Solid Collectives classification system

[Joao_Luz (João Luz)]

Hi, thanks for replying.

@Radivis

Also note that I have tried classifying different individual post-human minds in my blog post

Thanks for sharing your post, It’s been a fascinating read. I think I had already read it once, but I’d totally forgotten about it, so it was nice to read it again.

@Radivis

There, I’ve also used a logarithmic mind size characteristic that might be an interesting alternative to the number of synapses, though the synapse number is kinda more intuitive.

Your model has the advantage of being much more suited for very large posthuman minds than mine. The use of a logarithmic scale avoids the need to use ridiculously large numbers.

As I haven’t actually decided about the size of the collectives’s minds, I’ll certainly consider it as an alternative.

@Radivis

Given that the human brain has more than 100 trillion synapses, the hive beings from the K’phlor collective seem to be extremely simple-minded, especially for post-human entities. Why should they save so much on synapses? It would make more sense, if they had around 500 trillion synapses or more, as individual members, and collectively much more, of course.

LOL

You’re right. As I’d said, that number of synapses was chosen completely ramdomly. I didn’t even bother to look up how many synapses an human brain has.

I think that mind size you describe makes sense. Given that, I think it would make sense to use my mind-size measuring system for the minds of the “individual” members of a collective and yours to describe the collective as a whole.

The only problem that this would pose is that different members/units of the same collective can have very differently sized minds. In highly centralized collectives, for example, most of the thinking would be done by a small number of “command units”, while the remaining ones would be more like drones, thereby not needing many synapses.

I could probably solve this by using the average number of synapses for the “code form” designation of a collective (which would make it function as kind of a ratio between a collective’s thinking power and it’s degree of centralization) and than I could somehow adapt this system to describe the mind of an “individual” member.

@Radivis

Now a general criticism of your code. If you insist on making them connected strings of characters without spaces, you should avoid two letter characteristics like “Ph” or “Pa”.

What if I use P for “Pacifist” and T, for “Truth-seeking” as an alternative to “philosophical”.

@Radivis

And anyway, it would make more sense to make spaces between the different characteristics and perhaps add a variable number of "+"s for strongly expressed characteristics (instead of simply using the letter “E” for extreme).

Good idea, I think I’ll use that.[quote=“Radivis, post:2, topic:1060”]
When it comes to attributes like “philosophical” or “moralist”, its getting difficult, because there can be very many philosophical and moral theories. It may become interesting to go into more detail in those cases.
[/quote]

I don’t really think that we can devise a classification system that would give much detail about those things without being ridiculously complicated. I’ll try to think of something, thought.

@Radivis

Perhaps the system could be simplified by only taking one attribute of a dichotomy and denote its opposite with minuses.

For example C might stand for centralization. C-- would indicate a decentralized hive. C a very balanced one in that respect. C+++ would be a highly centralized hive.

Hum…I don’t know if I like that very much. C-- kinda sounds like a collective is still in the centralized camp but is just not as centralized as C+ or C++. I think I prefer to stick with using two letters.

@Radivis

What might also be interesting is to add primary motives of the hive in question. What does it concern itself mostly? Economic influence? Memetic dominance? Scientific progress? Cultural achievements? Entertainment? Excellence in combat?

Yeah, that may be interesting. I’ll think about that and try to come up with a more updated version of the system.