I love hive minds!

Discussion from Discord: Hive Minds by GoodModAddict on 2019-06-27 01:04:00 UTC Reply

Hello, everyone! A really interesting discussion popped up in the Discord today and led to several hours of discussion about character writing; given the sustained attention it's generated among some of us, I thought I'd open it up to the rest of the PPC.

Morning greetings turned to discussions of assimilating people through a convoluted process I'm still not sure I understand, which naturally led to a badfic hunt, which sadly turned up nothing tagged with the word "assimilation." No, not even in Star Trek. That in turn kicked off a discussion about writing hive minds, assimilationist and otherwise, as characters; how would it work? How would the hive mind think of itself and others? How could one try writing a ship of a human character and a hive mind without it devolving into a badfic or cheesy villain?

A lot of us have had a ton of fun discussing different types of hive minds and how these types would think about complex things like gender, communicating with beings that fundamentally don't think like it, what happens when either or both of these concepts are completely and utterly foreign, and how do things like "death" and "considering other life" work into all of this when you start working with ideas about hive mind "queens?" Obviously the answer to a lot of these questions is "It depends on how the hive mind works," which is probably why the discussion lasted so long.

So, what are your thoughts? What kinds of weird and interesting hive mind ideas do you have for building a character? Are we all worrying way too much about sci-fi and should go read more Tolkien instead?

Hiveminds and the pride flag machine by Tomash on 2019-07-01 06:25:00 UTC Reply

A bit earlier, Delta started off some RP in Rudi's with a machien that would print out relevant pride flags for characters that looked at it (but without outing people).

My tangential reaction to this was imagining some sort of plural entity (maybe one of those hiveminds that are made up of people who voluntarily decided to join brains for some reason - come to think it, have those come up in the thread yet?) coming by the machine and having it just hurl out all the flags.

And then I got encouraged to post the thought here, so ... yeah.

THE PRIDE EMPEROR OF PERSONKIND (nm) by Grundleplith on 2019-07-01 12:29:00 UTC Reply

+1 {= D (nm) by Neshomeh on 2019-07-02 02:19:00 UTC Reply

I love hive minds! by Cicada on 2019-06-27 20:27:00 UTC Reply

To add my two cents, I think Gestalts are somewhat distinct. Gestalts almost never assimilate, and they don't often breed new bodies, either. They only add new ones if some of the old ones die. They're very high on the composite side- either they have a few individuals, each of which is responsible for a certain task, or they have task groups responsible for different things. And they can be quite affected by their component parts.
They're one of my favorites mainly because I think the whole assimilation thing can make a hive-mind rather one-note. They're gonna getcha, and you'll either have to kill them or convince them to leave, and then they're kinda out of the picture. But a gestalt is capable of chilling out with other characters.
But then again, sometimes it's a great deal of fun to run from or try to negotiate with the spooky hive mind.
Most gestalts I've seen either treat the parts of the gestalt as lobes of the brain, which are slightly more vulnerable to damage, or as something like moods.
One of my favorite gestalts is Gavotte from Skin Horse, a webcomic I enjoy quite a bit. It also has plenty of other sorts of hive mind.
I also built a gestalt myself, though I've not written anything for them, with the gestalt "portions" acting almost like different moods. They kind of have the problem of being too human.
I guess that's the tension in a lot of sci-fi, that it's hard to interact with things that are meaningfully different from humans.
But speaking of fantasy- anyone know of any fantasy hive minds? I guess there are mind flayers from D&D...
Sample Types of Hive Minds by Good Mod Addict on 2019-06-27 01:06:00 UTC Reply

Here are the three broad categories of hive mind we came up with in Discord, if that's helpful.

Insectile/Swarm: One mind controlling many bodies, but the bodies have no effect on the mind

Mind Hive: One body, many consciousnesses that form some kind of composite mind, with each consciousness contributing its own experiences and worldviews

Mind Hive Mind (thanks, Granz, for the term): A Mind Hive where the composite mind has control over multiple separate bodies

Firstly, welcome, you are, for the term. by Granz the Ice Cream Monarch on 2019-06-27 01:46:00 UTC Reply

Secondly - the way I'd categorize them would be to rank them numerically on a set of scales, using the following categories which are named as follows until someone finds cooler stuff that fits better:
Assimilationist v. Swarm -
Examines how they acquire new members. An Assimilationist Hive Hive Mind will typically brainwash people of any species into joining, while a Swarm breeds new bodies.
Anchored v. Unattached -
The degree to which the hive's personality rests within a given individual to operate it. A species who, for example, requires a queen's direction to function is Anchored, whereas one which is Unattached is fine until the last member dies.
Composite v. Individual -
The degree to which the hive's personality depends on each member of the hive. A Composite mind is based on the personalities of all members added together, and assumes they would have one even if they were not present, while an Individual mind assumes one overarching mind which cannot be changed by the adding or subtracting of members.
Collective v. Scattered -
The degree to which the presence of the mind depends on the number of members in the area. So, for example, a mind which, if you encounter a fragment of a ship's crew or something, will give you a fight where your enemies are slow and sloppy, like they're being controlled by something half-asleep, would be Collective, whereas a Scattered mind is perfectly capable of having each member operating at peak performance regardless of how many are in the area.

I started Venn diagramming this... by Huinesoron on 2019-06-27 14:15:00 UTC Reply

... and apart from the fact that I discovered I only know a handful of hive minds (I've managed to chart a total of four, though there's more I just don't remember the details on), the big thing that popped through is that they're all coming up as Collectivist.

I think there's a big difference, though, between Borg (Star Trek) Collectivism, where their ability increases with how many other Borg they're in contact with, and Formic (Ender's Game) Collectivism, which I believe comes down to 'can they contact a queen'. Would the latter actually be Anchored-Scattered, and treat 'each member' in the Scattered definition as meaning 'each Queen'?

hS

Hm... by Granz the Ice Cream Monarch on 2019-06-27 17:42:00 UTC Reply

I think that's a decent way to look at it, but I was more thinking, for cases like this, that there'd be a theoretical numerical ranking, with, let's say 0 being a pure Collective and a 10 being purely Scattered, and the Formic would be somewhere in between. If it comes down to whether or not they can contact a queen, I think they'd end up closer to the Scattered side of the scale.