/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.3207256]

I think 4chan is a collective consciousness waiting to happen. Give or take a few years when we all have computers wired into our brains.

Thoughts?

lovethehivemind

[Anonymous No.3207261]

if it does happen then humanity's overall IQ will decrease by 65%

[Anonymous No.3207272]

>>3207261
But I would assume the collective of everyone's minds would be able to weed the stupidity and allow for the best ideas to evolve in the form of memetics.

[Anonymous No.3207306]

>implying the whole system won't crash as soon as it's self aware

[Anonymous No.3207323]

How can it crash when it's just a bunch of people wired through one big focal point. There is no AI in my theory.

[Anonymous No.3207326]

itt atheist teens fantasizing about nonsense

get a job fags

[Anonymous No.3207328]

I don't think you want your mind to be connected with that of some other channers.

[Anonymous No.3207333]

OP here.

You have all proved my point thus far. Thanks for playing.

[Anonymous No.3207334]

>cut corpus callosum
>put chip beteen it
>use stem cells to recrow it
>allow corpus callosum to fuse with chip
>allow chips to comunicate with each other in a basic manner
>collective consciousness!

[Anonymous No.3207348]

>>3207272

The collective of everyone's minds would create stupider thoughts. Look at any hivemind on the internet; the stupid opinions/judgments are accepted. Anything dissenting is destroyed.

Look at the Borg, it's easy to see why they live off a few directives and don't think past "we are borg, you will be assimilated"

[Anonymous No.3207352]

>>3207328
>implying downloading cp to your brain at the speed of thought would be a bad thing

[Anonymous No.3207361]

>>3207326
>Implying everyone here is an atheist.

[Anonymous No.3207464]

The last thing I want is 4chan in my brain.

And it will be much longer than "give or take a few years" before our brains are 3G compatible.

[excited kid No.3207505]

I'd generally love to see a hive-mind arise, but I would hope that it's not something that constrains people to their computer chairs, and that it encompasses a broader community than this. I've thought about the hive-mind in detail before. I have a vision of a more empathic than intellectual form of utopia when I see it. I believe and hope it would help us to select the best of our ideas, and to take care of each other. I think optional or temporary mind-melding could do wonderful things for relationships. A global mind, though, would have some interesting ethical implications.

If you are witness, through the eyes of another individual, of an ongoing violent crime or terrible accident, are you not obligated to do whatever you can to stop it? I imagine communication of dangers and volunteering to resolve them would result in a constant cycle of "emergency response" mobs or squads. Latency would have interesting implications, especially in this capacity. If humanity were non-optionally and fully aware of the goings on of all human bodies (not beings; for can we really distinguish one consciousness as many beings?), we would be viscerally aware of pain and misfortune in such a way that no argument would need to be made in order to have something done about it. But in the case that there is latency involved, and witnesses or victims must broadcast a message for help, the argument is something that the public would have to be convinced of, or that the collective would have to come to realize. In such a situation, I think the sudden feasibility of utilitarian maximization would bring it a whole new relevance. I say we would not just be ideally motivated, but morally obligated to deliberately refine our system of collective consciousness so as to develop the most effective way possible of dealing with these problems.

[Anonymous No.3207511]

>>3207256
I think we're all far to individualistic to submit to such a thing.

[excited kid No.3207512]

For example, a person concentrating deeply on solving some intellectual puzzle, their ability to complete other tasks diminishes greatly. I have in mind the image of Sherlock Homes lost deep in thought entering the street absent-mindedly, only to be pulled back into safety by a more directly present Watson. Given those sorts of risks, might we have to dedicate a portion of the population to specific tasks at different times? While one group or individual was focused on solving a problem, others would either actively provide for their other needs, or at least ensure their safety by staying out of the way and putting them in a safe place.

As I imagine more particular forms of this specialization, the collective consciousness begins more and more to look like a single organism as we understand it today. But the human brain is more versatile than any other organ in the body. While a white blood cell can only consume bacteria and viruses, every person changes roles at will on a daily basis (when they sleep, for example). The collective consciousness could bring us the first calculation device with a greater ability for generalization and self-adaptation than the human brain!

I would be so fucking in.

[excited kid No.3207539]

But there is one consideration, a problem I'd like to raise: the wisdom of crowds appears to apply only when crowds aren't aware of what each other are doing. When they are in active communication about some job, they begin to build a consensus prematurely, for social reasons, and come up short. Would this reduce the hivemind to idiocy? Or might we develop the ability to deliberately cut off communications from certain parties to others, in order to think more effectively? Similar observations have been made in brainstorming: when individuals sit down as a party and begin to imagine things, they are LESS innovative than they would be alone. The ideal strategy is actually to have everyone think very hard about a problem on their own, in order to maximize their individual creative burden, and then bring them together as a group to provide each other with new insight.

I took some time while waiting to avoid flood detection to locate the studies I'm talking about.

Social influences on crowd wisdom...
-Scholarly article (abstract): http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108.abstract?sid=1baaf087-335e-49e9-8bcb-7bde4cb
d8bdf
-Popular article: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/wisdom-of-crowds-decline/

Brainstorming...
http://www.jstor.org/pss/2390603

[excited kid No.3207567]

>>3207511
The true beauty of the hive-mind is that the tighter the integration of the collective, the more identifiable the *collective* is as a single individual. The more tied you become to the consciousness of others, the more you move from perceiving yourself as merely *part* of the whole to *THE WHOLE*. For this reason, I think it's only making the first jump that would be difficult.

It is also conceivable that there could be a form of collective consciousness which leaves the integrated individual with ultimate sovereignty over his body, not unlike the way our instincts have a sort of 'sovereignty' over our own motor control.

Another solution would be to create by experiment a generation or family of humans who are from the start BORN into collective consciousness.

Realistically, were this technology to be possible, I think it would first see its practical usage in the case of very brave married persons (read: crazy hippies). After some significant culture/population/data builds up about the nature of shared consciousness, scientists can begin to verifiably understand and publicize its benefits (and its shortcomings, which hopefully can be addressed) to form some kind of positive impression on the public. Once persons have tangible benefits to weigh against their own individuality, there will be fence-sitters who finally make the jump. We might also see joining the collective as an act of desperation, either as an alternative to suicide, or a radical change in the life of someone who believes they've truly hit the bottom.

[Anonymous No.3207614]

merge my mind with a shitload of people who i don't know at all for what exactly?

[Anonymous No.3207634]

>>3207464
^^^^^^^^^^^
yet here.

[Anonymous No.3207652]

>>3207634
there is a big difference between reading things on a screen and being merged with a hive mind

[Anonymous No.3207690]

>>3207614
enlightenment

Also consider that if you are willing to connect your mind to the minds of people you DO know and DO care about and DO trust, you will come to know many former strangers through them, and thus increase your pool of candidates for merging.

[Anonymous No.3207693]

Yeah, you REALLY want inside my head.

[Anonymous No.3207695]

>>3207652
>>3207690

filter my parts per million plz