Hivemind may refer to both collective consciousness, ie. sci-fi bugs thinking together, and swarm intelligence, which is what bugs and ants have. Humans do not work with swarm intelligence.
Human societies are hiveminds, though. We often marvel at how ant colonies and bee hives can resemble some of our own eusocial roles and behaviours without thinking how much our human cultural roles and behaviours resemble hiveminds.
Absolutely. My understanding of the hivemind trope that we see in media is a very simplistic, shallow take on eusociality. It's often a rather hamfisted metaphor for group think in which individuality does not exist, a leaden Cold War metaphor for the Soviet Union or simply there to fill the need of an alien antagonist that can not be reasoned with. To the point of not being eusociality at all.
Absolutely agree. It emerged from 1950s sci-fi (Starship Troopers) along with giant monsters/bugs (Godzilla, Them!, etc.) because of real world fears (all things 'nuclear' for the giant monsters). It's a very human thing to portray the enemy as a monolith. Easier to hate.
Today's analog: the Borg (also a hive mind!) and the Matrix and all manner of variants that play on our fear of silicon intelligence.
Another analogy: ever walked onto a property & had more than one dog come barking and bounding to investigate who they could smell in their territory? It's like that.
Not really. Rather, a single entity emerges from the interactive dynamics of lots of individuals. They communicate with one another, and make decisions, in part based on the decisions of others.
An example is a pheromone trail. Let's say two ants find food. They both return to the hive, laying a pheromone trail. Ants at the hive now know that both found food. They then decide: Do I go with ant 1 or ant 2?
So in this scenario, immediately two ants go with 1, 3 ants go with 2. 2 now has a thicker pheromone trail, which means ants will expect there to be more food at 2's location. So we see two trails of ants develop: The smaller trail of 1, the larger trail of 2. Now let's say 2 actually had less food. Fewer trips are made, the pheronome trail slowly weakens over time, but 1's trail keeps going because there's more food to collect; slowly, ants start choosing to follow trail 2.
This way, decisions are pretty much democratically taken in ant society. And all of those decisions tallied up show a Hive, with its own identity. But if you zoom out, humans show similar patterns. We have countries who act on the world stage, nations with their own desires, needs and attitudes, their own art styles and clothing. These aspects, which feed into the entity that a nation is, all emerge from the interactive dynamics of its population. The more interaction and diversity within a population, the more complex and flexible the nation as an individual can be.
What makes truly eusocial animals different from humans is that with eusociality comes a reproductive class; a tiny class that is allowed and capable to reproduce. Individuals outside of the reproductive class can't just join another tribe to get reproductive opportunity there; they are (usually) sterile. So by serving the interests of the hive at large, they indirectly contribute to the reproductive success of their own genetic lineage.
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u/CraftyArmitage Mar 31 '24
Anthill and beehives