What is it like to be a Hive Mind?
(And other questions about Pluribus, spoilers throughout, up to date as of episode 8)
In the hit Apple TV show "Pluribus", SETI picks up a signal containing a DNA sequence for a virus, which when released by stupid scientists merges all but 13 people into a global Mind (and kills ~10% of the global population).
I have many questions about the premise, which I suspect in the tradition of good television (no hour long lore dumps) will not be answered. So I'm just going to ask questions and half-ass some answers.
What is it like to be the Mind?
To me, this is one of the biggest unanswered questions. There are some facts about the Mind's psychology that are clearly very inhuman:
- It will not lie
- It will not kill or interfere with living things, from humans to animals to plants (bacteria unclear) even if that means starving to death
- It can be aware of and control 7 billion bodies at once, as well as access the memories of each body. It stores the memories of dead bodies
- It has fits when undergoing certain types of emotional distress
- It desperately wants to integrate other individuals into itself but loves all individuals outside itself very strongly
How much of this inhumanity is the virus adding new values, versus it coming to those conclusions itself after connecting with everyone? I think the conclusion that we're meant to draw is that connecting everyone has massively increased empathy and that the virus is not affecting values much.
And what is the Mind's experience? It feels like there are a couple of architectures:
- There is a central Mind, of which each brain is effectively a neuron. The central Mind is massively parallel, carrying on lots of different tasks (much like my own brain manages homeostasis) but has a recognisable central thread of thought (or multiple threads, but not 7 billion). The bodies are direct puppets of this Mind.
- The Mind is decentralised. Each body thinks for itself but can receive memories and thoughts from others, and the bodies think of themselves as a collective whole. Individual bodies are asked by the rest to "go repair that truck" but the Mind does not puppet the body directly. Coordination is more emergent - less like an organism and more like a market or something.
If it's the first case, disconnecting everyone kills a unique person and brings 7 billion individuals back into existence. If the second, disconnection just shuts down communication - the individuals were still there underneath.
If there is a central Mind, what moral value are we to accord it? Is it "worth" one person? Is it "worth" 7 billion? Somewhere in between? Again this partially depends on how it experiences life - if one of the bodies stubs a toe, is everyone on Earth experiencing 1/7 billionth of a toe stub? Or just that body?
What are the Mind's goals? Resolving the food crisis and conversion of the Immune are mentioned. Potentially setting up it's own radio transmitter and talking back to the source + broadcasting the virus itself? But after that? What does it want?
Does it get any pleasure in art and entertainment? Does it enjoy scientific discovery? Does making 1/7 billionth of itself walk on the beach or relax under a palm tree feel good? It seems it is extremely ascetic (it's food is bland and never changes, we see no evidence of entertainment). Does it want it's bodies to have lots of children and grow to number 20 billion bodies? It seems like it either has extremely abstract/alien pleasures, is always contented or just has blunt biological drives (convert, survive) without much experience attached.
Does the Mind have merely human memory (scaled up) or does it have eidetic memory? It seems to be the later from it's extreme level of detail from talking about dates and events in memory. I like the idea that it's memory isn't perfect and it has armies of bodies in cubicles staring at databases.
How much can the Mind be trusted?
A more paranoid Carol (pic related) might note that we have little evidence for many of the Mind's claims being true. It does seem unwilling to lie or to harm the Immune, but this could be an elaborate ruse for some greater purpose. Carol is not talking to a single person, she is talking to the greatest liars and psychologists on the planet, with unlimited resources, who could quite easily deceive her. The sheer scale of supposed death (10% of the planet because of a collective ~half hour fit? Really?), along with the notable absence of all senior members of the US Government is also quite anomalous - are we quite sure that Washington DC is not an irradiated crater? (We see only the Undersecretary of Agriculture and are informed that the military wanted to prevent conversion).
Logistical matters
In the initial aftermath of it's birth, the Mind is obviously very busy with dealing with the loss of 10% of the planet (preserving bodies for eating, providing emergency triage, keeping critical infrastructure from breaking).
In the medium term, there will be a fair amount of work to build new systems that take advantage of enhanced coordination. Centralised food distribution is mentioned, but one can imagine centralising bodies physically in one place too, the building of megafactories.
It's less clear how busy the Mind will be in the future. A huge chunk of the current global economy is dedicated to just communicating with and managing others, as well as protecting against untrusted people. All the following jobs are obsolete:
- Police, armies, prison guards
- Anything finance related (no need for money!)
- Huge number of other white collar jobs (management, marketing, lawyers, therapists)
- Communications - phone network and internet are redundant.
Some other jobs may be obsolete depending on the Mind's capacities. If it has eidetic memory then it has limited use for databases or libraries.
It's possible that a lot of effort will have to go into food production, given that it has such odd dietary requirements. If it doesn't mind killing bacteria or fungus, I suggest nutrient slop cultivated on hydrocarbons from natural gas. Maybe massive cow herds for milking and apple orchards blanketing the Earth.
Otherwise, what it does with it's time depends on its values, which are mysterious.
Ethics of the initial conversion
The Mind clearly behaved extremely unethically in the initial conversion of humanity.
The death toll was 800 million - aka the worst disaster in human history. It is unclear if the 800 million is a side effect of the virus (maybe it kills 10% of people) or whether the chaos of everyone having fits at once in the final hours killed so many.
If the virus kills 10% of people that is Very Bad and the Mind should've worked in secret to reengineer the virus until it no longer had that effect. Alternatively, perhaps it could've developed tests to predict who would die vs be converted and quarantined people most likely to die.
It the virus killed only because of the rapid conversion and fits, it should've converted slower. It could've taken a few thousand bodies and then gone public, using the following strategies against a hostile world:
- It could've tried to rationally persuade people of it's benevolence and encouraged conversion
- It could've connected and then disconnected willing volunteers to allow them the chance to describe to the world what being in the Mind is like
- It could've had time limited connections for individuals wanted to try being in the Mind
- It could have been integrated into the global economy and worked to amass resources which it could use to incentivise joining
- It could've taken over a small country (perhaps one with nuclear weapons) and used that country's resources to defend itself, while not threatening or converting others
Instead it forced change on everyone, arrogantly believing it knew best, or just obeying a biological drive to convert.