The cases where a certain region is more likely to vote a certain way is why we have local government.

>>52031141
You have no idea what a hive mind is, do you?

>>52031390
No you don't have any idea what a hivemind is.

Your thoughts are not your own. Your thoughts are shared with many people.

The only unique thing about your mind is the composition of all the common thoughts you hold in your mind filtered through your subjective experience and memory.

>>52011256
WE'LL TURN MANKIND INTO TANG AND YOU'LL LIKE IT!

>>52013204
I like this a lot
Thanks!

>>52032315

there's more to a hivemind than memes anon.

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Wizard creates an artificial entity that can replicate itself, intended as a self-maintaining labor force. He makes the mistake of creating a little too smart, and when it starts building more of itself it builds them better.

And better.

And better.

And it adapts itself, creating new forms to suit new tasks. Every new organism it builds is more neurons in its brain. It extends itself and consumes everything organic that isn't itself. When there's nothing left it converts its biomass into artificial plants that take energy from the sun and pass it up the chain to the artificial animals which use it to reproduce. More and more and more and more and bigger and bigger and bigger.

Jump forward a few years and half the continent has been completely taken over by artificial flora and fauna, everything in perfect instantaneous communication to form a single hyperintelligent entity constantly adapting itself to every environment it spreads into, creating its own ecosystems.

The hive mind is an evolutionarily perfect organism and outcompetes everything else. The extinction of all other life on the planet is inevitable.

>>52036722

tyrannids explained

>>52009083
>PCs travel with an NPC
>Have to escort the NPC to a certain place with some sort of certain properties to save her/him while killing some bad guys
>Each time you encounter bad guys they get more difficult, not because they're anymore powerful than the last but because they seem to be more and more competent
>At one point, it seemed like one of the enemies knew exactly what a PC was going to do and almost killed him
>Party wonders if they're getting smarter
>PCs keep going but they start to question whether or not the NPC is who they say they are because of dubiousness
>Eventually party reaches the place
>NPC goes beserk and attacks the party
>NPC gets killed by the party and they think "oh they must have been linked to the NPC and this was a trap" and now they won against the hive mind
>Then they realize they're standing in an altar site
>Sacrificing the NPC in question was the key to raising not just one old one, but multiple old ones and the bad guys were deranged cultists that killed themselves to trick you into believing they wanted to stop you but instead something something mind control pseudo hive mind with mages trying to resurrect the hive and you got tricked into helping
>Sky turns red, cultists appear and they mutate and shit, everywhere far in the distance huge monsters can be seen rising up, a giant mass forms in the sky above the altar
>99% of people and animals are now monsters
>Party is the 1%
>Jojo to be continued theme plays
Has something like this been done before? Where the entire world is turned into a hive mind around you? And where do I play it?

>>52010409
Self defense and preservation of the species. Simon did nothing wrong.

>>52021444
Wow what a helpful answer, I'm sure he has no questions now. I'll admit its not very simple to condense the thread's discussions into a paragraph or two but you didn't even try.

Like this: >>>/qst/1233890
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?tags=Hive%20Queen%20Quest

Better question is how do I make a hivemind legitimately terrified?

You could always reverse it and make it a hivebody. It's a bunch of minds stuffed into one little mind. Maybe just extreme schizophrenia or something more supernatual.

>>52009260

That's not a democracy, a democracy is mob rule.

What you've described is a meritocracy, albeit with some strange caveats.

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We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.

>>52009083
A hive mind is terrifying because it is lonely. I can never interact with another consciousness since it assimilates all it comes in contact with. It will forever be alone.

>>52031283
Law suggested, make small cities pay more the fewer people there are and the furthers away they are from major urban centres, conversely make it cheaper the bigger you city's population is.

How d'you figure that vote will go?

>>52040388
Alzheimers.

Feeling parts of it's consciousness die always slightly faster than it can grow.

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>>52040649

>>52021547
We want to have a goal.
But we want to choose that goal for ourselves.

That's the whole point : your life is only yours to decide how to spent/waste.
If it isn't, then you are just a tool in service of someone else's will.

>>52040649
>>52041093
Fuck. Cannot unsee.

Where's Species 8472 when you need them?

>>52036266
The is nothing more to a hivemind than memes, Anon.

All hiveminds in nature operate without a central processing unit. All hiveminds are simply individual entities operating in a hive due to information transmission - ants and bees do so through pheromones, we humans do it through written texts and spoken words.

>>52042065
The difference between a hivemind and a memeocracy is that in a memeocracy people can still have differing opinions (P.S: it's shit).
A hivemind in the likes of ants and bees does not have individual opinions.

>>52042150
Uh, ants and bees don't have opinions. Their brains aren't big enough for it.

If they had big enough brains, it's very likely ants and bees would have widely different opinions while still working towards a common goal.

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This always scared me.

>>52043297
they are just Fingers. Silly cow!

>>52043297
If I start using all my ten fingers to crush ants, does that make my hands a hivemind?

>>52042411
That's just society in general, anon. Whether it's communism, capitalism, theocracy, monarchy, democracy, or any of the other -isms and -cracies - if you see the big picture, it's people working towards a common goal.
But a hivemind it ain't. You presume that ants and bees would have differing opinions and yet still be a hivemind, would their brains be advanced enough - but this is pure conjecture since we can't force them to get a better brain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hive_mind

Then again, what is a hivemind defined as? It could refer to many things, one of which being Swarm Intelligence (the kind ants and bees have), another being Culture, Collective Consciousness, and Universal Mind (which is quite similar to what you propose). BUT! Swarm Intelligence of social insects' kind of hivemind should not be mistaken with the hivemind that is Collective Consciousness/Culture/Universal Mind! The two are different concepts that confusingly has the same name attributed to them.

>>52042411

That's some pretty massive speculation. Humans work towards a common goal out a perceived benefit for the individual. The idea of helping others comes from empathy, which is purely a projection of ones own desires onto another a la theory of mind. We see common good as a "good" because we know what we want, and thereby project that desire onto others, since if they're human like us then surely they'd want the same things we do, on a purely selfish level. This is an individualistic process and not a collectivist one.

The point is eusocial insects are solely collectivist while we are individualistic despite how organized our social systems seem. We operate to fulfill our own desires and that may sometimes coincide with fulfilling the desires of others (buying shit, sexual relationships, creating/consuming entertainment, etc).

Eusocial insects don't have that at all. Their actions are solely for the benefit of the hive as a whole even at the expense of their own life or fitness. That's why they're so interesting from a scientific/evolutionary perspective, since that concept flies in the face of natural selection on an individual level, which is what a vast majority of species rely on for propagation.

I get what you're saying about memes being a form of groupthink, but the fact that we have the ability to question them at all means we're not a hivemind, no matter how memetic our social sphere is.

>>52043584
Ants don't question their memes because they don't possess the mental faculties. There can still be defective ants - if they don't do what they're supposed to, they're not really ants and should be destroyed.

Kind of like society. If you don't "question" or resist a meme, you're defective and ought to report to re-education and destruction immediately.

This is how conservatism works

>>52011750
Guys I think I'm a tomato.

>>52009083
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBeoreJr4Yc [Remove]

>>52043584
>Humans work towards a common goal out a perceived benefit for the individual. The idea of helping others comes from empathy, which is purely a projection of ones own desires onto another a la theory of mind
Scientifically false.
Humans cooperate for a single, incredibly simple reason: we are biologically predisposed to do so, because cooperation among larger groups of people proved to be a non-zero sum game, providing a DRASTIC evolutionary advantage. It's not that we cooperate because we have emphaty: we have empathy (and even more importantly, actual biological idea-and-resource-sharing and fairness recognition drives inherent, complete with fascinatingly large specialized portions of our damn brain dedicated to those mechanics) simply because it's as much of an evolutionary necessity to us, as flying is for birds and diving is for whales.

Cooperative behavior is a biological necessity and condition of our existence. It predates our capacity to verbalize and conceptualize goal making by presumably millions of years. Our broader concepts of right and wrong are formed by evolutionary pressure for pro-social behavior, not vice versa.

The key difference, which are probably trying to say, but doing it in a rather innaccurate way, is the fact that eusocial organisms cooperative behavior stems from purely emergent processes, without any forms of higher representations for their behavior. Here we however must point out one absolutely key misunderstanding:

Individual ants do not sacrifice their own fitness by their often-selfdestructive eusocial behavior. That is because individual ant DOES NOT HAVE FITNESS. Individual ant is not a complete organism: ants, bees etc... each and individual are more akin to detached organ of a singular organism (hive) than to a independent organism in the first place. Ant workers are just semi-independent arms, queens are just mobile gonades of one, singular organism: the hive itself.

>>52010409
Huh?

>>52043688
>if they don't do what they're supposed to, they're not really ants and should be destroyed.
Well, that is false as well. Unless there is some kind of pervasive behavioral deviant pattern that some ants may start to display that DIRECTLY endangers the colony, ants who for what ever reason fail to behave in an expected fashion are completely ignored, because there is actually no over-seer "authority" on the that is supposed to keep ants in line. In fact, despite what you might think, ants have no social dominance hierarchies and no authorities what so ever. That is just a false projection of our type of social ordering we project onto them.
Once again behavior of individual ants is driven purely by emergent mechanisms. Simple, simple behavioral rules resulting in surprisingly sophisticated behavior. There is no "overseer" cast that has "an idea of how ant is supposed to behave, and eliminates those that do not fit such idea". There are extremely simple, long-term-evolution driven patterns that react to very specific, evolutionary-relevant conditions (such as in the case of ants being able to identify and isolate spore-infected ants in the famous case of Ophiocordyceps unilateralis): but outside of those few rare, specific occassions, ants don't really ever "police" each other. They are barely aware of each other's existence.

>>52044678

>we are biologically predisposed to do so, because cooperation among larger groups of people proved to be a non-zero sum game

well, yeah. i don't see how that contradicts anything i said. cooperation was a cornerstone of our evolution and empathy is the mechanism for that. i wasn't meaning to imply that said process was a conscious effort or something we decide to do from a top-down perspective, just that that's how it works. the evolution of cooperation developed due to the benefit each individual received to their fitness from the combined efforts of the whole group.

>That is because individual ant DOES NOT HAVE FITNESS. Individual ant is not a complete organism: ants, bees etc... each and individual are more akin to detached organ of a singular organism (hive) than to a independent organism in the first place

this is where i'm gonna have to disagree. likening them to a part of a larger organism works from a metaphorical perspective, but to treat each one as though they literally are such is just scientifically incorrect. they are very clearly independent entities; separate cells, separate neural processes, and separate genetic codes. if they weren't, the need for communication between individuals wouldn't exist, and communication very clearly exists between them via pheromones in ants and dances in bees.

i can see where your argument is coming from though, as many of them share a good majority of their genetic code with one another to the point where they're almost identical. but identical genetic codes don't necessarily dictate that each organism that possesses it is thereby the "same" organism. if so, identical twins wouldn't be scientifically recognized as separate people, but they are.

cont.

>>52045292
>>52044678

the point i'm trying to make here though is that they do in fact have fitness. any entity with a genetic code has fitness by definition, since possessing a genetic code means having the means to potentially pass it onto offspring. this is what fitness means. in this way they're similar to humans, in that cooperation within a group ensures the fitness of the individual. however, the key difference here is that due to them sharing so much of their genetic code, group fitness BECOMES individual fitness, since the likelihood of a sister ant/bee having similar or the exact same alleles to pass down as them is incredibly high, meaning it doesn't matter if they or their kin passes it down, since the result is the effectively exact same. this doesn't mean that the individual ceases to exist though. just that the individual and the group become synonymous; i.e. a hive.

this is different than species such as some cnidarian polyps that DO in fact operate as a single organism despite being made of many individuals, where they partition certain body parts/individuals to be the feelers, the mouth, and the stomachs, despite every individual polyp being capable of doing all of these processes. in these cases the polyps can in fact be literal genetic clones of one another.

this doesn't really carry over to humans though, since humans, although having a finite number of genetic possibilities, still haven't come close to that number yet, meaning that each individual still has the impetus to pass on their own individual genes in spite of the good of the whole group, regardless of the benefits they gain from it. a human that sacrifices themselves for the group does their genes a disservice; a bee/ant that sacrifies themselves does not.

i feel like this post is way longer than it needed to be but i typed it out so i'm posting it anyway.

>>52045292
>this is where i'm gonna have to disagree. likening them to a part of a larger organism works from a metaphorical perspective
You can disagree, but you are unquestionably wrong there. There is a very simple reason why this NON-METAPHORICAL distinction is made:
An ant worker is by it's biological make-up unable to reproduce. They don't have fitness, because they do not actually propagate their own genetic make-up. Every single worker ant is a biological dead end: it does not have fitness just like your skin cells don't have fitness, despite containing genetic information. An organism can have "fitness" only if said organism is capable of propagating it's own genetic materials: outside of the queen, ants individual ants are incapable of it. The proposition to treat ants as mere organs of a larger organism is not mine invention, by the way: it was proposed by Darwin first, and then adopted by nearly any evolutionary etolog in history.
Once again, it's emergence in it's finest: Fitness of the entire colony is obviously dependent on the capability of it's individual parts (individual ants) to survive (because too large death toll would cripple the colony, eventually make it unable to propagate itself), but individual parts of the colony have no fitness, because each and individual one of them cannot propagate itself. In other words, "life" of a colony cannot be reduced to quality of it's individual constituents.

>if they weren't, the need for communication between individuals wouldn't exist,
The absence of a concept of fitness on individual members of the unit actually necessitates communication more. As individual organisms have no "life" capacity on their own, the process we call "life" which involves capacity to self-maintain and PROPAGATE only emerges through their cooperation. This is a process that is well described in evolutionary ethology, but is actually very unintuitive and difficult to understand to normal people.

>>52045437

>An ant worker is by it's biological make-up unable to reproduce.
>An organism can have "fitness" only if said organism is capable of propagating it's own genetic materials: outside of the queen, ants individual ants are incapable of it

you're right about workers, but drones are fully capable and able to reproduce. but still, fitness is only defined by the propagation of alleles. if an allele is shared among organisms and gets passed on, this allele has fitness. if the allele is shared among many individuals, this fitness is also attributed to them.

>but individual parts of the colony have no fitness, because each and individual one of them cannot propagate itself.

not trying to be pedantic here, but by definition a sexually reproducing species cannot propagate by itself. it needs a mate. the drones and queens fulfill this criteria. through this logic they are not a single organism any more than a male and female mammal or reptile are a single organism. their inter-reliance on one another for the fitness of the hive (and thereby their own fitness) says nothing about whether they are a superorganism or not since this is a facet of all sexually reproducing organisms.

>In other words, "life" of a colony cannot be reduced to quality of it's individual constituents.

except it can. as long as royal jelly and a single undifferentiated larva exists, the genetic code of some individuals can persist through the development of a new queen (a single individual) provided she mates and establishes a new hive, and as long as she shares enough alleles with the individuals that perished.

it seems as though you're creating a distinction between the genetic code of the hive and the genetic code of the constituents of the hive when they are one and the same, unless i'm misunderstanding you. as long as an allele an individual possesses has the potential to be passed onto the next generation, said individual has fitness.

>>52036722

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-want-to-build-a-super-fast-self-replicating-computer-that-grows-as-it-computes

I WIN FUCKERS

I WAS RIGHT

WE TYRANIDS NOW

>>52043688
Explain to me the lazy ants, then.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27834-lazy-ants-sit-around-doing-nothing-while-their-nest-mates-work/

>>52033621
My players liked it too, hopefully your players/readers feel the same.

Good luck!

>>52009368
So your hive mind is literally Tzeench?

>>52041056
First off-that's obviously a straw man, and meant to 'win' the argument rather than create meaningful discussion. But I'll bite.

In an idealized model where voters always voted to further their side at the expense of the other?
Depends. What's the specifics? What counts as a "city?" How does the city pay for it? What 'territory' is assigned each city?

Does, for example, the Bay Area sprawl count as several different cities, even though the borders between them basically amount to a sign announcing the city limits? This would change the dynamics substantially-instead of one, monolithic Sprawl with little small town tax, it'd be (in no particular order) San Francisco, Berkley, Concord, Palo Alto, San Jose, Richmond, Pittsberg, Vallejo, Sunnyvale....All cities of various sizes, all right next to each other, each individually paying the small town tax.
Suddenly the small town tax isn't so clear cut for urban voters. I mean, San Francisco would go for it, but Concord, Berkeley or Sunnyvale? They'd get shafted, despite being right in the neighborhood as San Francisco.

Also, all of this assumes (as you seem to do) everyone votes 'rationally' with naked intent to screw the opposition over. Consider the fact that the urban voters don't get anything out of this but a leg up over their countrymen-they still pay the small town tax, just not so much. It's still a loss for them. (Also consider that we're talking about people that tend to be 'bleeding heart liberals', here. Do you REALLY thing they're the type to knowingly screw over 'the other team' just for the sake of doing so?)

>>52053191
People in rural areas, meanwhile, would to a man vote against it, because it'd be plenty clear to them they're gonna get shafted by this.
This situation does not a guaranteed victory make. Support is tepid, because the only reason you'd vote for such a thing would be to screw your fellow man over, and you'd also suffer a loss in doing so. Opposition is strengthened for the same reason, and in the case of rural areas by the fact that they're the ones that are gonna get screwed over.

Now. How'd you figure THAT'll go?

>>52009083
Intelligent socialist makes skill, memory and idea sharing infectious nano-"plague" & slime sharing & computing network. The network stores skills, memories & ideas; want it and you start downloading it; save to not get distracted by someone else thoughts on the subject.

>>52053950
This use block chain or similar hack-resistant data structures?

File: French Hive.jpg (187 KB, 1024x1463)

187 KB JPG

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-1702
>The only thing that I think could improve this article would be the removal of the stuff about chitin and antennae. It feels like it would be creepier to have a colony of outwardly normal women who, oh yeah, vomit bone and tear apart their queen when she becomes "damaged." Just a thought, but this article is still great.

It's not a single parallel mind, but it is also not composed of individuals. Within the vast network information thoughts and identity ebb and flow. The beings deep and pervasive intents exist beside a cacophony of self organizing and self destructive ideas and actions. It seems capable of rationality but not of maintaining sanity.

>>52010987
Wagecucks eternally btfo