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A hive mind would face tremendous costs and very small returns. If you think of a human brain as a hive mind made out of neurons, which isn't an unfair way to d

A hive mind would face tremendous costs and very small returns. If you think of a human brain as a hive mind made out of neurons, which isn't an unfair way to describe it, a hive mind split on two planets would be like two brain hemispheres being light years apart. They can't help each other without unacceptable delays, so they would both have to be almost completely independent to function properly. They couldn't make each other very much stronger. Furthermore, synchronization overhead scales with distance: you may be part of a hive mind, but if it takes ten years to exchange a message with the rest of the hive, you have to act independently during these ten years. This means the hive's "goals" must be replicated on each colony well enough to make sure they can't drift too far in that time. This is not cheap: for example, a lot of innovative technologies would have to be stifled while the whole hive assesses the risks they pose to its own integrity. Independent colonies, on the other hand, would just plow forward.

Razengan 10y ago
Delays in research and coordination, yes, but not the threat of internal competition or warfare, at least. I imagine a hive mind would first send scouts to potential habitats, wait to gain enough information about a world from them, and then dispatch a colonizing group with fixed orders and some leeway in local operating parameters. After that they'll coordinate just like all species will have to, within the confines of Physics. If a colony cannot adapt to a planet while remaining within the hive's goals, then I guess it simply withers happily, till new scouts deem the world worth another try. That could actually turn out to be an efficient way of spreading across the galaxy..
- breuleux 10y ago
  Possibly. On the other hand, the delays in research and coordination may be so large that they basically negate the advantages of being united. An expanding orb of viciously competitive societies would probably make them pretty damn efficient at deception, murder and hostile takeover. A hive mind that has never had to harden itself against what's basically an expanding sphere of vicious viruses may be easy prey that gets utterly annihilated. To put it in another way, I think an expanding hive mind needs to develop an immune system of sorts if it is to stand up against nimbler (virus-like) societies, but it's hard to see how it could succeed effectively without extended exposure to the latter. So I feel there's a kind of catch-22 going on: if we expand without extensive synchronization, we create competitors out of our own offspring, but competition breeds efficiency, so even though the system is a horrible Malthusian hellhole on the inside, it is pretty strong as a whole. But if we try to avoid this and expand as a hive mind, we have to expend a lot of overhead on synchronization and an immune system, but we don't really know what the potential threats are, so the result will be brittle.

Razengan 10y ago

Delays in research and coordination, yes, but not the threat of internal competition or warfare, at least. I imagine a hive mind would first send scouts to potential habitats, wait to gain enough information about a world from them, and then dispatch a colonizing group with fixed orders and some leeway in local operating parameters. After that they'll coordinate just like all species will have to, within the confines of Physics. If a colony cannot adapt to a planet while remaining within the hive's goals, then I guess it simply withers happily, till new scouts deem the world worth another try. That could actually turn out to be an efficient way of spreading across the galaxy..

breuleux 10y ago
Possibly. On the other hand, the delays in research and coordination may be so large that they basically negate the advantages of being united. An expanding orb of viciously competitive societies would probably make them pretty damn efficient at deception, murder and hostile takeover. A hive mind that has never had to harden itself against what's basically an expanding sphere of vicious viruses may be easy prey that gets utterly annihilated. To put it in another way, I think an expanding hive mind needs to develop an immune system of sorts if it is to stand up against nimbler (virus-like) societies, but it's hard to see how it could succeed effectively without extended exposure to the latter. So I feel there's a kind of catch-22 going on: if we expand without extensive synchronization, we create competitors out of our own offspring, but competition breeds efficiency, so even though the system is a horrible Malthusian hellhole on the inside, it is pretty strong as a whole. But if we try to avoid this and expand as a hive mind, we have to expend a lot of overhead on synchronization and an immune system, but we don't really know what the potential threats are, so the result will be brittle.