Is a Hivemind Becoming A Necessity?

[elfs]

One of the less important points in my post entitled Intelligent Design and The Legend of the Lone Scientist is that scientific research these days involves thinking about things in such a broad manner that it takes more than one head to get headaround on any given project. While there have been a number of recent research projects that have been done by one man, they're projects that are done at the one-man scale, and most of the ones I can think of are in zoology or taxonomy. Anything deeper and you're talking teams.

But teams are by definition wasteful. There's an upper bound to how much input the core thought of a team can be distributed among its members, and how useful adding additional people to the team can be. Ultimately, you end up with a circumstance in which more people make for less meaningful work; they become a drag on the system as their ideas require more winnowing to reach the really good ones.

We have effectively tapped out the ideas within reach of a single mind; we are now researching the ideas that are within reach of a team of human beings. We have added tools to improve filtration, winnowing, and so forth: wikis, fora, email, and so forth allow teams to improve their responsiveness and capabilities, but there's only so much that these extensions to hands, eyes, and voices can do.

We're eventually going to face problems that require so much thought that either the machines will do it and we'll just try to understand what they came up with, or we'll become part of the machine and use its storage and automation all the more efficiently. One of the reasons for the hyberbolic growth curve in knowledge has been the growth of knowledge management, from oral histories to written words to indexed libraries to digital collections, wikis, and search engines. There is a limit, however, to even what a team can accomplish with these tools, limits imposed by the borders of flesh. Either we will hit those limits and stop, or we will penetrate those borders and become hive.

Comments

Does it really matter if it IS a necessity?

[(Anonymous)]

If the benefits of collaboration of that type are great enough, then whether or not it is the only way becomes irrelevant. Most of our science will end up being done that way anyway, simply because of selection pressure. It will just be cheaper...

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I don't think we'll literally become a hivemind, but I do think that part of the Singularity will be an immmense expansion of the ease of collaboration. Some of this is already happening, with the vast expansion of the Internet. Topics that I used to have to make major library expeditions to find information on are now researchable with a few Googles, maybe another few to verify controversial data. Imagine what this will be like if we have sf-nal neurolinked web-searching (no brain fries, please, the Singularity will have fuses!), on an even bigger and user-friendlier system.

Not quite.

[joeypimping.livejournal.com]

In the scientific world, its usually one man with an idea and a bunch of underlyings that carries out the experiments. So I would have to say that a hivemind is necessary

Not quite.

[joeypimping.livejournal.com]

In the scientific world, its usually one man with an idea and a bunch of underlyings that carries out the experiments. So I would have to say that a hivemind is not necessary

Not really a hive mind...

[rand0m1.livejournal.com]

This post has been eating at me a little bit for a while and I finally figured out why.

Part of it stems from the concept of "hive mind". More than likely you're not using the term in the same way I think of it but I thought it might be useful to bring up. When I think of a hive mind I think of many minds combined to make one. All minds thinking the same thoughts about the same things. In contrast, I think what we actually have in the scientific community is a group of many minds thinking many different thoughts about a subject.

I think there's an important distinction here. I've always been of the opinion that all data we gather and process is filtered through our own perceptions. (This isn't exactly a fault. We can't avoid this since it is bound up in the very nature of our being. I've explained this poorly but I could go on for pages on this subject and still not cover it all.)

Anyway, what we currently have is a group of minds, gathering and processing information through their own perceptions. While each individual mind may not have a broad area of expertise, it is capable of becoming very specialized in its own area. (A single mind can do only do so much. It can have a broad but shallow area of knowledge or it can have a narrow area of knowledge, but that knowledge is very deep.) Gather many of these minds together and you have a group who then has both a broad and a deep area of knowledge. Each mind is processing its knowledge through its own perceptions.

You now have a group who has access to large amount of information that is both broad in nature as well as deep in content. In what I feel is one of the finest virtues of modern science, you have multiple minds thinking independent thoughts about the information available. The group can then see where these thoughts match up, and basically be able to filter out the individual perceptions in order to get to the root of "reality".

(I have to apologize here. I've never been very good at expressing myself through writing and I fear that last paragraph does a poor job no matter how many times I rewrite it.)

We also need to remember that even in ancient times, no one mind worked in a total vacuum. Every brilliant mind built upon the results of the minds who came before him. They would also communicate with their peers when possible, though communication would often be slow.

So, what we really have now is the ability to progress more information (more thoughts) faster than we have in the past. If you really look at scientific and technological advancement in the past 100 years, you will see we have made progress in major leaps and bounds as compared to previous eras of time. As time goes this gets faster as methods of communication become faster.

In contrast, in what I consider a hive mind, you have many minds all thinking the same thoughts, often forced through the same perceptions. In what I feel are some of the saddest aspects of human nature, what we often end up with is a few individuals dictating the thoughts and perceptions of the masses. You can see why only 13% of Americans can discern the viewpoint of an editorial. The majority of people out there have always blindly done and believed what they were told by whoever the authority is. They have no concept of the idea of an independent opinion. They have no concept of perception because you would need more than one perception in order to see that there could be a difference between that perception and reality.

Is it any wonder why so many Americans chose a president based upon who they would prefer to go out for a beer with?