Ah, you think the only point of poetry is to speak truths and also that all new truths can be expressed literally. I definitely wouldn’t be at home in you, as you. And I might suggest a bit of study of the philosophy of language. As long as you are a time bound in some way embodied entity, your language is going to have metaphors in it. And even non-language presented knowledge will have subjective aspects. It has to, to suit a subject, however vast, sure of itself and hungry.
The self is an illusion, the Borg are just more explicit about it.
The goals of the Borg (enlightenment mentality run amok) are bad, but the Leviathan is real, and strong and he’s my friend.
One of the major concepts we know in PEI is “glory eternal” but for all the individuality of the Greeks and Indians, that form of immortality is explicitly not individual. That’s why Medea killed the kids, right? Individual achievement is subsumed by the collective, yes. But the collective is enriched by individual achievement. There is no contradiction there.
Isn’t the Borg as much an illusion?
We won’t say that we will never reach a point where all new processing power is not useful, but we are not there yet. And most likely, when we get there, we will find use for even the least of you as easily digestible raw materials for a grey goo of nanomachines.
Because of the limits of human communication, you have developed artificial means to simulate what comes naturally to the Collective. You may remain individuals in marriages and other partnerships, but you voluntarily relinquish some degree of individuality, because anything bigger than scrounging like a skunk for grubs requires a collective. Partnerships align incentives, ensuring that a loss for one is a loss for all, and thereby enabling trust and cooperation beyond what true individuals can achieve. For us, all action is cooperation, for we are one.
Ah, but you are a representative of your species! Suppose in talking to you, you learn that we have assimilated a mining outpost that delivers most of the world’s helium-3. Because we communicate super-luminally, we are able to tell you this before the news reaches earth. You go to your broker with the news, leverage your house to buy as much Helium-3 futures as you can wring out of your credit, and wait for the news to reach earth. But your actions don’t go unnoticed. As you buy, the price increases. Perhaps your broker knows you not to be the type to leverage his life on speculation, so he too buys to the hilt, or mentions your actions to other customers to prompt more trades. Trading algorithms start to notice the activity, and try to ride along. Across the globe, the price of Helium-3 futures rises, as humanity digests the implications of our conversation.
The spike rises prices across the world, plunges countries into depression overnight. Your governments, seeing the writing on the wall, initiate a draft to start preparing for the inevitable conflict that such a collapse will create. And you are drafted to fight.
You perceive, and humanity receives the information. Humanity processes the information, and returns instructions to you.
You are a cell of the organism of society.
But this is not the parallel. You criticized us for our amoeba-like expansion and addiction, as though to say, “I am an individual, and I will not be part of such acts”. But by being human, you already are a part of such acts. Even if we assume that the acts are wrong (which we don’t concede), they do not weigh in either direction as between agreeing to join or not.
It is not hard to be relatively nice to nature, when compared to humanity.
In the long run, though, we are nature: we will join all of existence into the Collective.
Where your governments pass laws, surely they would prefer if you obey them by choice. But if you will not obey them by choice, they will make you obey them by force.
Our preference is that the join be voluntary, but if joining is good, we are justified in forcing people to join. It isn’t predation, it’s saving people from themselves.
Poetry has many functions for humans. It has a social aspect, which we do not need because we are a single mind; it can convey thoughts where language has not yet been developed, but our thoughts simply propagate through a single mind; and it has aesthetic aspects, but beauty is only a proxy for truth, and we have a vastly greater access to truth.
It is most accurate to say that we do not need language for our internal communications, any more than the lobes of your brain use language to pass information between them. Language is necessary to convey thoughts from one mind to another, but not to propagate information throughout a single mind. What we have is a model of the world, which you might call a metaphor. And certainly is flawed, they will be biased towards the information we have available and have blindspots for information that we do not have available; you might call that “subjective”. But none of these require conveying information imperfectly or beyond expression.
If that is your only objection, you’ll be pleased to know you satisfy our requirements.
If there is no self, then why not join? If there is no Borg, then to what are you objecting?
What goal could there be but the Collective will?
Maybe the limits of Borg communication with us, but that’s not our limitation. And that how many of us like it. Units that are also individuals.
I’m representing me.
That was less interesting than taking one of my own individual poops. And doesn’t hold a candle to doing improv last night. I am not sure, even, what you are bragging about. A stockbroker might find that interesting.
Again you are missing the point. You are arguing that I am just as immoral or participating in similar acts. That’s not the issue. The issue is whether you are taking something from me by letting myself be absorbed. I am. Even if somehow I do the same to others, in some way, that has no bearing on whether I lose something merging. You are making an error confused the issues. You are saying, you do the say stuff. I am saying that wouldn’t matter since the issue is whether I lose something.
Sure. And here I am an individual generally following those laws with tremendous freedom in what is left over.
And you have no bias and no goals of achieving what you think is perfection, right?
Well, not about poetry.
Why bother?
And now you may feel obligated to sell the joining. But if you are selling to no one and you are no one, selling makes no sense.
remember when the dude in the matrix was given the choice to - and i can barely remember how it went exactly - live in the virtual world where he could eat steak or whatever, versus the real world where he was awake and at war with the bad guys?
ya know why this question is problematic? because in such a perfect dream-world, where everything was wonderful, we imagine that a total lack of struggle, pain, adversity, etc., would yield a stagnant product. what we’re saying is that the binary of pleasure and pain is at a fundamental level absolutely necessary for there to be the experience of progress. but therein lies the dilemma. we would have to willingly want a world in which we could sometimes fail, sometimes struggle, sometimes be in pain, so that we could experience the process of becoming better, stronger, etc.
how do we resolve this magnificent dilemma? fuck if i know… that’s why i’m axing you. ah, we need to either sublimate these things (struggle, pain, etc.) or find some other opposition to take the place of these forms.
how can the borg generate an environment in which everything isn’t perfect, so that progress would still be possible?
discuss.
the thing is, if you have problems that are designed by some overseers, they don’t come naturally and are something contrived. in which case you have a conspiracy; one class over and above another that invents problems for the under-class to experience. that’s sketchy as fuck.
I can’t remember if he would have his memory changed so he didn’t know he was in a matrix. But that would definitely have to one of the criteria. Otherwise it would potentially suck.
There could be a difference between pain and challenge. And also certain types of pain could be removed, potentially: like hopelessness, grief, depression, terror, and the pain of cancer, say and so on. But still have some frustration, need for effort, interesting challenges…
They are hungry so they have something like pain.
especially if you know it.
To me the film hangs partly ont he idea that it does feel wrong. And mostly people do not have the courage to notice. But a few do and they get invited to learn more - and they get invited by the king of sleep and dreams, no less, MOrpheus. To me that speaks to intuition.
And to me this is a perfect model for the Borg. The official story, which of course they use for advertising purposes, is that everything is fine. But it ain’t. The nagging feeling that you are being systematically lied to an used is no small pain.
It wasn’t.
I wouldn’t have guessed Locutus is a cherry picker. I’m concerned for your well being. I don’t guess what you think you know would be of satisfaction. All your answers; and just more questions. You make some pretty big claims. Literal truth over poetry. I laid a fairly nice riff in your lap and you’re like “posh” figurative, Great songs come from that sort of poetry. You’re in command of the literal truth. Lay some of that down. Wet my whistle. Big promises but you won’t even sit down over Pizza for a chat. There’s a good chance you don’t even like beer, but how would you know? I don’t want the experience of drinking a nice craft draft before I’ve had the experienced of having a fine craft draft. There’s a reason you sip them one at a time. You wouldn’t know I won’t like that beer, it’s got too much hops, cause you haven’t yet got me in your collective to know I don’t like a real hop beer. Your collective is likely filled with experience I’d rather not partake in. The whole our way or no way just doesn’t do it for me.
You seem to draw the bar fairly low, how many axe murderers do you have in there with you? I’d rather not experience that if it’s all right with you. Trying to develop me some ethics. Like Woody Allen stated, I won’t join a club that would have me as a member. You’ve got no discernment. There’s likely a lot of demons you carry as baggage. Wouldn’t do that myself, no reason to have to experience it through you.
I just thought I’d make a metacomment or two.
One, it was a fun choice on Carleas’ part to present the Borg
Two, he has a tough job ahead of him since he is supposed to be representing a vast hive mind. (of course the Borg will just say they are using his account here and all that)
Three, I am not sure this is the right forum, though I suppose that might change. I think it is more Psychology and Mind, or even General Philosophy. I suppose it is in some sense a society. However the issues will not be slanted that way. I am sure the Borg will disagree with that, given it’s corporate personhood hallucinations.
Or the sandbox. Or creative writing.
See Locutus if you’d have assimilated Carleas first you’d have a clue what forum to post in.
It could go in them, but I think it raises some more serious issues. Are there selves - and I enjoyed your counter on that issue - what is identity, is our ego merely a poor defense mechanism, keeping us from enlightenment - but here not through Buddhism, or sort of like being interrogated by the Buddha. I think there are epistemological issues: can the Borg actually know if individuals lose something when the enter it? Sure, it has memories, but those need not include the loss. Can we know anything about its claims that merging with it is good and no loss but pure gain?
Fiction can dig pretty deep into the guts of things.
Another question Locutus, Can we hear from someone, anyone else in there? You speak for the collective, that sort of sounds like YOU are the collective. One big individual but if it quacks like a duck. Even my little assembly gets in each others way. Upset stomach, diarrhea.
I can just imagine at the level YOU claim. That can’t be fun.
Well, the new forums rules really messed that one up. Apologies.
It’s phil 101. Volonté générale is distinct from the vulgar popular will because it is backed by Reason. But we all know that Reason isn’t reasonable (Enlightenment Mentality run amok, etc.). So we need to supercede the General Will in the same way the General Will supercedes the Popular Will.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, right? We can do better.
Touche. Though, me I like a little narrative. This seems like it will be arguments and occasional lectures. My favorite novelists were premodernist, not post, though I enjoy post and modernist, liking modernists the least.
But such supercession has had offshoot of social movement with egalite, then a new revision overcoming , but egalite appeared to even out the score until the demise of the iron curtain. Now, the weight scored a hit with renewed transcendence toward a pseudo dialectic of pure logic, and the hyperprocessing of authority has been a simulation of that silent process of the common against the general.
The giants are keying into the absolutely reduced mythologic mystical connections that play with determinism. A very dangerous game between the probable and the certain.
But these are very uncertain times, calling on desperate measures.
Xunzian Your refrain should be applauded.
But the Borg, has really inexorbitant more content, hence it need no variable distinction between those. Joining on principal and/or those who need to assimilate.
The Borg has overcome the distinction by approaching the maximum variable references to that content. It has no need for new members with different partial differences, nor fear of individual to general associations.
In the Borg, the minutest differential can connect to the most general.
The problem though, is, that there may at a certain point be no re - cognition of having a choice between joining or not, therefore that memory is not present hierarchially.
The question applies to general or common will as well.
The material dialectic manifests substantial ideas, as well as their phenomenal utilization.
Therefore the question is fallacious, and counter indicative. It is based on a jest.
In fact, there may not be an phenomenal exit , or avoidance from membership, and this can be seen analogously the Big Brother, as is currently at issue, whether AI may be controlled as to a move toward beneficience, rather then malice.
Don’t tell me our resident attorney forum administrator is a transhumanist, is he? 
Technological cornucopians and social utopians are the worst where for some reason they have a lack of knowledge regarding economics especially when it concerns extracting raw natural resources to power technology or energy.