> It so happens that boarding schools are (were?) a major tradition in the alien British culture. A very harmful tradition, IMO, even in elite schools like Eto

> It so happens that boarding schools are (were?) a major tradition in the alien British culture. A very harmful tradition, IMO, even in elite schools like Eton. In my hypothetical, the aliens consider a hive-mind as an ideal as it would wipe out all wars and conflict, and improve collaboration (imagine if all 20th century mathematicians had a Erdős number of 1, and all his insights retained after the death of his biological unit). All this progress would come at the cost of getting rid of "individualism" - a very backward, romanticized, but inefficient notion that is clearly outweighed by the benefits (in the aliens mind).