Suggestion: Innate Ethos

[Gamesguy]

In a "hive-mind" society, Mr.Space-ant wouldn't talk to anybody, since he CAN'T. Because it's a worker and he lacks the intelligence to do anything except working. Also, a "hive-mind" society would never invent internet. If it would, it would be for communication purpose only, between hive-queens.

It doesn't work like this in real life. With many hive insects ruled by a single queen, there are in fact defectors that betray the nest. For example about 1% of worker wasps sneak away to lay eggs in other wasp nests in hopes of passing on their genes, something that is explicitly banned by their queen. Even in ant colonies workers will slaughter less fertile queens, or sometimes all the queens in a chemically driven murder frenzy.

The more intelligent a species, the more likely workers are to betray the hive. Ants are too stupid to really go against their chemical programming, where as more intelligent insects like wasps do have sufficient brain power to plot betrayal. Of course, there is no such thing as a hive animal with anything approaching the intelligence of birds and mammals because smarter animals simply value themselves far more. Social animals like wolves routinely betray the pack to breed, monkeys form alliances to overthrow their leaders, etc.

 

[BrokenSky]

It doesn't work like this in real life. With many hive insects ruled by a single queen, there are in fact defectors that betray the nest. For example about 1% of worker wasps sneak away to lay eggs in other wasp nests in hopes of passing on their genes, something that is explicitly banned by their queen. Even in ant colonies workers will slaughter less fertile queens, or sometimes all the queens in a chemically driven murder frenzy.

The more intelligent a species, the more likely workers are to betray the hive. Ants are too stupid to really go against their chemical programming, where as more intelligent insects like wasps do have sufficient brain power to plot betrayal. Of course, there is no such thing as a hive animal with anything approaching the intelligence of birds and mammals because smarter animals simply value themselves far more. Social animals like wolves routinely betray the pack to breed, monkeys form alliances to overthrow their leaders, etc.

What if they could deviate to the non-fanatic form or even neutral, but no further? (A neutral one would be seen as fanatical from the perspective of the other pops though?)

 

[Guilu]

It's pretty shocking how many people buy into the notion that "hive minds" deprive individuals of free-will. What we call hive minds are just gathering of dumb insects working and communicating together. A lot of them are too stupid to even figure out better ways to do things, but they're not remote controlled. If you had such a species in your Stellaris game reach FTL on their own, most likely your pop ethic would be at a more collective level than individual. Whether the individual has a selfless mindset doesn't matter - what matters would be whether individuals from one group care for individuals from another group and to what extent.

That it is impossible for a race to have high amounts of their equivelent of testosterone and be highly aggressive? Even though there are several species of animal on earth which are naturally highly aggressive (Wolverines anyone?) why would it be impossible for a race to be naturally predisposed to militancy?

If a species has trouble reining its aggressive tendencies I'm sure its members would have diverging opinions on how to deal with it. Letting it out on other nations is an easy out for a writer that needs conflict in his story. Ritual combat would be an easy out for a writer that wants exotism, and allows for their societies to be pacifist. These are all smart and reasonable people - they did manage to get to space through technological means after all. They can surpass their nature.

I can see the argument for a trait that lowers ethos divergence for species that follow chemically-encouraged behaviour over forming their own opinions, but not a straight-up barrier on certain ethics. Natural selection will do odd things in remarkably short periods of time.

 

[BrokenSky]

It's pretty shocking how many people buy into the notion that "hive minds" deprive individuals of free-will. What we call hive minds are just gathering of dumb insects working and communicating together. A lot of them are too stupid to even figure out better ways to do things, but they're not remote controlled. If you had such a species in your Stellaris game reach FTL on their own, most likely your pop ethic would be at a more collective level than individual. Whether the individual has a selfless mindset doesn't matter - what matters would be whether individuals from one group care for individuals from another group and to what extent.

If a species has trouble reining its aggressive tendencies I'm sure its members would have diverging opinions on how to deal with it. Letting it out on other nations is an easy out for a writer that needs conflict in his story. Ritual combat would be an easy out for a writer that wants exotism, and allows for their societies to be pacifist. These are all smart and reasonable people - they did manage to get to space through technological means after all. They can surpass their nature.

I can see the argument for a trait that lowers ethos divergence for species that follow chemically-encouraged behaviour over forming their own opinions, but not a straight-up barrier on certain ethics. Natural selection will do odd things in remarkably short periods of time.

What I call a hive mind is where you plug a load of people together so that they share knowledge, emotion and pain. Obviously free will is conserved, it's just applied over the whole. That's not to say that a hive mind would disregard the value of it's constituent entities, though. Probably the opposite; they all have little bits of the mind in them (this is decentralized, not like a centralized organism like a human who cares more about his head than his foot).

 

[Guilu]

That's just an excellent form of communication though. We're not far off from it ourselves.

 

[aitaituo]

What I call a hive mind is where you plug a load of people together so that they share knowledge, emotion and pain. Obviously free will is conserved, it's just applied over the whole. That's not to say that a hive mind would disregard the value of it's constituent entities, though. Probably the opposite; they all have little bits of the mind in them (this is decentralized, not like a centralized organism like a human who cares more about his head than his foot).

Neat idea, but we don't really have the faintest idea of how that might look in practice. A cybernetic pseudo-hive mind is probably the closest humans could get to it, but I'm skeptical you can interface two human brains directly without something resembling a psychotic break.

 

[BrokenSky]

Neat idea, but we don't really have the faintest idea of how that might look in practice. A cybernetic pseudo-hive mind is probably the closest humans could get to it, but I'm skeptical you can interface two human brains directly without something resembling a psychotic break.

Perhaps? I mean I don't have a problem with being hooked up to an inter-mental link between myself and a few others which causes us to share knowledge, feelings (including both in the emotions and the pain sense of the word) and constantly discuss things, but then I may be non-standard in this regard.

 

[aitaituo]

Perhaps? I mean I don't have a problem with being hooked up to an inter-mental link between myself and a few others which causes us to share knowledge, feelings (including both in the emotions and the pain sense of the word) and constantly discuss things, but then I may be non-standard in this regard.

It is three in the morning. You wake up in a rage. Mary has just come home and found her husband re-enacting Eyes Wide Shut. What do you do? Every other member of the link, except Mary, is in the same situation, confused, bellicose, perhaps with a small desire to murder.

It is six in the morning. You have woken up normally. Ted is having a shameful sex dream. Lily dreams of being the President and giving a speech before the UN, which is greeted to thunderous applause. Robin is dreaming of being devoured by a horde of zombies. How do you feel?

I haven't the foggiest.

 

[BrokenSky]

It is three in the morning. You wake up in a rage. Mary has just come home and found her husband re-enacting Eyes Wide Shut. What do you do? Every other member of the link, except Mary, is in the same situation, confused, bellicose, perhaps with a small desire to murder.

It is six in the morning. You have woken up normally. Ted is having a shameful sex dream. Lily dreams of being the President and giving a speech before the UN, which is greeted to thunderous applause. Robin is dreaming of being devoured by a horde of zombies. How do you feel?

I haven't the foggiest.

I once woke up form a dream where my friends and family were being complete armholes (*ahem*) and woke up angry at them for stuff they haven't even done. That sounds way less annoying by comparison. But yeah no, I imagine it might be a bit weird if some of me is sleeping and the rest of me is awake, but not by much.

I would probably wake up, feel a little weird, then get back to feeling normal.

 

[Gamesguy]

Neat idea, but we don't really have the faintest idea of how that might look in practice. A cybernetic pseudo-hive mind is probably the closest humans could get to it, but I'm skeptical you can interface two human brains directly without something resembling a psychotic break.

Scientists have actually been experimenting with wiring animal brains together, obviously this isn't something that can evolve independently in nature though.

Yes it's as disturbing as it sounds:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/science-can-learn-wiring-monkey-brains-together/

 

[BrokenSky]

Scientists have actually been experimenting with wiring animal brains together, obviously this isn't something that can evolve independently in nature though.

Yes it's as disturbing as it sounds:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/science-can-learn-wiring-monkey-brains-together/

Wow they're at monkeys already? Last time I heard they'd only got as far as rats...

 

[Orkonkel]

Ah. Dem orcs drifting into fanatical pacificts.

 

[Cybele]

You're missing the point. Applying human thinking to aliens. Mr. Space Ant may not be ABLE, or willing, to be an individualist. It may be in his blood to serve the colony, just like how a real ant can't ever act on its own.

Let's take an extreme example. Say we have an ant-like, telepathic species where the drones are completely mindless and can only act by receiving instructions from the sapient queen. The drones can no more act without the queen's input than your arm can without your brain, they are literally parts of the queen's "body" that just happen to not be physically connected to the part that has the brain and uterus.

"Individualism" would still be possible for this species because it's possible to have multiple queens at once. Here are some examples of how this species would look under each ethos and how drift could happen:

Fanatic collectivist: All drones would be linked to a single queen. A couple queen backups would be kept in case the ruling queen dies, maybe even kept off-homeworld, but they would remain isolated and prevented from controlling drones.

Collectivist: Each planet or sector would have a single queen, each controlling their own region's drones and willfully acting in subservience to the homeworld's queen. Drift from fanatic to moderate could happen for a number of reasons:

1. The empire may just become too large for a single queen mind to control. Drift may be a biological necessity.

2. One or more backups could escape confinement and seize control of drones, and the central queen decides to allow them freedom provided they pledge their loyalty instead of just purging them.

3. The queen could fear species extinction and start rapidly breeding more queens and delegating jobs to them.

4. Queen gets bored and wants someone to talk to. Or just does it on a whim. Absolute rulers don't need reasons to do things.

Individualist would be each planet having multiple queens, maybe one per pop, each controlling millions of drones.

Fanatic Individualist would be each planet having millions of queens, each controlling a few dozen drones each.