The Hivemind Singularity

An anonymous reader writes "Alan Jacobs at The Atlantic writes about a book called New Model Army (NMA), which takes the idea of Anonymous — a loose, self-organizing collective with a purpose — and adds twenty-five years of technological advancement. The book's author, Adam Roberts, 'asks us to imagine a near future when electronic communications technologies enable groups of people to communicate with one another instantaneously, and on secure private networks invulnerable, or nearly so, to outside snooping.' With the arrival of advanced communications tech, such groups wouldn't be limited to enacting their will from behind a computer screen, or in a pre-planned flash mob; they could form actual armies. 'Again, each NMA organizes itself and makes decisions collectively: no commander establishes strategy and gives orders, but instead all members of the NMA communicate with what amounts to an advanced audio form of the IRC protocol, debate their next step, and vote. Results of a vote are shared to all immediately and automatically, at which point the soldiers start doing what they voted to do. ... They are proud of their shared identity, and tend to smirk when officers of more traditional armies want to know who their "ringleaders" are. They have no ringleaders; they don't even have specialists: everyone tends the wounded, not just some designated medical corps, and when they need to negotiate, the negotiating team is chosen by army vote. Each soldier does what needs to be done, with need determined by the NMA which each has freely joined.' Let's hope resistance isn't futile."

Kind of like democracy today?

[saboosh]

We've seen what happens with democratic decision making, as the population grows so does the splintering and each side grows further apart. Unless human nature can progress like the "25 years of" technology I dont see large hiveminds getting too far past their internal "debates".

Re:Kind of like democracy today?

[oakgrove]

What 'democracy'? I don't know about you but I live in a representative republic. What the summary is describing is an actual democracy so, no, it is not like what we've seen so far as far as national politics goes.

Voting is not the best solution

[cripkd]

It's somewhat of a sociologically interesting fact that in 99% percent of the cases, where this sort of utopic future communities are described, voting always come up. The fact that there is a network and a mean for people to be "always on" doesn't make people brighter all of a sudden. That sort of democracy can quickly turn into chaos and then anarchy.

From my experience in being part of some passionate amateurs communities I can say that leadership is very important. Individuals will always have different degrees of involvement, different degrees of the ability to know what is right for the group of a whole, different degrees of objectivity, education, selflessness. And even different agendas. Individuals in a group might sincerely believe that their way is the best.
What I'm trying to say is that voting is not always the best solution, leadership (formal or informal) and fast decision making abilities are more important. Having a vision and seeing "the path" is more important than wasting time and energy (think of how long it takes in a group of people larger than 3 to decide where to eat out and multiply by ten for "important stuff") to vote all the time.

I'm not saying that democracy is overrated but not even democracy supposes that people vote on every single aspect. That's where the idea of a parliament (or similar institution) comes from. You're supposed to have your interests represented by people with knowledge, leadership skills, vision and desire to serve the community.
Then again, we also know how that turns out :)

Re:Kind of like democracy today?

[multiben]

Try living in Zimbabwe or North Korea for a day and then see if you think you live in a democracy or not. The system you are citing is utterly untenable in the complexity of the modern world. We would do *nothing* else all day long except vote on issues we would barely understand.

What about spies?

[pipedwho]

You can assume that there will be a foreign agent pretending to be part of the 'army' using an equally secure link to send out the planned activities to the adversary.

And what happens if a large number of equally 'anonymous' agents are influencing the vote and then following through with counter actions to whatever is decided?

Re:Raises the obvious question

[Anubis IV]

If everyone in an army is making decisions then they aren't as likely to engage in risky behavior or unnecessary violence.

I came to the exact opposite conclusion. Individuals can be smart, but people are dumb. This sort of thing is likely to encourage mob mentality, and I do not see that as being a good thing for the respect of human life and dignity.

Re:Kind of like democracy today?

[justforgetme]

Quite insightful. Another quip I have (about the story since I dn RTFA ) is that apparently the story's poster thinks that joining individuals into a live feedback net with each other will somehow erase individuality. The thing is that since we are not exact cell perfect clones of one another individuals will tend to excel in differing tasks and - given a wide enough array of tasks - roles will finally emerge. Now I'm not saying that there actually will be `ring leaders` but surely the individuality of each of the hive mind participants will come to be used in the fields it excels in forming a recognizable structure and disrupting total equality.

tl;dr version:
The importance of your thoughts varies depending on the likeness of their field to your publicly recognized specialties.

Eh

[jxander]

Even though my buddies and I can hive-mind our decisions, it still takes us 15 minutes to decide on pizza toppings.

Or, to put it more plainly, knowing what we're all thinking won't necessarily help the individuals cast their mental "votes" any quicker.

Re:GLORIFY!

[Anonymous Coward]

anarchistic bunch of teenage assholes being controlled

They can't be both anarchistic and controlled.

I assume by "controlled" you mean buying into an alternative propaganda to the one presented by mainstream media.

For better or worse, It's just an age where people have a choice where they invest their beliefs.

The idea of a decentralized "army" is pretty ridiculous but ironically the definition of perfect democracy as the strength derives from the membership.

Re:Kind of like democracy today?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish people would stop with this kind of argument. The fact that there exists worse countries than country X does not mean that country X is good. This should be obvious, but it doesn't appear to be.

A movie quote that isn't far off the mark

[xs650]

A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.

- - Kay
( Men in Black)

specialists

[Tom]

they don't even have specialists: everyone tends the wounded, not just some designated medical corps,

Do not sign me up then. When my life is on the line, I prefer a trained medic, thank you very much.

There's a reason specialization has won the culture wars some 10,000 years ago: It works. Everyone who did Economics 101 knows that, it's called "division of labour" there. Basically, you do what you're good at, I do what I'm good at, and we share the spoils, which results in both of us having more than if we had to both do everything ourselves.

And the more complex things get, the more specializiation is required and useful. In a hunter-gatherer society, in a bind the primary deer hunter can also skin the beast and the primary cook can also catch a rabbit. But that was 50,000 years ago. How many medical doctors have even a basic competence in programming? And how many of us geeks here could make even the simplest operation without killing the patient?

So, interesting vision from the sound of it, but already from the summary I can tell that someone hasn't thought hard enough about the consequences.

Oh, also: Even Anonymous has specialists.