Graph Minds

I will call this notional maximally safely collectivized intelligence a Graph Mind.

Idealized conditions of maximally collectivized security, material abundance, aesthetic experience, sentimental experience, and emotional experience are imagined as utopias. But idealized conditions of maximally collectivized intelligence, true hive-minds, are generally imagined as dystopias, as in the Borg in Star Trek, or the Cyber-Men in Doctor ... See more

collective thinking behaviors are treated as epiphenomena at best, and pathologies at worst.

We find the eusocial intelligence of insects like ants and bees particularly striking, since the swarm appears so much more intelligent than the automaton individuals, yet we turn our own much more capable coordination mechanisms, such as markets, bureaucracies and corporations, into cartoon antagonists for courageous rebels operating individually ... See more

We like the idea of dissolving individuality when it comes to playing together, fighting together, laboring together, feeling together, praying together, dreaming together, or dancing together — all behaviors that involve some intelligence in varied narrow senses, but are not primarily about thinking. But we are extraordinarily wary of the idea of ... See more

Doing “deep learning” in vast, pooled, individuality-dissolving intelligence collectives is apparently for machines and insects, not us. Even though we’re just coming off a couple of centuries doing exactly that in vast and hyper-specialized industrial economies. What might it mean to lean into that, instead of resisting and retreating?

This fear does not seem to stop us from appreciating the power of collectivized intelligence from a safe distance, however. For instance, we are quick to notice effectively collectivized intelligence in other species. 

For some reason, we are reluctant to entertain the possibility that a full expression of human intelligence is perhaps necessarily and intrinsically social. And so Fear of the Borg holds us back from exploring the most promising directions for the future evolution of intelligence itself.

It is a strange thing: we acknowledge the generally social nature of our species, but resist acknowledging the specifically social nature of our intelligence.

The primary modern manifestation is what I’ve previously labeled waldenponding — a fearful retreat from the technologically mediated modes of rich connection that would enable such maximal collectivization. The fetish object of the waldenponder is the individual brain doing “deep” work, with minimal collectivization, and maximal egoism.