{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/posts/hive-mindless",
  "path": "/posts/posts/hive-mindless",
  "publishedAt": "2026-01-07T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "Hiveminds don't make much sense. I love them, but I might love them\nmore if more writers grappled with that rather than handwaving it.\n\nIntroduction\n\nBefore anything else, I must note that this is an informal discussion\nof the topic, hardly a rigorous survey of the portrayal of the trope\nin fiction.  I am unfamiliar with definining examples of group minds\n--- I don't know the Borg, I'm barely acquainted with the Formics, nor\nam I familiar with the Flood or the Zerg.  I haven't even watched\nPluribus.\n\nThough I'm ignorance of the influences, I've definitely encountered\nthe influenced.  It's difficult to immerse yourself in broader culture\nwithout a series that features an episode or recurring minor faction\ninspired by hiveminds writ large.\n\n; related\n: - SFE: Hive Minds\n  - Coalescing Minds\n  - In Defence of Hivemind Society\n\n; foreword italic\n:\n\n  > Yeah, so my skull's just a coffin for the corpse of my brain\\\n  > Wriggling contents rattled awake by the driving rain\\\n  > Get the night watch on duty, come on lads, man the eyes\\\n  > Light this stricken beacon for some sign of the skies which\\\n  > Whip up a frenzy to rattle the worms to\n\n  --- A Forest of Stars - \"Hive Mindless\"\n\nHiveminds began life as specters of horror and antagonism --- humans\nprize their individual freedoms highly, after all. It's tempting to\nclosely identify the trope with Cold War anti-Communism sentiments,\nbut reviewing its history in\nSFF reveals that it\npredates that circumstance (though it could certainly have been\nexacerbated thereby).\n\nWhen hiveminds are portrayed sympathetically, you're more likely to\nsee them called group minds. This, too, has a long\nhistory, dating all the way back to 1930's Last and First Men,^[I am\nin love with its description of the Martian group mind as \"an\nextremely concentrated and formidable cloud-jelly.\"] but it arguably\nextends to any serious engagement with the implications of widespread\n\"telepathy\", biological or technological, blurring the lines between\nbrains.\n\nMany have a distaste for calling such organizations \"hiveminds.\"\nEusocial insects are not psychic, and even the concept of colonies as\n\"superorganisms\" has its\ncritics,\nand so using the term \"hivemind\" propagates this popular\nmisassociation.^[And I tend to underestimate the impact of this.  As\nexperts are wont to do, I readily assume everyone already knows\ninsects don't have hiveminds, so why would there be any confusion? And\nyet on multiple occasions I've had people take for granted that real hives\nhave hiveminds and needed to be corrected on this matter.]\n\nPersonally, I'm quite fond of the term \"hivemind\" --- I think\nquasi-insectoid aesthetics are awesome, and I'm entirely willing to\nembrace (reclaim?) purely cultural associations therewith.^[Relatedly,\nI have an appreciation for dictatorial queens ruling their hives.\nThese days, bug nerds love to tell you that actually, gynes do not\nhave authority over her children and are just a breeding caste ---\noften effectively enslaved to her workers.  And fair enough, that's\ncompellingly alien.  But have you considered that the irrestible aura\nand allure of a god-queen, though?] Likewise, to me the connotations\nof abominable evil simply adds a delicious flavor --- it's nice and\nedgy.\n\nAnd others share my taste.  Modernly, nerds of my stripe (queer,\nneurodivergent, and allies thereof) repeatedly find themselves drawn\nto such tropes and aesthetics.\n\nAs a teenager, I had read plenty of My Little Pony fanfiction, where\nthe changelings (rather bugly, but more horse than bug) were often\nheadcanoned to possess a hivemind.  Of the\nHive is the first in a\nlong series where the protagonist becomes a changeling, integrating\ninto their collective and learning about their culture.\n\nMore recently, I read We Will\nEvolve, a Metroid\nfanfic focused on the X parasites, enriching them with deeper lore and\nmore compelling ambitions --- I found it a remarkably gripping read.\n\nAfter completing the first draft of this post, I encountered more\nexamples in older published science fiction.^I really want to mention\nPeter Watts' Echopraxia, which features group minds by way of\ncybernetic enhancements --- brain-computer interfaces creating\ncult-like collectives elevated to incomprehensible efficacy --- but\nbecause the text does not portray the interiorities of these\ncollectives, they are irrelevant to this post.  However, the prequel\nshort story [\"The Twenty-One Second\nGod\"\nindirectly offers a hint to how they tick, for its protagonist was\nbriefly a component in the mind of the largest collective mind ever\nrecorded.  Anyway, given Blindsight's whole thematic contention\ncontra-consciousness, it suffices to say that the Firefall series's\nportrayal of hiveminds is quite probably the opposite of everything I\ncritique hereafter.] I mainly speak of Blood Music, a Hugo\naward-winning classic a friend had been urging me to read for\nyears.^Ever since they first read Black Nerve and its concept of\n[ichor.]  It's a\nbook where genetic engineering can grant individual cells intelligence\ncomparable to humans, and thus the millions of cells in a researcher's\npetri dish soon ascend to a level of organization to rival an entire\ncivilization.\n\nAdmittedly, even mentioning it in this article somewhat spoils its\nlatter plot developments --- in short, it goes full [parasitoid\nsingularity, and humans are all\nassimilated into the grand noocyte collective.]{.spoiler}\n\nPerhaps that's enough to furnish my point.  I don't mean to simply\nrecommend good fiction here.  I've mentioned these stories to\ndemonstrate that when this post goes on to characterize portrayals of\ngroup minds, my target is something more specific than a common\ndenominator of this trope, that of some race of bug aliens, fodder for\nhumans to war against without understanding.\n\nSo many writers now boldly ask: what if hiveminds were Good, Actually?\n\nSympathy for the Pandaemonium\n\nThat is to say, I find it's increasingly common to write about group\nminds and psychic collectives with credulity and sympathy.  It goes\nwithout further elaboration the appeal of a society where you are\nnever alone and never deprived of understanding nor trust.\n\nThe question I ask is: does this hold up to scrutiny?  Soft science\nfiction is often guilty of technobabble, a vague handwaving to\n\"nanotechnology\" or \"quantum wormhole hyperspace,\" after which the story's\nconceits are expected to be blanketed in a protective coating of\nplausibility. Writers of such stories traffic in magic with a veneer\nof science.\n\nAre group minds another kind of vacuous magic?\n\nNow, I am a fantasy writer (albeit with ambitions to match hard\nscifi), so I'm hardly opposed to writing about magic.  When I think\nhivemind, I think telepathy before I think exocortex routing\nprotocols. And when you grant that your group mind is unabashedly\nmagical, it can work however you please. But how they work has\nimplications.\n\nFundamentally, the dissatisfaction I have with group minds rests on\ntwo misunderstandings of the world that color how they're portrayed\n(And a last point that is just a nitpick becomes I'm a sucker for\nlogistics.)\n\nFor the rest of this post, understand references to a \"hivemind\" to be\nreferring to a particular type: a united, comforting consciousness.\nYour sisters and siblings in the hive love you unconditionally and\nunderstand you perfectly.  What one member knows, the hive all knows.\nWhat one member wants, the hive all wants.  But the hive does not\nsmother or erase or negate your individuality (that's close-minded\n---heh!--- thinking). No, your identity is simply one thread woven\ninto a tapestry of something grander.\n\nThat is what I consider the general form.  Tropes can vary in\nexecution, not all of this needs to be strictly true, each property\ncan get greater or lesser emphasis.  But if this sort of describes\nwhat a story has going on?  Then I'm not sure I actually buy it.\n\nWhy?  Well, it comes down to the two aforementioned misunderstandings.\nThe fallacies I take issue with are one: the idea that ambiguity is a\ntreachery of language itself, and two: the idea that social conflict\nis a bug, not a feature.\n\nAmbiguity's Eternal Regress\n\nThis first fallacy actually holds for psychic abilities and mind\nreading powers generally, not just in hiveminds.  It's so tempting to\nview these words of ours as a lossy imprint of ourselves, or to\nbelieve that we nurse some well of pellucid intent deep inside of us,\nwith only a small portion of it able to leak out.  We easily believe\nthat we are Cartesian commanders, minds dispatching instructions to\nbodies that are at best imperfect servants thereof.\n\nAlready we're in trouble here. I would argue it's often the opposite\n--- consciousness is an illusion, our internalities are a jumbled\nmess, and performing a truly accurate \"reading\" of a mind by any\nreductionist mechanism would be more\nconfusing than just asking the person --- brains are complicated!\n\nAnd the operation of the brain is a matter of feedback cycles,\ninformation going both ways.  Your \"intent\" can be just as well be\nsomething that arising simultaneous with you expressing it --- or be\ntransformed by the process --- rather than always preceding it. \n\nAnd of course, the conscious processes are but a small fraction of\nwhat actually goes into in an organism's behavior.\n\nHere, a concrete example. Imagine someone with poor introspection,\nrepressing their emotions so effectively they're genuinely unaware of\nwhat they should feel. Someone might read anger into their tone,\ntension in their body language, but this is all stress they aren't\nconscious expressing: they would deny they are angry.\n\nIn this scenario, what should we assume a mindreader receives?\nIdeally, they might parse out both the unconscious sentiment and the\nconscious intent, and perhaps even discern the line of repression that\ndemarcates the two.  Still, the emotion certainly isn't intended ---\nthe target might even protest this interpretation!\n\nI'm belaboring a simple point: we don't un",
  "title": "Some Hivemind Fallacies"
}