what is wrong with the Borg? I mean emotionally we all dislike it, yes. Yet speaking objectively, the Borg is the naturally highest state of developed life we can conceive off. Atoms makes molecules like proteins, lipids, etc., the molecules make cells, cells make organisms, organisms make society... The same cycles of assembly/integration and specialization, basically the same 2nd law driving life at different scales. Looking at the level of integration and specialization our society has so far reached i'd say it is just the level of primitive multi-cell organisms. The Borg is the natural state of society when the level of integration and specialization increases, and increasing of that level is just the 2nd law gradient in application to the live systems. Resisting it is just like insisting on staying "free" single cells instead of combining into organisms. The organisms would see the stars, the cells - no.
What's interesting is that throughout the different startreks. They touch on disconnected borg greatly depressed and missing the collective. There is less fear and more collaboration in the borg. And while individuality is reduced. There are still subtle differences between individuals and smaller groups. Though some accept and desire more individuality. And yet here we are today with so much interconnectedness and how lonely and disjoint so many people are. I definitely have things I'm embarrassed about but if there was an optional to join/leave collective I think it'd be neat/great.
We all only get to experience our single life. But to have opportunity to have memories and experience many more just sounds enticing to me. Borg isn't mindless. It is a collective where ones arguments don't need to be debated because you can reach better consensus because you can fully experience and understand the counterpoint and why views differ. We are all blind to our own anecdotal experiences.
> And while individuality is reduced. There are still subtle differences between individuals and smaller groups.
Exactly. General symmetry breakup process guarantees that uniformity in highly interconnected environment wouldn't be a stable state, ie. it means the necessary emergence of non-uniformity, basically individuality, at different scales - personal, group/team, cube, ... It is just that such individuality would look different as it will be driven by emerging non-uniformity instead of just physical barriers of our skulls.
We're heading toward the same thing every species before us has; death and extinction. We're just accelerating the process, and have the unique ability to anticipate it. Nothing has shown an ability to avert the inevitable however.
In what was is human diversity increasing? Broadcast television has been causing the decline of regional accents and increasing cultural homogenization for decades. Many obscure languages are dying out in favor of consolidation at the regional or national level.
In the past, humans were naturally diverse simply because there were so many distinct communities that hardly ever interacted with each other. Nowadays you might be exposed to many times more diversity than the average medieval peasant ever was but there's nothing contradictory about that happening as the total amount of diversity in the world continues to decrease.
You'll have a hard time convincing me that a world with several orders of magnitude more humans is somehow less diverse than the times with fewer humans unless you somehow remove the ability to process arithmetic from my brain.
Wait, how does more humans = more diversity? I would think any abstract measure of diversity would be based on average differences, or standard deviations away from the mean. Obviously, the absolute extremes are greater with more people, but it seems entirely logical to say diversity has decreased as the number of people increase.
Easy. The more populated world is the one that has a global telecommunications network, whose homogenizing influence far outweighs higher-order effects like population.
Hardly. Increasing connection is shifting us closer to a single world-culture every day, which has advantages and disadvantages. All the world's most powerful people wear Western-style suits and speak English.
This was my initial thought as well. But on further thought, it doesn't seem to be true. I think, with technology and inter-connectivity, we are getting exposed to diverse points of view more than ever before. It might eventually lead to one culture, but then that would be because we all learned from all the options and settled on the best combination.
Oh, each human being is definitely exposed to more diversity, but that doesn't mean the world is getting more diverse. Now, I can be English and interact with people who are French, German, American, Chinese and so on; previously, I could have spent my whole life only interacting with Anglo-Saxons, but not know about the Bretons, Picts, Gaels, Geats, Swedes, Goths, Navajo, Hopi, Anasazi and so on nearby and around the world.
Perhaps we'll settle on one culture as we choose the best one. I more imagine we'll end up with one culture in an endless echo chamber, forever unable to sense our own biases.
