Who is the smartest Hivemind?

[Axiomatic]

Science fiction has a long standing tradition of portraying any sort of race/society that can be described as a hivemind as, well, stupid. Lacking the rugged individualism of humanity, their only strength is in their massively overwhelming numbers, since they are usually in every other was inferior to Us.

So tell me, are the counterexamples? What are the some of the smartest Hiveminds in science fiction?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Inhibitors.

[Big Orange]

The Inhibitors.

Sorry about my ignorance, but who are they?

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sorry about my ignorance, but who are they?

A hive mind, my good man.

[Stark]

Ignore him, he's taking the piss. Just look it up.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Ignore him, he's taking the piss. Just look it up.

You can't be helpful, dammit!

But yeah, use Google. Preferably "Alastair Reynolds + Inhibitors". Big feckin' spoilers likely abound, which is why I try not to go too in-depth.

[Darth Ruinus]

The Inhibitors sound really cool. I have a few questions though, I read up on them on Wikipedia just now, and it says "post-intelligent" what does that mean?

And if I understand this right, Inhibitors are black cubes of energy?

[Admiral Valdemar]

The Inhibitors sound really cool. I have a few questions though, I read up on them on Wikipedia just now, and it says "post-intelligent" what does that mean?

They're basically able to be fully sentient/sapient, but remain borderline below it for the most part to avoid becoming what they were designed to avoid. Only rarely do they actually go and awake their higher order intellect.

And if I understand this right, Inhibitors are black cubes of energy?

Essentially we don't know. They have no atomic granularity in their structure, so basically like a Bose-Einstein condensate: a super-atom (they seem to be near absolute zero too, temperature-wise). Physical attacks do nothing to individual cubes which can alter their dimensions somewhat by shrinking or enlarging. Any attempt to analyse their structure leaves you with very little sensory information penetrating them (or some EM bands passing right through) or the cubes simply shrink to microscopic sizes leaving useless ash as a self-destruct mechanism. Possibly femto-technology, but nothing is confirmed.

[Ford Prefect]

Sorry Valdy, I can't really back you up there. The Inhibitors aren't the smartest hivemind around. They're not supposed to be intelligent, and frankly, nothing done by the caretaker intelligence is actually particularly clever. They get the job done, but they're not blisteringly smart or anything. Inventing lots of methods of killing a star isn't exactly good evidence, given Volvoya comes up with three of the top of her head when asked how they could do it.

[Zablorg]

And if I understand this right, Inhibitors are black cubes of energy?

Essentially we don't know. They have no atomic granularity in their structure, so basically like a Bose-Einstein condensate: a super-atom (they seem to be near absolute zero too, temperature-wise).

Could you smart folk explain to me what a super-atom is? It sounds familiar.

[Warsie]

Anonymous

Oh wait, Sci-ti

Erm, the Advent from Sins of a Solar Empire (new RTS game-came out 2 months ago) has a 'hive mind' in wich they can connect with each other and exchange their experiences and pool their thought together, but they still maintain their individuality.

[Warsie]

that was a typo. I meant Sci-fi.

But now that I made this post. Maybe the Silver Tribe from Heroic Age (similar to the Advant from SOASE). Also, how intelligent were the Borg? Weren't they pretty smart?

also, to clarify. the Advent were humans who ended up transhuman-y and developed/evolved psychic powers.

The Silver Tribe is also seemingly like the Advent, though they apparently developed on a separate planet. Thst theory of humans beign seeded by various other races again

[Axiomatic]

Certainly not the Borg. Ignoring people who beam onto your starships until AFTER they've done some terrible mischief is not smart.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Perhaps the Cosmic Spirit ( multiple names are used ) in Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker ? The being is supposed to be the collective mind of every advanced species in that universe. The culmination of a hierarchy of mind from superhuman individuals, worldminds composed of those superhumans, entire species of those worlds, galaxies of them, and so forth; and each level is supposed to be more than the sum of it's parts.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Sorry Valdy, I can't really back you up there. The Inhibitors aren't the smartest hivemind around. They're not supposed to be intelligent, and frankly, nothing done by the caretaker intelligence is actually particularly clever. They get the job done, but they're not blisteringly smart or anything. Inventing lots of methods of killing a star isn't exactly good evidence, given Volvoya comes up with three of the top of her head when asked how they could do it.

I was going more by the practical approach of them surviving so long and being able to implement such ideas. We can all dream up ways of killing stars, but it takes a special kind of intellect to be able to put that into action with such efficiency etc.

In most cases, it would appear hive minds have attributes that go beyond simple mental creativity. Being so organised and networked is an advantage in itself, though at least in my example a smart director can emerge to take control.

[Ford Prefect]

Sorry Valdy, I can't really back you up there. The Inhibitors aren't the smartest hivemind around. They're not supposed to be intelligent, and frankly, nothing done by the caretaker intelligence is actually particularly clever. They get the job done, but they're not blisteringly smart or anything. Inventing lots of methods of killing a star isn't exactly good evidence, given Volvoya comes up with three of the top of her head when asked how they could do it.

I was going more by the practical approach of them surviving so long and being able to implement such ideas. We can all dream up ways of killing stars, but it takes a special kind of intellect to be able to put that into action with such efficiency etc.

In most cases, it would appear hive minds have attributes that go beyond simple mental creativity. Being so organised and networked is an advantage in itself, though at least in my example a smart director can emerge to take control.

Eh, the Inhibitors impress me in terms of scale. Yes, they operate with almost infallible hyper-effiency. Given that they are explicitly described as being not intelligent (it would totally defeat the purpose of their mission, after all), this is not an example of intelligence. This is an example of a dumb machine executing a plan flawlessly. They have in the past displayed intelligence - overseers have to have discovered the new stellarcide methods, after all - but again, these feats are not especially impressive.

The Inhibitors are scary. They are cold, relentless, and they could have been unknowable, but they're just not candidates for smartest hive-mind evah. I'd like to say the Conjoiners are cleverer as a hive-mind, except the Conjoiners as a hive-mind were being lead by a small cadre of individuals.

[Zixinus]

There is Mars from A Miracle of Science.

[FA Xerrik]

The Bugs from the book version of Starship Troopers are pretty smart, at least in the opinion of the narrator. They're at least as smart as humans after all, as they have weapons and spaceships on a par with humanity. I don't know if they're really a Hivemind per se, since they seem to have several Brain bugs, but they do function as a collective conscious at least.

[Jawawithagun]

The majat from C.J.Cherryh's novel "Serpent Reach". Maybe not quite the smartest and technologically less developed but scary in their very alien plots and plans.

[SylasGaunt]

I wonder if you could count The Archive from the Dresden Files as a hive-mind.

[Molyneux]

I wonder if you could count The Archive from the Dresden Files as a hive-mind.

Well, instead of a collective intelligence spread across multiple bodies, it's multiple intelligences tacked onto a magical source of knowledge all crammed into one body.

How about Mars, from A Miracle of Science? She (don't ask me why, Mars just seems like a "she" to me) was pretty sharp.

[Ford Prefect]

Mars was only made up of a few million Martians, and though much more advanced than everyone else, Virgil Haas did manage to outdo it once he cottoned on to the idea of them having an FTL drive. It seemed fairly godly to the 'mere humans' who appeared in A Miracle of Science, but like the Conjoiners it is generally forced along by individuals.

[The Grim Squeaker]

What about The Flood, from Halo (Namely, the Gravemind form, that was [SPOILERS] able to talk the equilevent of a Culture Mind into helping it eat the universe).
There's some evidence that it retains the intelligence & skills of everything it eats, and while it's not as decentralized as some (Such as, say, The Phalanx from Marvel's "Annihalation: Conquest" which allows individuals to retain their personalities within the collective), it's fucking intelligent, and far smarter than the "zombie" sterotype. (Modifying the engines in the "Truth and reconciliation", even without a Gravemind, or getting past the "Maginot line" or their overwhelming the Forerunners orbital defenses algorithms).

The Zerg are fun, with Sarrah"Watch me make everyone bend over for me" Kerrigan, or The Overmind, but Kerrigan is not a relevenat example of a hive mind in my opinion, the basic Zerg are not machine wielding geniuses (Even if they can lay traps), likewise the Tyrannids.

[Shadowtraveler]

Speaking of Tyranids, why not nominate them for smartest? It's not every day a sci-fi power attacks the enemy from the Z-axis.

[The Grim Squeaker]

Speaking of Tyranids, why not nominate them for smartest? It's not every day a sci-fi power attacks the enemy from the Z-axis.

They're not smart, there's just a lot of them.
The limit of Tyranid intelligence is genestealers being good at breeding and retaining their intelligence, and some cunning. Attacking a galaxy from all sides is an act of numerical overwhelmage, not intellgience.

There should be a noted distinction between cunning, and intelligent. Laying a trap with a wounded animal (Zerg for example) is cunning. Philosophically bamboozling a Mind, or cutting power lines/critical technological weak-points, or adding the intelligence and abilities of anything added to the hive mind (Borg, in THEORY) is "Intelligence", in this context.