Are Hive Minds Inevitable?

Hive minds are not just a sci fi trope. They might be a natural outcome of evolution.

In this episode of Entropy Rising, we explore whether hive minds could realistically evolve in nature and whether advanced civilizations might choose to become networked intelligences. Are the Borg pure fantasy, or is there a biologically plausible path to collective consciousness? Could something like the Conjoiners from Revelation Space represent a more realistic future?

We break down the difference between a true hive mind and a networked intelligence. From ant colonies and pheromones to biological radios and interstellar communication limits, we examine what physics and biology actually allow. We also tackle the uncomfortable questions: Do you lose free will in a hive mind? Could a civilization scale across the galaxy if its thoughts are limited by the speed of light? And could this be part of the Fermi Paradox?

This episode moves from evolutionary biology to spacefaring civilizations, asking whether merging minds is dystopian, utopian, or simply inevitable.

Would you join one?

Transcript

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You can have a hive. My made up of intelligent individuals, for example, I was thinking of a situation where maybe you have a hive made up of individuals who have human level intelligence, but they just have really strong biological responses to certain stimuli, Like pheromones or even sounds, and it's not hard to imagine, right? Humans have that already. We have empathy. Naturally, if I see someone in trouble, the human response is that you want to help, right? But we can walk away from that. We can override that response. But imagine a species evolving where they can't, where if there's a, a call for help, they, they're literally biologically forced to respond. And in that way, you could potentially have a hive mind made up of very intelligent. individual members, it's just that they feel compelled to respond to the cues of the hive. Hello and welcome to Entropy Rising, a podcast dedicated to talking about the science and science fiction and taking a realistic look at where we could end up in the future. I'm your host Jacob, and joining me is my always lovely co-host Lucas. You think I'm lovely? Thank you. I do, I do. Yeah, no, I think that's an accurate description. Wonderful. I'm doing great, Jake and yourself? I'm doing wonderful. I'm happy to be recording and I'm really excited for the topic we're diving into today. Where we're gonna be looking at hive mines are gonna be taking a dive into, how hive mines could realistically evolve in nature and and talk about if that's possible for group intelligence to evolve from a natural perspective. We're gonna be talking about how advanced species may actually. Grow into, uh, networked intelligences and hive minds and really just be looking at everything in between. So I think this will be an interesting topic. And think it lines up well with, uh, I know I just watched Pluribus. I think that's the name of the show. I hope I'm not mispronouncing it. Oh, yeah. It definitely inspired us, to think about this concept and I dive a little bit deeper into it, so it should be very exciting. No, absolutely. So I'm looking forward to it. And I've always been a huge fan of things like Star Trek and the Borg has always been a huge. I don't know. Frightening entity. No. Great antagonist. Yeah, absolutely. And it's not the only hive mind we've see in science fiction. So I do think this is gonna be, a fun topic, uh, and, and rife with, uh, source material. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So first I thought it would be good to actually talk about what a hive mind is and the different types that can exist. Yeah, that's a great thing to dive into with first, because I feel like a lot of people have different concepts of what hive minds are. They might even, misplace them with a more like a networked intelligence, which is a larger, subsection of what a hive mind is. A hive mind falls into that category, but they have key differences between them. So, Jake, what to you is a hive mind? Yeah. So I guess, and I might fall under the same issue 'cause I, you said networked intelligences and I do agree. I do think that. A networked intelligence can fall under that category of hive mind. But when you say hive mind specifically, I think what comes to my mind is a situation where the individual kind of ceases to exist and they work for the greater good of the groups. This can be something like maybe an ant and an ant colony, or like a drone from the Borg where. you don't really have individuality. You are just a part of a broader collective, and maybe in the most extreme case, that broader collective can be one controlling consciousness that's essentially spread out over a bunch of biological nodes. With those biological nodes being the individuals who make up the hive mind. See, I 100% agree with you. It's that loss of your ability to be an individual in any capacity, right? I feel like is what really creates that vision of a hive mind. Where you're all just working for the network or for the gestural consciousness, whatever it is that you're working for. It's that complete loss of who you are as a person. But there are a lot of different steps that I feel like people confuse hive minds with when it comes to network consciousness leading into a hive mind. Like you can argue that there's a lot of things right now that are network consciousness is, and that's because a network consciousness is just the transfer of information between. it can be between, you know, a race, like, like you can consider humanity as a network consciousness. You can consider some of the things that we've done as adding to our network consciousness. Like writing was a great, great example of that. We were able to bring in information from living people and transcend not only space by sending the letters, but also time by incorporating people who have passed on. that transfer of information was great. And then you can move into things like, um, cities, which are networks on their own. Um, and that is also within humanities bounds that you can transfer information faster. And then finally, the biggest leap that we've had so far, and that a lot of us have noticed and some of us are even old enough to remember a time without, was the internet that created us to be a gigantic, networked intelligence and really expand in that way. I think you hit a lot of nails in the head. And then one that you didn't specifically state that I do wanna dive into'cause is really important is the invention of verbal communication. I think more than anything really made us the network intelligence that we are. It's an amazing way to communicate ideas and share values and, and you can argue, I think that humanity is on that spectrum of hive mind, right? Mm-hmm. It's not, obviously we're not a hive mind, we're not a collective intelligence, but we are in many ways, like an ant colony or a bees. We joined together to make up a civilization that's greater than the sum of all of its parts. And for me, I think that it does make sense that you could consider us, uh, a network intelligence, at least to an extent. And that's something that we might continue to expand upon in the future. Obviously we've added many technologies in our, under our tool belt, like writing, like you mentioned before. Also, of course, the internet would be hard to understate what that's done for us. So no, absolutely. I agree with that. I do wonder, do you think there could be situations where. Humanity is, I think, a fairly low level of network intelligence, right? We're still very individualistic, even if we are able to communicate and share ideas. But I, I wonder how in nature, you could see hive minds developing and forming. to a greater extent than what humanity has done. And maybe also not just a hive mine, like an ant colony or a bees nest, but a, a true civilization scale. Maybe able to go into a space and build advanced technology hive mine from a natural background. That is actually a super interesting question to ponder because we think of humanity as it progressing right, through these different ages. But we do it with the help of technology and through structure, like, like building channels to go back and forth with our technology now going to a more biological standpoint. I feel like this really is what encourages that, feel of what a hive mine could be. Because now we're talking about literal hives. like insects of course are going to be our starting point. I feel like we see that the most with ant colonies. And bees nest. Or bees. Hi. they have individuals that are able to communicate through chemical means or through different dancing means that are very subtle, but convey a lot of information. And that information isn't being conveyed over there, but it's triggering something in them to know that that's what they need to do next. So with a small action, you create a big response. I feel like if that continues and something were to want to evolve to a point to where it became a higher, neural network and wanted to eventually become a hive mind, it could develop technologies biologically that could allow for it to do that even more efficiently. Yeah, I could see that. it doesn't necessarily have to be from an insect perspective, but I do think just for the, the sake of what we have on Earth, it is fun to think about a situation where ans or bees basically evolve to be intelligent, right? Mm-hmm. And then, like you said, what type of biological technologies could come to exist? Because when we see Hive mines represented in science fiction, I think one of the, the tropes that we see a lot. Is that they're able to communicate telepathically, yes, there's this connection between the members that, is just some magical connection that happens almost instantaneously. And right now we don't, we've never seen anything like that in nature. You know, mostly we see pheromones and then visual, cues with bees dancing. And I don't know if there's any auditory examples in nature, but I don't think of any. Mm-hmm. So I was thinking, you know, maybe there are some biological technologies that could happen. Like imagine you have a hive mind form, some hive insect species that advances and, and maybe a, a higher collective intelligence starts to form. Where the hive basically represents like individual neurons in a brain. Right? Imagine an advanced ant colony where the individual ants, basically make up processing centers for a, a more group consciousness that traditional hive mind, right? Right. could that potential evolved consciousness than direct evolution toward developing things like biological radio to have that telepathy communication, like what we see in science fiction. Mm-hmm. And you know, from a biological perspective, I can't really find any reason why biological radios couldn't exist. We already have animals on earth that can manipulate the electromagnetic field. Electric yields being a, a, a superb example of that. Mm-hmm. And so expanding upon that and designing an animal that could potentially transmit and receive, to have that linked communication at least seems biologically possible. If not evolutionarily, highly unprobable to evolve. So if you had a kind of collective intelligence that was driving that mm-hmm. Uh, maybe it could be possible. it's easy to imagine that could be possible because you see it even conveyed, not even if it's not pure telepathy. Like you'll see aliens, you know, they have antennae that they respond to each other with makes you feel like, like that is a organic radio. Now you mentioned that you could see that it would be possible for organic radio to like e evolve into one of these creatures and for them to be able to use it. What do you think is like, the main driving factor that that would actually push like from that? Hi. To be like, okay, we need to be able to communicate amongst longer distances. So what I would say is that I think it's at least not violating any laws of my, for an organic radio to exist. Mm-hmm. I can't see any reason why that's not possible. I really struggle to find or to imagine evolutionary pathways where that would be preferred. And the main reason being is how insanely energy intensive it would be. You would be dedicating a very. Large portion of your metabolism to receiving and transmitting these signals. And if you're going at it from a hive mind perspective and every member has to constantly be receiving and uh, and transmitting that, that's a huge caloric dedication. Yeah. It would take, so from an evolutionary perspective, maybe not, but from a position where. If you had this greater intelligence evolve out of a hive organism, and it could actually selectively drive evolution, especially because a greater intelligence, right? Like if we're imagining some alien species of insect where there's what you see in science fiction, right? Uh, right. a level above intelligence. It could persist for potentially thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, while the individual members of that species might, be born, grow old, and die. The, the net consciousness could stay forever, be like a, a normal human brain. Just imagine where your, your neurons slowly die and get replaced with new ones. And so over long periods of time on the alien world, maybe you have this broader intelligence actually intelligently guiding evolution to develop advances for its species, like something like a biological radio where it doesn't make sense evolutionarily. but because there's an intelligence behind it, it can push through those traditional evolutionary, hurdles. Yeah. That, that is actually such an amazing concept because it's like you have this being behind everything that's sort of like, like selecting and breeding. Mm-hmm. Essentially to make its colony push into the next step, And if you have a consciousness that is storing a lot of the information, it actually would probably save them some calories and room because they wouldn't be thinking so much for themselves. Yeah, exactly. Just to further clarify in this, hypothetical problem I'm imagining is essentially imagine, an ant colony where there's an intelligence that can actually over a evolutionarily timescale, encourage certain subsets of the caste system in these ants to evolve and actually guide that direction. And like you said, that could lead to. some things existing that, otherwise wouldn't naturally evolve. Yeah, and that makes me think the same fate could happen for humanity, but just in a different way, right? If we were to progress, not biologically but technologically and continue forth in a way that we started adding implants or things into ourselves to become more and more hooked into a network, at what point does it become we. Don't have free will because we're all sharing so much information with each other that it's like we become onto a same plane of understanding amongst everybody. Is that still a hive mind or do we just all understand each other so much to a point to where. we care for each other in that way. It is, um, a complex question. Where do you draw on that line? Because, it seems like networked intelligence is something that is a very real possibility that could happen with not just humanity, but any technological species. Over the last, I mean, especially one to 200 years, we've really seen a push for. More and more and more connectivity between humans, and especially in the past 50 years with the mention of telephone and, and the internet. So it's not hard to extrapolate that further. Right? And imagine a future where you have implants that, makes it easier to communicate, basically through telepathy with another brain. And I think one of my favorite examples from this is the conjoin us from Revelation space because they're, they're a great example of a networked intelligence where there's still individuals at the end of the day. Like you have an individual consciousness. You don't just. Dissolve into the mass, but their brains are connected in such a way that makes any other form of communication seem painfully slow to them. Right? It would be like us going back and trying to communicate exclusively through Morse code is how painful they find verbal communication. It's just the bandwidth isn't there for them and they're able to share entire concepts, ideas, feelings. in the span of milliseconds to someone. Mm-hmm. Instead of taking time to turn your thoughts into words and then transmit those words to the next person whose brain needs to try to build a mental image, you can just send the entire concept you're thinking of. And that is a great example, but also in the books and revelation space, you come to learn that while you do maintain your own individuality. There are parts of your brain that can be accessed by other members of this networked intelligence. There are like compartments where you can hide things, but because your brain is essentially a computer that compartments can be hacked into and, and your, your private thoughts can be accessed against your will. So that's where it really does start to become that question you're thinking of, of like, okay, are you a, a member of a hive mind or are you one joint, organism, Especially if you have these implants so deeply embedded in your brain that it could influence you against your will or change your will in ways that you don't think about. Right? Yeah. it, of course, you know, when we get into that science, fiction aspect, you start to get that corruption, then it's like it could control your brain. but it's like, I'm just thinking of the fact if you were to be able to go out there and like you were saying, transmit data between people, feelings, deep emotions, entire experiences, and you get to that point to where it's like you're still an individual but you know everything about everybody. it's not a hive mind. Right. Technically but based off of what you and I both think of what a hive mind is, but it is something that is so close. To it, and it still feels really achievable, but it's that little bit of difference between, am I still me or am I part of a big thing That makes it really scary. I, I do agree. I think it's having your own individuality that makes it less dystopian and maybe even a bit utopian. And I think the, the reverse of that coin is also why the Borg makes such a great scary enemy, because you lose that individuality. You just. Merge into one. And I have also seen more utopian depictions of that as well. I mean, I don't know. I don't really wanna spoil any TV shows that have recently came out, but there is an idea that maybe it's a utopia, you join into a, a hive mind and it's great. But for me, I think once I lose individuality, it's, it becomes scary. But I did wanna just, actually reiterate something that you kind of brought up. Which is that it does sound objectively great to be able to communicate in such a way. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, and that's something we see in the conjoin I think we've all had the frustration of having something that you're trying to express in words, and you just can't find the words to adequately describe what you're thinking or feeling. And I could definitely see it being looked upon favorably to have that next level of connection. Where you don't need words, you can just send exactly what you're thinking of and feeling to a person and have that whole concept delivered in a nice little package. And I don't think it's a, you know, a crazy thought to see that technological species, whether it's humans or alien, might naturally tend to go in that direction to greater connectivity. Yeah. to your, account of that like. We developed language out of nowhere, which is just a simpler version of that. It is to convey information more efficiently and more accurately. So obviously if evolution will naturally push us to that point, what is to stop it from pushing us to that next one, the one after that. Right. So I, I absolutely agree with you that that is a very real possibility in the future. Yeah. And it's definitely something that I could see not just being a one-off case where humanity does, but. I, I struggle to call anything universal liable. That's not just like a law of biology, but I can see you trying to make a case that you essentially need to be a social species to be a space-faring species.'cause no one's building a civilization and technology by themselves. Mm-hmm. You have to have a species that is social and enjoys communicating. And you could make an argument that maybe because of that and that natural drive to be social, that would be required, and I would say a prerequisite being an advanced society, that it might be a, you know, a sort of universal realizable case that species tend to go in this direction toward a networked intelligence. And I've even seen it proposed that that could be a potential, uh, firmly paradox solution. The argument being that, okay, if. Species tend to prefer to go into a networked intelligence type situation where you're building a sort of, maybe not hive mind, but even something like a matrika brain. Mm-hmm. Or a networked intelligence like I was talking about with a conjoins. You know, not even necessarily one consciousness controlling multiple beings, but multiple beings who link up and have this extra layer of reality. Then that could restrict their ability to expand into the galaxy, because that connectivity can only move at the speed of light. And if you're so deeply connected, the idea of sending a ship out to the neighboring star where you're a four year communication lag, could be agony or impossible. Yeah, I mean, that's why, in science fiction we see a lot of these larger, galaxy spanning hive minds. A lot of it doesn't make sense because of the communication lag between them. Like, like you were saying, if you were a civilization and entwined with being All one mind and then splitting that, it's like you're taking part of your, your memories or, part of who you are, like part of your soul and just. Throwing it four years away, it would be horrific to think of. especially in the case where you actually had one consciousness spread over multiple beings. Mm-hmm. Then you know, it's essentially impossible because if you try to, grow and expand, you have two choices. Either you have to basically. Segment your consciousness and, and basically split into two different beings. or alternatively, you have to slow down basically your rate of your perception of time and how fast your thoughts transmit. Because as you spread out, you can only think as fast as the communication lag between two different nodes. So sure, you can expand into a multi star system hive mind, but it's gonna take you thousands of years to complete a single thought, right? If each neuron is light years apart, you know, having a simple thought could, could be a millennia long process. And, and God, if we saw something like the Borg from Star Trek, or like a truly galactic size hive mind, just a simple thought, would take hundreds of thousands of years.'cause our, our galaxy, you know, is about a hundred thousand layers across. So if your neurons were that spaced apart, took a hundred thousand years for two neurons to communicate. imagine how fast you would witness the universe go by. Yeah, no, it would be insane. And to Star Trek's point, they do try to kind of explain that by making the drones of them dumb. So it's like they don't really work as part of the consciousness, just, surveyors of information to be transmitted there eventually. Right. And they also have faster than like, communication. Yes. That is also true. but assuming that, that very, very, very skeptical thought of having faster than like communication, we see other examples of this try to be covered in, movies and books like Enders Game. Right. they watch as the insect ships are able to communicate with each other and almost react to things. A light you're across. from where they were fighting, and then humanity's able to try and replicate it. But that's all just, just fiction, right? Those, those are things that can't really be conquered, with what we know in physics so far., I fully agree. And you can try to get around this with known physics by having essentially nodes, right? Like you can have one large consciousness. And then the same way we have reflexes, you know you've been to the doctor, right? They hit your knee and your leg responds before that signal has time to make it to your brain. a lot of animals have that already, little clusters of nerve fibers that essentially act as many brains that can react real time to a situation, uh, while the greater, the bigger part of our consciousness. It takes a little longer to react. Mm-hmm. But the more you spread out, the smarter those individual nodes need to be to handle any given situation. And at a certain point you just risk it essentially turning into its own consciousness. Yeah. it's not worth taking, if you were to mentalize that, like your neurons and just spreading them out, um, and have your thoughts just be spread out everywhere. It's just not worth the time Travel. And then also to another point where you were saying that it is a firmly paradox solution. even if the hive mind could split and like you were saying, create another hive mind, why? Yeah. You create essentially an adversary, uh, something that's going to fight you, maybe not for land, but fight you perhaps for more information you could become hungry for, you know, what, what your colony is. And what your colony has. Um, and it could come to reclaim that or try to merge you both together and eventually become something hostile where if you didn't have it, it poses no real benefit to you. That is very true. I mean, that's the same argument we see with expanding into the galaxy, even as humanity, even as what we are, is that if you go and colonize another star system, that could very well be an enemy in the future. And it's the same thing with a hive mind. Although I did just have a thought while you were explaining that, is that, uh, I guess a way to throw shade maybe on this being a firmly paradox solution is. potentially maybe the, the hive mind would want multiple copies so that it's not alone. If it's one consciousness controlled over multiple beings, it is possible that to an extent you could have a small society of hive minds and, and they would prefer to have, other beings of their own like to talk to. And if we were talking especially about a biologically evolved hive mind versus a technologically evolved one, then it's very possible that. the limit right on how big a hive mine can get before it has to basically split into another mind. If they're working through pheromones and sound versus, you know, implants in their brain, uh, might not be very big. So on a single planet, you might have hundreds, dozens, thousands of individual colonies. and then, you know, if that species continues to evolve and become technological, uh, potentially even, um, you know, a whole civilization not made of individuals, but made of individual hive mines, that'd be interesting. It, it is interesting. And the reason why it's so interesting to me is because it almost starts to just revert back to. What we are now, we have cities that are at these epicenters or like, like these main nodes of information and we spread them out, amongst each other, but we see them as their own things, right? We see each city as its own place. Each state, each country, nations are their own thing, but they're spread from. One a beginning. I see what you're saying. Yeah. I could see that. Yeah. Individual cities that are literally li living. Yes. And we do talk about cities as living, breathing things a lot of times, but this would be quite literal. Yeah, it would be. Yeah. It would be a living hive city. which would be so, out of what we can fathom, but also so similar to what we are now. It's kind of poetic. It is. And I know that Hive mine's you know, they make a great. Science fiction villain, and we see it a lot, but I don't necessarily think they need to be a villain. I don't think they need to be this evil, horrible thing. And, the typical sci-fi trope of a hive mind being this hungry, all expanding swarm that wants to essentially assimilate everything into its own. I don't necessarily think that's true. I, I think that that would be tricky to imagine because for one. we talked about the size, the scaling issue. It might be disadvantageous for them to expand by, at a certain point they may turn inward and really focus on maximizing what they have locally, toward trying to expand broadly. And two, if you're imagining this being one consciousness where instead of, our brains are made up of a bunch of neurons, their brains are made up of a bunch of individual beings. Then it could potentially be reasoned with and thought with. Although it would be interesting to think about what the psychology of such an entity would be like. Yeah, I mean, it would, it makes you think like it would kind of just be like a dumb hive mind. it, if it's feeling like it needs to just constantly expand into vour, and it's not managing its population, or its mental capacity if we're thinking of them as individual like neurons. it's just like, like, like hungry and it can't spread across the universe, but it needs to travel and consume all these other planets. if it doesn't have fast than life travel, it's only path is to die eventually. Yeah. It'll consume the whole galaxy and die or just Yeah. Cease to exist because they're just split into multiple different beings and mm-hmm. Yeah. It does not seem like a good path. Although, one thing, and I, sorry, this is slightly changing track, but it is something that we talked about earlier, was. A notion of a high mind that we often see is that the individual nodes are dumb. we think about ant colonies or B colonies. Mm-hmm. And, you know, they're not particularly smart, but they follow all of these evolved, patterns and they follow these, call and response cues from the greater group. And that that's what makes them smart, is they're like together. But that doesn't necessarily need to be true. You can have a hive. My made up of intelligent individuals, for example, I was thinking of a situation where maybe you have a hive made up of individuals who have human level intelligence, but they just have really strong biological responses to certain stimuli, Like pheromones or even sounds, and it's not hard to imagine, right? Humans have that already. We have empathy. Naturally, if I see someone in trouble, the human response is that you want to help, right? But we can walk away from that. We can override that response. But imagine a species evolving where they can't, where if there's a, a call for help, they, they're literally biologically forced to respond. And in that way, you could potentially have a hive mind made up of very intelligent. individual members, it's just that they feel compelled to respond to the cues of the hive. So, we were imagining the civilization, how it might function, if the greater colony put out a call for people to, go be workers, then people would happily do it and feel compelled and, and, and just. It would just happen. but that doesn't make them any dumber, right? Like free will and intelligence don't necessarily have to go well hand in hand. You can be very intelligent. But not be an individual or not have that individual free will. Yeah, I mean, I, I definitely understand and that concept is super unique because it's like, it is a hive mind in the way of chemical responses and, reactions in the brain that rewards you and compel you to do those things instead of just a drive for raw transfer of information and that information being linked to an entity or a network that is simply controlling all of you. Super cool concept. Yeah, I think it's cool. I don't know if it's explored much in science fiction. I would love to see it. I haven't seen it. Yeah, I haven't either. I would love to see a work of that where they're individuals but they just, they strong compulsion versus the traditional hive mind where it's, you know, telepathy and you're not an individual. Yeah. No, and I definitely think that that would still be considered a, a hive mind. I, I think you're right. It's every, everything is so like based off of. Uh, essentially idiotic worker drones, or even drones that are like, just built to perform specific tasks that you forget that, a hive mind is just, entities that are all like, compelled to work together and almost in a way that is against your will. But it doesn't have to be, like you said, an intellectual way. It could be you're compelled to do it chemically. Yeah. And it's, you said against your will, but it, it's also true if it can make your will aligned with what it wants. That's right. That's, not against your will, but, to curve your will to where that is truly what you want to do. Exactly. And that's something that on a small extent, happens with humans. we do have biological responses if there's screams, people tend to respond. Like we do have that just not to that level. Yeah. like the same way that if you touch a hot pan, you pull your hand away. It would just be the same type of reaction as that. Exactly. It's uh, yeah. Super interesting. I think so I think it's fun. I would like to see that explored more. And even taking that a step further, you could potentially even see again, uh, the same situation, human level intelligence, but then you could start to see specialization on top of that and actual physiological differences between different cast of this civilization to fulfill different roles. And what would actually also be interesting would be. Are these roles going to still make sense as this hive mind becomes technological? Or will they become outdated? Right. Yeah, like there's, there's an ant colony where they, they have a specific. Ant that basically is a door, right? It has like a big, broad, flat head. Like, does that work when that ant colony has space travel? No. I mean, I, I definitely get what you're saying, like those physiological changes that were made to fill a role because they needed to change what they were as a creature to be able to do it. Where as you progress as an intelligent hive mind, you would essentially. Take on like how we do today with language and training. We can make anybody anything as long as they're willing to do it. And if you have the hive minds chemical push to do so, you could achieve whatever you wanted and needed to fill in that colonies niche just through a transfer of information. It would make it obsolete. Yeah, exactly. And I'm just wondering, would these. Hives where they have specialization. Would those specialized roles be able to adapt fast enough as technology evolves? Or would it be that you have these cast of, uh, members used to be a part of this hive mine that just don't have a, a role that needs to be fulfilled anymore? Or, it's like a, an ant hive, potentially there's hormonal signals and pheromones that can say, okay, well stop. Making larvae turn into this form. It's no longer useful, but it, I dunno, that's an interesting one to think about too. And potentially even having, um, as a hive mind became more intelligent, you could even have, cast of people or you know, members of this hive mind that are, nodes for thought and thinking. That is actually a huge point too, which we do see in science fiction often , especially in mass effect, they're a main antagonist, a main enemy in the game, but the way to destroy them and get them off the planets, you have to destroy these larger node cells. But those aren't the main hive. They simply are there to allow for specialized transfer of information down to the base creatures so that you still do have these specialized roles. They're just like much, much bigger. Yeah, that's very cool. It's fun to think about. But with that being said, I think that's all that I really have to say on Hive Minds. I do think that they're possible both from a evolved perspective and from a technological perspective. I don't necessarily think they have to be the Borg. they could be utopian or dystopian like many things. So I dunno. All in all, I think that was a fun discussion. I hope all of our viewers enjoyed listening to it as much as I enjoyed talking about it. Yeah. And hopefully it raised some questions with you guys. Like if, if we had one of the more intellectual hive minds, would you guys join one? Yeah. Let us know. The con joiners has always sounded like an interesting one to join for me. Uh, with that being said, a quick shout out to our Patreons. Thank you guys so much for making this show possible and ad free. Uh, we're continuing to try to hit that goal of weekly uploads. You know, I'm not gonna sell, say a hundred percent, but I would like to do it by the end of 2026. That would be perfect. I just need to hire an editor and also, uh, join us next week where we are gonna be talking about realistic spaceship design to fulfill a variety of roles, not just warships, which we've talked about in the past, but maybe more mercantile roles, colonization roles, and just the general considerations that would go into designing a real spaceship. Yeah, some of the concepts might be cooler than you guys think. I hope so. Thank y'all so much. Take care..