[UA] The IC and the Mindless Hive

[R. Menzi]

     Who says that the parts of a hivemind need to
cooperate?  Why can't a "hivemind" be conflicted?  The
reuse of the word "mind" in "hivemind" gives a false
impression, perhaps it is not the best term for this
trans-individual level of mentality.

     If humanity functions as such a thing, there is
no reason why the more ethereal elements would be any
more clearcut or consistant that their menifestations
in human thout and action.  Also, the Hagelean view of
the thesis creating its anti-thesis and the two of
them resolving into their syn-thesis must be
considered.  Even within the ordered and consistant
tyrrany of logical progression (a single, consistant
imperitive throught the chain of Reason), the process
is always one of self-created conflict.

     Also, as much as one can ascribe conscious
attributes to a phenomenon that manifests or (emerges
out of) consciousness, this is not necessarily the
case.  A hivemind, in this sense, may just be a form
of recursive circuits, between individual brains and
some spindle that they form, or forms them.  The
hivemind may have no more of a single view point than
a system of feedback circuits that reproduce the
walk-cycles of insects (a semi-recent robotics
breakthrough).

     Just because a "hivemind" would be a
controlling/influencing agent for consiousness within
a certain system/species (other birds do not know the
blue tit method for getting into bottles), does not
mean that the apperatus has any traits of
consciousness itself.  Just as our neurons do not
manifest the consciousness they collaborate to
manifest, so the trans-individual "hivemind" may not
have the sort of consciousness that is emerges from. 
Still, just as thought-patterns alter the growth and
activity of the neurons that host them, so too may
individual minds both reshape and submit to the
broadcasted ideas of the hivemind.

     The hivemind work just as well as the hardware,
not the software that run on it - the IC as an
institution, not the minds that hold a seat at any
given point in time.  It works as the software, as
well - the minds determining the pathways and the
hivemind guiding thoughts between them.  Of course,
it's best seen as a recursive system between them,
much the way an individual's hardware (brain) and
software (mind) work with an reshape each other as a
kind of "wetware" multi-order phenomenon.

     Just as no atom viewed in isolation can have a
temperature, temperature exists only as a relationship
between atoms.  Though human minds may form a
hivemind, such a "hiveMIND" need not have any shared
characteristics with the minds that create it.

     Humanity progressing with all the omnescient will
of an insect's ganglea guiding its feet to carry its
body away from wherever it happens to be.

     How's any of that fit with your views of UA?



Regards,
- R. Menzi


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