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

I have hardly ever encountered a thought along the lines of “It is adaptive for humans to band together into collectives because it allows more powerful collective intelligences to emerge.”

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.

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?

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

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. 

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

It almost feels like there is a sort of conspiracy to construct intelligence as a primarily individual trait, and hide the extent and depth of its social character from ourselves.