[MUD-Dev] Re: Idea: Hive-mind monster

[coder at ibm.net]

On 30/10/97 at 09:17 AM, Adam Wiggins <nightfall at user1.inficad.com> said:
>[Nathan:]
>> :On Sat, 25 Oct 1997 01:38:27 -0500, Sauron <dlove at kusd.kusd.edu>

>Orion and I have been discussing something very similar to this to handle
>any organized group of similar persons.  

There was some discussion of handling semi-hive like minds on the list
here several months back (May?), altho there the concentration was on
having groups of mobiles act in a concerted and organised manner.  

Much of the discussion as I recall centered around having, say, a band of
orcs, one of who was the "leader".  With a leader, the orcs would behave
in predictable and logical manners, and be quite wily.  Remove the leader
however and they would descend into more chaotic forms until a new leader
evolved.  The really fun discussion I think I recall centering about how
such a leader may be arranged to evolve within the "band od XXX's"
structure, and what the internal forces would be to create or replace a
missing leader.

>Also setting mins and maxes - a more
>independant race might never fully agree with all of their bretheren,
>while the borg would want to 'resolve' any information in dispute and
>then set that as an absolute in the hivemind database.  

Several SF writers have worked with the idea of tightly coupling knowledge
with evolution at an absolute level.  It makes for interesting structures. 
Essentially:

  All knowledge is passed on by heredity.  As far as knowledge base is
concerned, a child is a direct copy of its parents.  Once something is
"known", it can never be changed or "unlearnt".  Everything that a kid
knows is a summation of everything all of its parents back into
evolutionary history ever knew and all of the conclusions which all of
those ancestors made.  None of conclusions can be changed.  If some
ancestor learned that things fall towards the earth because tiny invisible
fairies pull it down, all of his descendants will incontrovertably know
and believe that without any possibility of ever believing something else,
or learning any other explanation of why things fall.

War and genocide then becomes the method of achieving concensus on
"important matters".  Literally the winners write history.  The losers are
dead and have no descendants to inherit their knowledge base.

The fun really happens when individuals/genetic groups win such wars and
have false data.  There is no possibility of changing that data, and all
surviving individuals "know" it to be incontrovertably true...

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...