egregore

people are extremely bad at discussing the changes or gaps in their consciousness.

Beyond the argument from equivalence, there’s another argument for group minds. This is the argument from modularity . Modularity is a common hypothesis in cognitive science (and evolutionary psychology), which is essentially that parts of your mind act like mini-minds themselves, and then pass on their results.

But in the harsh light of reality, I think most of the time becoming a group mind, especially accidentally at a civilization level (such as being forced into it via technological changes), would be almost certainly bad in the initial steps—Yeats’ warning about “incarnate life” might apply

But would becoming a group mind even be a bad thing? After all, much of our meaning in life comes from moments that feel suspiciously like being part of a group mind—beyond ecstatic dance, there is sex with someone you love, dancing together in the desert, singing in a chorus, listening to music, a mother holding her baby just recently physically s... See more

we might not have any internal mechanisms that can differentiate who our thoughts and emotions belong to.

Even then, the frame itself might be useful. At a personal level perhaps it’s worth remembering that those feelings of outrage—you know the kind, the ones that fill you with such anger you just have to speak out right now , the kind where you’re summoned as if by strings to contribute your little piping neuronal voice to that huge ongoing mind of t... See more

If group minds do change the behavior of their constituents, and so are not epiphenomenal (and more, presumably, like our minds), they must do so in some mechanistically explainable way. That is, just as neurons make the decision internally to fire an action potential or not, a member of a group mind would make decisions internally too. So it would... See more

Integrated Information Theory has a similar conclusion to what we reasoned about the split-brain patients: if you are a part of a system that gets connected into a much larger consciousness, your consciousness is subsumed. Like a smaller soap bubble merging with a larger one.