Wait! Putting others’ wellbeing before your own means you don’t care about your own?
Throwing away their lives for no reason does.
You are correct that the do not have an imperative to preserve every body that belongs to the hive, however, that does not mean they throw their lives away for no reason. In the example you gave, the reason was to save Carol’s life. They can value saving one of the unconnected at a higher level than saving one of their own bodies without meaning that they don’t care about their own bodies or that they do it for no reason.
You’re really not landing on a point here. The cases we’ve seen where the hive was willow to let its bodies die all had some sort of reason (one of their stated biological imperatives, or saving Carol’s life)
When have we seen that?
I agree.
I get why they would sacrifice one of themselves for Carol. As a hive mind losing one individual really is not a loss to them. Not that they’d be careless with any life but protecting the 13 at the cost of one of them makes sense.
What I do not get is, assuming the hive mind can be reversed, why the hive will willingly let humanity die off rather than leave so humanity might live? The hive has this weird reverence for life to the point they will not even pick an apple to eat to survive but will also let themselves starve to death and wipe-out an entire species rather than undo the hive?
Seems a mismatch to me.
Converting an unjoined is not considered killing them.
Would you let your family die (or even kill them) so that you might live? I think that is the situation they are in. They love all life equally.
We could hypothesize that as this spread across the galaxy, it evolved or behaved differently with different intelligent species. What made sense eons ago manifested differently here. Evolution isn’t always logical. The Hive has no idea what happened back at that other planet
Sure, weird reverence for life. Emphasis on “weird.” They possess the combined intellect and knowledge of the human race. So they know releasing domestic animals to fend for themselves is going to result in a massive death count as countless pets or livestock starve, sicken or are devoured by wild predators. They don’t care beyond the abstract ( they might think it’s a shame, but hey that’s life), because their biological imperative demands it.
They also don’t care about restoring humanity - why would they undo perfect bliss? The biological imperative insists on spreading the Hive and the biological imperative may be politely regretful over the demise of humanity. But they are never, ever going to restore it anymore than they’re going to keep and shelter pets even if on some level they appreciate what a good boy they are. Through the Hive, humanity has achieved apotheosis. They haven’t eliminated a species, they have transcended it.
“Restoring” them almost certainly = harming them from their POV.
There is no rationally consistent concern about any life: there are simply rules to hive must follow.
They can milk cows. But they cannot eat fruit even though being eaten off the tree is more a natural part of the fruit tree life cycle is than having milk pumped and drunk by humans is for cows. And they release all pets and zoo animals many of whom will then, as a result, die horribly. They would passively let the human species wither to extinction if necessary rather than actively harvest.
The hive is happy no matter what because it is in the state of bliss. It may try to avoid having situations that cause more loss of its component parts, but I heard no sadness or anger at the deaths of any of their numbers. Just wanting space. Its love is unconditional.
Does it think and decide on a very large unit scale? It might but all we have seen is thought about how to execute its stated biological imperatives - to share the gift as fully and as widely as possible, to cater to and “love” the others left, and to not intentionally cause harm (as they see harm) to any other life form.
But there is no apparent thought possible about the goals. That we have seen anyway.
I wonder…is it possible for a species to exist which does not consume other living things (like plants)? I suppose plants do not necessarily “eat” other living things to survive. Hard to imagine and intelligent species of plants though.
If so, the hive mind is really just a soft death sentence to any species subsumed by it.
Maybe that is the point. It is an invasion meant to kill everyone but less painful…kinda.
I can’t see how the hive mind ever improves a planet it gets to. Most likely to kill off those it takes over.
We’ve never seen them reproduce (although given the inevitable death of the species they may have chosen to not reproduce).
Carrion feeders, earthworms, any bugs or fish that live off dead stuff on the forest or ocean floor.
It still remains to be seen what the ultimate nature of it/they/whatever-we-call-it is. Is it an individual? A hive? Does it have emotions like love or guilt? Or is it just a bundle of appendages that act with co-ordination but only according to instinct or “biological imperative” without any central self-awareness at all?
That makes me think of science fiction writer Peter Watts’ novel Blindsight, which asks the question, is self-awareness even necessary for a technologically advanced species? Might self-awareness itself even be maladapive?
(Blindsight may be freely read or downloaded with Watts’ blessing at his own website.)
To be specific, they left town when Carol drugged Zosia and tried to force her to tell the secret of undoing the Plurb. They made quite an effort to stop Carol from doing that. They did NOT leave town when Carol killed millions of them. If Carol had just been cutting pieces off Zosia for her own amusement, it’s less clear that they would have objected.
That’s consistent with their desire to protect their unity, but not necessarily consistent with a desire to protect an individual.
And if Inrecall correctly, they asked Carol’s permission to save Zosia; if Carol had said no, Zosia would have died.
The weirdos have their reasons, although the weirdos’ reasons probably don’t make a lot of sense. What kind of life form works toward its own extinction?
Possibly humans. TBD, I suppose, but the trend isn’t looking great lately.
They are working towards reproduction, the whole giant antenna thing. The death of the hosts seems irrelevant.
Right. By passing on the “space virus” to a new host they will have successfully reproduced.
The causative organism of plague spreads because it forms a filmy mass in the mouth parts of infected fleas, preventing them from ingesting properly. The starving fleas then bite and bite desperately, repeatedly vomiting the bacteria clogging their mouth parts back into the wound. Eventually the flea starves to death.
Plague don’t care. It’s already happily spreading in a ground squirrel and thence into more fleas. Mission accomplished.
I haven’t read all 1,199 posts, so maybe this has been discussed.
Does the Pluribus “virus” infect and control animals other than humans? Does it link their consciousness, too? Because, the rat that started the infection sure behaved like it had a plan.