Well fair enough. That's your take on things, canon states it's the Borg collective, the Borg are many, not singular.
But I will leave it at that because it's pointless going over it forever because you will never change my opinion.... And I will never change yours.
It's one mind, many bodies, according to word of god.
Each drone is basically a finger of the Borg collective consciousness, which IS one single, unified mind composed of the yoked remnants of trillions of individual minds.
Once you sever a drone from the Collective, it becomes one individual mind, separate from the Collective entity.
It's one mind, many bodies, according to word of gojd.
Each drone is basically a finger of the Borg collective consciousness, which IS one single, unified mind composed of the yoked remnants of trillions of individual minds.
Once you sever a drone from the Collective, it becomes one individual mind, separate from the Collective entity.
Billions of minds connected working together is not singular, their goal is singular. But like I said I will not change my opinion..
Billions of minds connected working together is not singular, their goal is singular. But like I said I will not change my opinion..
No, no, no, you're thinking in Human terms.
Think Legos. Each brick is a discrete unit, right? Now think of each brick as a drone, and then glue 15,000,000 of those bricks together into a scene like Will Ferrell's live-action character's giant diorama from the Lego movie. Now melt the bricks so that they fuse together while maintaining the shape.
Each brick is no longer a discrete unit; it's a part of a bigger, discrete whole, but it's no longer discrete in and of itself.
Billions of minds connected working together is not singular, their goal is singular. But like I said I will not change my opinion..
You've got the Collective confused with the Cooperative.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I don't, but like I said, pointless going over it constantly
Buddy, word of god says that the Borg is a hive mind. Hive mind doesn't mean a bunch of interconnected minds reaching a consensus, it means one mind with many bodies and brains.
Buddy, word of god says that the Borg is a hive mind. Hive mind doesn't mean a bunch of interconnected minds reaching a consensus, it means one mind with many bodies and brains.
I do have to ask, what do you mean by "word of God"?
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
It didn't take the threat of extinction to get the Klingons, Cardassians, and Romulans to the bargaining table (it was respectively economic collapse, an internal revolution the first time and the Dominion turning on them the second, and another internal change of government to a faction that was more reasonable), and threatening the Founders with extinction by Section 31's bioweapon just pissed them off. And you keep conveniently ignoring the part where as soon as the threat of extinction was withdrawn, the Borg went back on the deal instantaneously because they have a hard-coded imperative to assimilate or destroy every thinking creature in the galaxy.
I think Praxis and Hobus pretty much were "excinction level" events for Klingons and Romulans respectively.
But I am not denying that the Borg went back on their promise the moment they though they could get away with it. But it wasn't all rainbow and sunshine for them afterwards. A few years later, Voyager blew up their Transwarp Gateway - how different would things have been if the Borg would just let Janeway go and come to a peace agreement with her? The Borg didn't achieve its secondary objective and lost a major strategic asset as a result. I don't think this action brought he Collective closer to perfection.
The Hive Mind is still in the middle of the process of learning what the real consequence of their actions are. It will take some time - but I cannot believe that a sapient creature that aims for perfection and adapts all the time to new knowledge is capable of "assimilating" the information that constant war will not work.
You're not getting it. The entire point of the Borg is that they're an enemy that the Federation cannot beat by being high-minded pretentious idealists. It's like trying to argue with Ebola, or, perhaps more appropriately, with Stuxnet.
Neither Ebola nor Stuxnet are sapient. The Borg are. (OR should I say "Is"?)
"They can't be reasoned or bargained with" is something that we always say about our most hated and feared enemies. It doesn't make it true.
They were foiled at every turn in canon Star Trek too. No effect. You misunderstand your opponent. That is the greatest mistake you can ever make.
The part you quoted is specifically for me as a writer - as a writer, they aren't my enemy.
What even the Federation forgets at times is that the Borg is one mind. It is an omnicidal maniac that is absolutely, insanely, irrevocably programmed to kill everything else that exists by turning every other living thing into an appendage (i.e. a drone). The Borg Queen, at least the First Contact version, is the Borg entity's CPU, and as such functions and interacts with the world in a way quite similar to the Borg itself; in fact, the Borg Queen can be considered to BE the Borg entity, and even says so herself.
The Borg mind is not generally described as "mad" and "completely insane" in Star Trek. That is how you interpret them. It is not the only possible interpretation.
The Mind may have a very strong goal and a strong opinion on where it is in achieving it and how to do so. But the lore also describes the Borg as adapting. That means they must be able to incorporate new ideas. The Hive Mind can learn. It does learn. It realized when it chewed off more than it could handle, and reached out for help. It mistakenly believed that it could get away with later turning against it help - it can learn from that mistake. Of course it can just learn to be more trickier the next time - but there are counter-strategies the Federation can (and must) take for that - the next time the Borg are offering a deal - ensure that going back on them will hurt the Borg. Make it clear the Borg must proof their trustworthyness, and if the Hive Mind fails, it will cost it.
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"Insane" is a relative term. By our standards, the Borg is/are insane.
Remember, however - they are alien. Any attempts to ascribe human motivations, fears, and drives to them will be approximations at best, and possibly just totally misleading.
I'm sure that in terms of the society that first programmed the Borg, its/their behavior is perfectly sane, exactly in line with the original design. By the standards of us individualists, it's crazy - but by its/their standards, we're insane for insisting on the value of the individual.
I think Praxis and Hobus pretty much were "excinction level" events for Klingons and Romulans respectively.
But I am not denying that the Borg went back on their promise the moment they though they could get away with it. But it wasn't all rainbow and sunshine for them afterwards. A few years later, Voyager blew up their Transwarp Gateway - how different would things have been if the Borg would just let Janeway go and come to a peace agreement with her? The Borg didn't achieve its secondary objective and lost a major strategic asset as a result. I don't think this action brought he Collective closer to perfection.
The Hive Mind is still in the middle of the process of learning what the real consequence of their actions are. It will take some time - but I cannot believe that a sapient creature that aims for perfection and adapts all the time to new knowledge is capable of "assimilating" the information that constant war will not work.
The Borg mind is not generally described as "mad" and "completely insane" in Star Trek. That is how you interpret them. It is not the only possible interpretation.
The Mind may have a very strong goal and a strong opinion on where it is in achieving it and how to do so. But the lore also describes the Borg as adapting. That means they must be able to incorporate new ideas. The Hive Mind can learn. It does learn. It realized when it chewed off more than it could handle, and reached out for help. It mistakenly believed that it could get away with later turning against it help - it can learn from that mistake. Of course it can just learn to be more trickier the next time - but there are counter-strategies the Federation can (and must) take for that - the next time the Borg are offering a deal - ensure that going back on them will hurt the Borg. Make it clear the Borg must proof their trustworthyness, and if the Hive Mind fails, it will cost it.
"Adapts all the time to new knowledge", right. What the Borg have actually shown the ability to adapt to is strictly on the level of weapons technology. The only time they've even visibly altered their own battlefield tactics was when they were being attacked on their home territory by Voyager and the Undine, when they started mobbing the enemy instead of deploying single starships (something that could easily be rationalized as SOP in the event of somebody actually taking the offensive).
Their outlook and aims have never shown any indication of wavering once, and as shown by their reaction to to the newly individualized Hugh (i.e. unplugging his entire cube) they actively defend against the introduction of new ideas. Even the Founders, despite being roughly as delusional (due in large part to groupthink in the Great Link), changed their minds in the end.
Neither Ebola nor Stuxnet are sapient. The Borg are. (OR should I say "Is"?)
"They can't be reasoned or bargained with" is something that we always say about our most hated and feared enemies. It doesn't make it true.
I look at the Borg Collective and I see something rather like a fundie, a climate change denier, or a conspiracy theorist, or Adolf Hitler during the Battle of Berlin.* It's a matter of faith that their way is right and there's nothing anybody can possibly do to prove them wrong. A defeat is a temporary setback, not a learning opportunity or an indication that maybe they're wrong.
You can change a society, but you can't always change an individual.
* Didn't really want to invoke Godwin's Law but the analogy works. Even in the face of imminent defeat with all his generals and government ministers telling him to cut his losses and surrender, Adolf Hitler insisted on trying to defend Berlin as if victory was still possible.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
starsword made a good point. The Borg encountered in Enterprise were used to the more advanced 24th Century tech. The more primitive 22nd Century tech worked because it was less advanced. Same idea with the Tommy Gun pwning the Borg in the Holodeck in First Contact. A more primitive weapon was effective.
But considering that the tech they have to work with beyond the implants in their bodies was 22nd century tech. The Borg did the best they could without having access to their normal assembly tech and supplies. It would be like a good engineer of today going back in time to the Middle Ages. He could improve the old tech to a certain point. But beyond that he would have to recreate the Industrial Revolution.
* Didn't really want to invoke Godwin's Law but the analogy works. Even in the face of imminent defeat with all his generals and government ministers telling him to cut his losses and surrender, Adolf Hitler insisted on trying to defend Berlin as if victory was still possible.
It was bound to happen on a thread about a genocidal, totalitarian enemy.
Still... how much are you projecting human sensibilities here on something that is out of de facto every our experiences. There are no Hive Minds in the real world. There are hives, but a a bee or ant hive can't talk with you and they are not hell-bent on world domination.
I don't think I am ascribing too much humanity to the Borg, however. I subscribe general "lifeform" behaviour - the wish to survive. If violent assimilation of anyone that gets in the way isn't conductive to survival anymore, an intelligent life form will have to adapt its methods. I think the Borg will.
Q may have called the Federation not ready to deal with the Borg, but that doesn't have to mean that we would never be able to, nor that he though the Federation didn't have the capacity to extinguish another species. Because just a few episodes earlier with him, he made a point of humanity being quite vicious and brutal and the Federation at best a thin veneer on our baser instincts - obviously we're capable of extinguishing other life forms. That's like driving a bike - you never unlearn that!
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But considering that the tech they have to work with beyond the implants in their bodies was 22nd century tech. The Borg did the best they could without having access to their normal assembly tech and supplies. It would be like a good engineer of today going back in time to the Middle Ages. He could improve the old tech to a certain point. But beyond that he would have to recreate the Industrial Revolution.
Actually, not really; the difference really isn't one of "completely new technology" so much as "linear extrapolation from old technology". Except for combat-grade deflector shields the NX-01 basically has all the same tunes and tricks as the NCC-1701; they're just less refined. It's more like comparing my Samsung laptop to an Apple IIe (f**k, now I feel old) than having to recreate the Industrial Revolution. More "advanced", certainly, but it still uses the same basic principles and parts, Nvidia graphics card and LCD screen notwithstanding. Considering the fact that the Delta Quadrant was routinely ten to twenty years or more behind the Federation, the Borg presumably have to deal with less-advanced but nevertheless warp-capable species all the time.
Still... how much are you projecting human sensibilities here on something that is out of de facto every our experiences. There are no Hive Minds in the real world. There are hives, but a a bee or ant hive can't talk with you and they are not hell-bent on world domination.
I'm not really ascribing human sensibilities to the Borg so much as using historical human actions as an analogy, much like how Star Trek often uses the behavior of aliens as an analogy for human behavior for their social commentary episodes (off the top of my head, Voth Doctrine as an analogy for creationism, and Kai Winn as an analogy for fundies).
And you're absolutely right that there's no such thing as a hive mind on Earth. Individual ants and bees aren't mind-networked like a hive mind so much as being instinctive creatures with a set of pre-programmed responses (e.g. "I smell nectar" -> "I go back to the hive and tell the other bees where it is by dancing"). Bee, ant, and termite queens aren't much more than egg-layers.
I don't think I am ascribing too much humanity to the Borg, however. I subscribe general "lifeform" behaviour - the wish to survive. If violent assimilation of anyone that gets in the way isn't conductive to survival anymore, an intelligent life form will have to adapt its methods. I think the Borg will.
Not if it conflicts with their delusions of superiority. The Federation wrung them out and hung them out to dry a dozen times by the end of the 2370s because they survived long enough through dumb luck (and because the Borg can't assimilate plot armor, lol) that they were able to adapt to the Borg instead of the other way around. And then they got their asses handed to them by the Undine, who presumably just burn through their resistance to energy weapons with sheer brute firepower, and meanwhile the Voth are also holding their own against a full-scale invasion. But the Borg have yet to waver in their intent. That says delusions of grandeur to me.
Like I said, you can change a society, but you can't always change an individual.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Billions of minds connected working together is not singular, their goal is singular. But like I said I will not change my opinion..
The Collective is misnamed according to it's function. The Borg Drone's don't work together. They have no free will. They are USED. The Collective is one entity. One being. Singular. IT.
IT won't negotiate unless IT's existance is threatened. IT was only threatened when Trillions of IT's components (Drones) were being salughtered. Because IT could not assimilate and counter the threat to IT's existence.
The Collective is misnamed according to it's function. The Borg Drone's don't work together. They have no free will. They are USED. The Collective is one entity. One being. Singular. IT.
IT won't negotiate unless IT's existance is threatened. IT was only threatened when Trillions of IT's components (Drones) were being salughtered. Because IT could not assimilate and counter the threat to IT's existence.
I would look the other way if they started writing it as a proper collective with the Borg Queen simply as an avatar of the Collective.
Then again, I played a Trek RPG as a teenager and I played a Cardassian whose big idea was to create a large volume of Cardassians with the intent of them being assimilated so that we could influence the Collective to be subserviant to Cardassian interests.
I think I estimated the number needed to sway the Collective in terms of a few hundred trillion and proposed a civic works project to create a few hundred trillion brainwashed embryonic clones offered up for assimilation.
If the Borg could be manipulated into assimilating enough voices with a singular viewpoint, I reasoned, they could be made subserviant to an outside perspective and we could get the Queen to pledge her absolute fealty to Cardassian Central Command with the Collective agreeing not to assimilate natural Cardassians and to use their enormous power as servants of the Cardassian Union. Naturally, a component of the clones' programming would be to use non-Cardassian drones as disposable foot soldiers and to discontinue further attempts at assimilation so as not to upset the balance we'd have created.
Granted, if we couldn't manipulate the Collective into taking the bait, we'd have the alternative strategy of creating a supercomputer with a few hundred trillion virtual consciousnesses (or perhaps just brains, with enough resources) and using replicated Borg interlink nodes, forcibly inject these consciousnesses into the Collective. I imagine the Borg are used to people trying to avoid assimilation but might be a touch less prepared for someone using replicated interlink nodes to assimilate people for them.
You could always test this out by tossing a Bajoran prisoner in a remote laboratory into an assimilation chamber of our own design to see if the Borg would "take the bait" and recognize the Bajoran as assimilated after we attached the interlink nodes to the prisoner. If we can assimilate a lab specimen FOR the Collective and the Collective accepts them as a drone then we could go about trying a mass infiltration/coupe by wiring up enough real or artificial brains into the Collective to overwhelm the collective will of the Collective and replace it with something more... pliable.
I think it was a pretty decent example of how someone like the Cardassians might attempt to deal with the Borg.
I would look the other way if they started writing it as a proper collective with the Borg Queen simply as an avatar of the Collective.
Then again, I played a Trek RPG as a teenager and I played a Cardassian whose big idea was to create a large volume of Cardassians with the intent of them being assimilated so that we could influence the Collective to be subserviant to Cardassian interests.
I think I estimated the number needed to sway the Collective in terms of a few hundred trillion and proposed a civic works project to create a few hundred trillion brainwashed embryonic clones offered up for assimilation.
If the Borg could be manipulated into assimilating enough voices with a singular viewpoint, I reasoned, they could be made subserviant to an outside perspective and we could get the Queen to pledge her absolute fealty to Cardassian Central Command with the Collective agreeing not to assimilate natural Cardassians and to use their enormous power as servants of the Cardassian Union. Naturally, a component of the clones' programming would be to use non-Cardassian drones as disposable foot soldiers and to discontinue further attempts at assimilation so as not to upset the balance we'd have created.
Granted, if we couldn't manipulate the Collective into taking the bait, we'd have the alternative strategy of creating a supercomputer with a few hundred trillion virtual consciousnesses (or perhaps just brains, with enough resources) and using replicated Borg interlink nodes, forcibly inject these consciousnesses into the Collective. I imagine the Borg are used to people trying to avoid assimilation but might be a touch less prepared for someone using replicated interlink nodes to assimilate people for them.
You could always test this out by tossing a Bajoran prisoner in a remote laboratory into an assimilation chamber of our own design to see if the Borg would "take the bait" and recognize the Bajoran as assimilated after we attached the interlink nodes to the prisoner. If we can assimilate a lab specimen FOR the Collective and the Collective accepts them as a drone then we could go about trying a mass infiltration/coupe by wiring up enough real or artificial brains into the Collective to overwhelm the collective will of the Collective and replace it with something more... pliable.
I think it was a pretty decent example of how someone like the Cardassians might attempt to deal with the Borg.
I like it. That's kinda the idea for my idea on how to build on that Parallel Universe where Riker and the Enterprise were fleeing from the Borg after they assimilated Earth. I would continue the story - years later, the Borg have assimilated all of the Federation - and stopped.
The Federation was the largest single "culture" the Borg assimilated that was based on peaceful cooperation and cooperative and negotiated "assimilation" - and the method was deemed superior by the Hive Mind. The Collective had assimilated huge empires before - but those were based on conquest, with member species as slaves and servants for a dominant species. They were only held together by mutual hatreds and brutal policing. This "Empire" was different. It was diverse (like some of the Empires), but it had a unique, common trait - the willingness to learn from each other and to cooperate, a desire and gift for peaceful exploration, not expansion.
It altered the collective - it is now engaged in diplomacy with its neighbors, releasing drones that still desired individuallty back, offering people to join the collective temporarily or permanently. And... it is succeeding.
Many neighbors do not trust the Borg, of course - but on many worlds, there are people that are looking for something bigger to be part of, and they join the Collective (unless forcibly hindered by the respective governments.)
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I like it. That's kinda the idea for my idea on how to build on that Parallel Universe where Riker and the Enterprise were fleeing from the Borg after they assimilated Earth. I would continue the story - years later, the Borg have assimilated all of the Federation - and stopped.
The Federation was the largest single "culture" the Borg assimilated that was based on peaceful cooperation and cooperative and negotiated "assimilation" - and the method was deemed superior by the Hive Mind. The Collective had assimilated huge empires before - but those were based on conquest, with member species as slaves and servants for a dominant species. They were only held together by mutual hatreds and brutal policing. This "Empire" was different. It was diverse (like some of the Empires), but it had a unique, common trait - the willingness to learn from each other and to cooperate, a desire and gift for peaceful exploration, not expansion.
It altered the collective - it is now engaged in diplomacy with its neighbors, releasing drones that still desired individuallty back, offering people to join the collective temporarily or permanently. And... it is succeeding.
Many neighbors do not trust the Borg, of course - but on many worlds, there are people that are looking for something bigger to be part of, and they join the Collective (unless forcibly hindered by the respective governments.)
If they assimilated the STO Federation they would be even more warlike and desire technology from other civilizations even more.....
STO Federation in practice is oh Hi nice to meet you pewpew , now give me all your stuffs. :rolleyes:
In canon they have assimilated entire civilizations and it doesn't seem to change their goal of perfection one bit.
Once assimilated the drones no longer have free will or desires, unless some outside force like a "Hugh" virus is introduced to them . Even then not all drones revert to their previous life.
And the borg seem to have a very effective means of controlling these "virus" outbreaks in canon by simply self-destructing the infected ship.
Darthmeow504's idea maybe the closest to the truth it seems as how they have been shown in canon, just because a couple of minor hero borg have been freed from the collective and be all "Humanish" again, the majority seem to fall into madness like the mini Collective Lore was controlling in ST:TNG - Descent without some alternative collective consciousness they are unable to cope.
If they assimilated the STO Federation they would be even more warlike and desire technology from other civilizations even more.....
STO Federation in practice is oh Hi nice to meet you pewpew , now give me all your stuffs. :rolleyes:
That isn't happening in STO. Starfleet is still not in the business of conquest. Name one planet or star system that the Federation or Starfleet forcefully brought into the fold.
There is a lot of fighting going on*, but we haven't conquered anyone or anything.
The only thing that one could really describe as a contest of ownership might be the Dyson Spheres - but the Spheres are uninhabited. The Voth, Romulans, Klingons and the Federation are interested in it, but the last 3 cooperate on it.
In canon they have assimilated entire civilizations and it doesn't seem to change their goal of perfection one bit.
But none where like the Federation. Most civlizations we have seen or heard about in Star Trek are either based on just a single race (Voth, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians) or have a single dominant race that subjugated the other races (Dominion, Iconians).
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I would look the other way if they started writing it as a proper collective with the Borg Queen simply as an avatar of the Collective.
Then again, I played a Trek RPG as a teenager and I played a Cardassian whose big idea was to create a large volume of Cardassians with the intent of them being assimilated so that we could influence the Collective to be subserviant to Cardassian interests.
I think I estimated the number needed to sway the Collective in terms of a few hundred trillion and proposed a civic works project to create a few hundred trillion brainwashed embryonic clones offered up for assimilation.
If the Borg could be manipulated into assimilating enough voices with a singular viewpoint, I reasoned, they could be made subserviant to an outside perspective and we could get the Queen to pledge her absolute fealty to Cardassian Central Command with the Collective agreeing not to assimilate natural Cardassians and to use their enormous power as servants of the Cardassian Union. Naturally, a component of the clones' programming would be to use non-Cardassian drones as disposable foot soldiers and to discontinue further attempts at assimilation so as not to upset the balance we'd have created.
Granted, if we couldn't manipulate the Collective into taking the bait, we'd have the alternative strategy of creating a supercomputer with a few hundred trillion virtual consciousnesses (or perhaps just brains, with enough resources) and using replicated Borg interlink nodes, forcibly inject these consciousnesses into the Collective. I imagine the Borg are used to people trying to avoid assimilation but might be a touch less prepared for someone using replicated interlink nodes to assimilate people for them.
You could always test this out by tossing a Bajoran prisoner in a remote laboratory into an assimilation chamber of our own design to see if the Borg would "take the bait" and recognize the Bajoran as assimilated after we attached the interlink nodes to the prisoner. If we can assimilate a lab specimen FOR the Collective and the Collective accepts them as a drone then we could go about trying a mass infiltration/coupe by wiring up enough real or artificial brains into the Collective to overwhelm the collective will of the Collective and replace it with something more... pliable.
I think it was a pretty decent example of how someone like the Cardassians might attempt to deal with the Borg.
The Borg aren't swayed by the personal beliefs of those they assimilate, they assimilate knowledge and technology, not ways of life. Probably no one wanted to be assimilated, therefore they should have swayed the Collective to stop assimilating people then. It doesn't work that way.
The Borg aren't swayed by the personal beliefs of those they assimilate, they assimilate knowledge and technology, not ways of life. Probably no one wanted to be assimilated, therefore they should have swayed the Collective to stop assimilating people then. It doesn't work that way.
I don't know if it's ever been touched upon in anything but it could also be that assimilation is written into the borg's ai side similar to AI in Asimov's creations having the 3 laws. Only choices that allow the eventual assimilation of a target are allowed.
I don't believe the Collective envisions itself as an "omnicidal maniac".
"Why do you resist? We only wish to raise quality of life, for all species."
~ Locutus
"By assimilating other beings into our Collective, we are bringing them closer to perfection."
~ Borg Queen
From the point of view of the Collective, it isn't doing anything wrong per se.
Yeah, the Collective isn't really "evil" per se. If I was to assign it an alignment I'd call it True Neutral by way of being limited by its core programming to a single basic course of action.
I doubt a "Hugh" virus would work a second time, even on a limited basis.
Quite frankly it wasn't too effective the first time, either. The Collective seems to be well-practiced at getting rid of unwanted ideas.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
The thread's title sounds like something Neville Chamberlain would have said if he had lived in the Star Trek Universe. I think Parliament sent for Churchill. Time for the Federation to build more dreadnoughts.
None that we know of as of yet. Several worlds collaborating toward a common goal isn't unheard of outside of the Federation. There was (supposedly) an alliance of worlds that banded together to defeat the Iconians.
And nearer the home territory of the Borg, the Turei led an alliance in the 15th century to defeat the Vaads the first time around.
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
I notice a lot of people saying the Borg are "programmed" - but what is the evidence for that? Just because the are determined on assimilating others doesn't mean it's their programming, it is just what they think is the best course of action to achieve their goals. I think it's possible to dissuade them from that.
And nearer the home territory of the Borg, the Turei led an alliance in the 15th century to defeat the Vaads the first time around.
But it seems these alliances didn't last, probably because they only existed to deal with one single thread. The Federation existed for more than that.
The thread's title sounds like something Neville Chamberlain would have said if he had lived in the Star Trek Universe. I think Parliament sent for Churchill. Time for the Federation to build more dreadnoughts.
I don't argue against using more dreadnought. I am just saying that, if we continue to fight the Borg and don't falter, the Borg will have to see that their methods aren't working, and they must try something new.
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It's one mind, many bodies, according to word of god.
Each drone is basically a finger of the Borg collective consciousness, which IS one single, unified mind composed of the yoked remnants of trillions of individual minds.
Once you sever a drone from the Collective, it becomes one individual mind, separate from the Collective entity.
Billions of minds connected working together is not singular, their goal is singular. But like I said I will not change my opinion..
No, no, no, you're thinking in Human terms.
Think Legos. Each brick is a discrete unit, right? Now think of each brick as a drone, and then glue 15,000,000 of those bricks together into a scene like Will Ferrell's live-action character's giant diorama from the Lego movie. Now melt the bricks so that they fuse together while maintaining the shape.
Each brick is no longer a discrete unit; it's a part of a bigger, discrete whole, but it's no longer discrete in and of itself.
That giant fused diorama is the Borg entity.
You've got the Collective confused with the Cooperative.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
I don't, but like I said, pointless going over it constantly
Buddy, word of god says that the Borg is a hive mind. Hive mind doesn't mean a bunch of interconnected minds reaching a consensus, it means one mind with many bodies and brains.
I do have to ask, what do you mean by "word of God"?
Ronald D. Moore. And the other guys who created the Borg before Berman and Braga turned them into a joke.
Here's a Tropese to English translation.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
Thank you both kindly. I suppose the word of god does kinda slap my opinion to the side..... I was wrong ( slinks off quietly to the corner)
I did like the lego explanation.... Just don't glue any more together.
But I am not denying that the Borg went back on their promise the moment they though they could get away with it. But it wasn't all rainbow and sunshine for them afterwards. A few years later, Voyager blew up their Transwarp Gateway - how different would things have been if the Borg would just let Janeway go and come to a peace agreement with her? The Borg didn't achieve its secondary objective and lost a major strategic asset as a result. I don't think this action brought he Collective closer to perfection.
The Hive Mind is still in the middle of the process of learning what the real consequence of their actions are. It will take some time - but I cannot believe that a sapient creature that aims for perfection and adapts all the time to new knowledge is capable of "assimilating" the information that constant war will not work.
Neither Ebola nor Stuxnet are sapient. The Borg are. (OR should I say "Is"?)
"They can't be reasoned or bargained with" is something that we always say about our most hated and feared enemies. It doesn't make it true.
The part you quoted is specifically for me as a writer - as a writer, they aren't my enemy.
The Borg mind is not generally described as "mad" and "completely insane" in Star Trek. That is how you interpret them. It is not the only possible interpretation.
The Mind may have a very strong goal and a strong opinion on where it is in achieving it and how to do so. But the lore also describes the Borg as adapting. That means they must be able to incorporate new ideas. The Hive Mind can learn. It does learn. It realized when it chewed off more than it could handle, and reached out for help. It mistakenly believed that it could get away with later turning against it help - it can learn from that mistake. Of course it can just learn to be more trickier the next time - but there are counter-strategies the Federation can (and must) take for that - the next time the Borg are offering a deal - ensure that going back on them will hurt the Borg. Make it clear the Borg must proof their trustworthyness, and if the Hive Mind fails, it will cost it.
Remember, however - they are alien. Any attempts to ascribe human motivations, fears, and drives to them will be approximations at best, and possibly just totally misleading.
I'm sure that in terms of the society that first programmed the Borg, its/their behavior is perfectly sane, exactly in line with the original design. By the standards of us individualists, it's crazy - but by its/their standards, we're insane for insisting on the value of the individual.
Their outlook and aims have never shown any indication of wavering once, and as shown by their reaction to to the newly individualized Hugh (i.e. unplugging his entire cube) they actively defend against the introduction of new ideas. Even the Founders, despite being roughly as delusional (due in large part to groupthink in the Great Link), changed their minds in the end.
Correction: It doesn't always make it true. Unfortunately, sometimes it is true, if the other party is delusional enough. I'll give you a present-day example. We've got several dozen prominent Muslim scholars laying out in gory detail how the actions of ISIL are not only contrary to Islamic teachings but in fact constitute heresy and sacrilege, but I rather doubt it's going to stop Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from trying to keep up his insanity.
I look at the Borg Collective and I see something rather like a fundie, a climate change denier, or a conspiracy theorist, or Adolf Hitler during the Battle of Berlin.* It's a matter of faith that their way is right and there's nothing anybody can possibly do to prove them wrong. A defeat is a temporary setback, not a learning opportunity or an indication that maybe they're wrong.
You can change a society, but you can't always change an individual.
* Didn't really want to invoke Godwin's Law but the analogy works. Even in the face of imminent defeat with all his generals and government ministers telling him to cut his losses and surrender, Adolf Hitler insisted on trying to defend Berlin as if victory was still possible.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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But considering that the tech they have to work with beyond the implants in their bodies was 22nd century tech. The Borg did the best they could without having access to their normal assembly tech and supplies. It would be like a good engineer of today going back in time to the Middle Ages. He could improve the old tech to a certain point. But beyond that he would have to recreate the Industrial Revolution.
Still... how much are you projecting human sensibilities here on something that is out of de facto every our experiences. There are no Hive Minds in the real world. There are hives, but a a bee or ant hive can't talk with you and they are not hell-bent on world domination.
I don't think I am ascribing too much humanity to the Borg, however. I subscribe general "lifeform" behaviour - the wish to survive. If violent assimilation of anyone that gets in the way isn't conductive to survival anymore, an intelligent life form will have to adapt its methods. I think the Borg will.
Q may have called the Federation not ready to deal with the Borg, but that doesn't have to mean that we would never be able to, nor that he though the Federation didn't have the capacity to extinguish another species. Because just a few episodes earlier with him, he made a point of humanity being quite vicious and brutal and the Federation at best a thin veneer on our baser instincts - obviously we're capable of extinguishing other life forms. That's like driving a bike - you never unlearn that!
I'm not really ascribing human sensibilities to the Borg so much as using historical human actions as an analogy, much like how Star Trek often uses the behavior of aliens as an analogy for human behavior for their social commentary episodes (off the top of my head, Voth Doctrine as an analogy for creationism, and Kai Winn as an analogy for fundies).
And you're absolutely right that there's no such thing as a hive mind on Earth. Individual ants and bees aren't mind-networked like a hive mind so much as being instinctive creatures with a set of pre-programmed responses (e.g. "I smell nectar" -> "I go back to the hive and tell the other bees where it is by dancing"). Bee, ant, and termite queens aren't much more than egg-layers.
Not if it conflicts with their delusions of superiority. The Federation wrung them out and hung them out to dry a dozen times by the end of the 2370s because they survived long enough through dumb luck (and because the Borg can't assimilate plot armor, lol) that they were able to adapt to the Borg instead of the other way around. And then they got their asses handed to them by the Undine, who presumably just burn through their resistance to energy weapons with sheer brute firepower, and meanwhile the Voth are also holding their own against a full-scale invasion. But the Borg have yet to waver in their intent. That says delusions of grandeur to me.
Like I said, you can change a society, but you can't always change an individual.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
The Collective is misnamed according to it's function. The Borg Drone's don't work together. They have no free will. They are USED. The Collective is one entity. One being. Singular. IT.
IT won't negotiate unless IT's existance is threatened. IT was only threatened when Trillions of IT's components (Drones) were being salughtered. Because IT could not assimilate and counter the threat to IT's existence.
I would look the other way if they started writing it as a proper collective with the Borg Queen simply as an avatar of the Collective.
Then again, I played a Trek RPG as a teenager and I played a Cardassian whose big idea was to create a large volume of Cardassians with the intent of them being assimilated so that we could influence the Collective to be subserviant to Cardassian interests.
I think I estimated the number needed to sway the Collective in terms of a few hundred trillion and proposed a civic works project to create a few hundred trillion brainwashed embryonic clones offered up for assimilation.
If the Borg could be manipulated into assimilating enough voices with a singular viewpoint, I reasoned, they could be made subserviant to an outside perspective and we could get the Queen to pledge her absolute fealty to Cardassian Central Command with the Collective agreeing not to assimilate natural Cardassians and to use their enormous power as servants of the Cardassian Union. Naturally, a component of the clones' programming would be to use non-Cardassian drones as disposable foot soldiers and to discontinue further attempts at assimilation so as not to upset the balance we'd have created.
Granted, if we couldn't manipulate the Collective into taking the bait, we'd have the alternative strategy of creating a supercomputer with a few hundred trillion virtual consciousnesses (or perhaps just brains, with enough resources) and using replicated Borg interlink nodes, forcibly inject these consciousnesses into the Collective. I imagine the Borg are used to people trying to avoid assimilation but might be a touch less prepared for someone using replicated interlink nodes to assimilate people for them.
You could always test this out by tossing a Bajoran prisoner in a remote laboratory into an assimilation chamber of our own design to see if the Borg would "take the bait" and recognize the Bajoran as assimilated after we attached the interlink nodes to the prisoner. If we can assimilate a lab specimen FOR the Collective and the Collective accepts them as a drone then we could go about trying a mass infiltration/coupe by wiring up enough real or artificial brains into the Collective to overwhelm the collective will of the Collective and replace it with something more... pliable.
I think it was a pretty decent example of how someone like the Cardassians might attempt to deal with the Borg.
I like it. That's kinda the idea for my idea on how to build on that Parallel Universe where Riker and the Enterprise were fleeing from the Borg after they assimilated Earth. I would continue the story - years later, the Borg have assimilated all of the Federation - and stopped.
The Federation was the largest single "culture" the Borg assimilated that was based on peaceful cooperation and cooperative and negotiated "assimilation" - and the method was deemed superior by the Hive Mind. The Collective had assimilated huge empires before - but those were based on conquest, with member species as slaves and servants for a dominant species. They were only held together by mutual hatreds and brutal policing. This "Empire" was different. It was diverse (like some of the Empires), but it had a unique, common trait - the willingness to learn from each other and to cooperate, a desire and gift for peaceful exploration, not expansion.
It altered the collective - it is now engaged in diplomacy with its neighbors, releasing drones that still desired individuallty back, offering people to join the collective temporarily or permanently. And... it is succeeding.
Many neighbors do not trust the Borg, of course - but on many worlds, there are people that are looking for something bigger to be part of, and they join the Collective (unless forcibly hindered by the respective governments.)
If they assimilated the STO Federation they would be even more warlike and desire technology from other civilizations even more.....
STO Federation in practice is oh Hi nice to meet you pewpew , now give me all your stuffs. :rolleyes:
In canon they have assimilated entire civilizations and it doesn't seem to change their goal of perfection one bit.
Once assimilated the drones no longer have free will or desires, unless some outside force like a "Hugh" virus is introduced to them . Even then not all drones revert to their previous life.
And the borg seem to have a very effective means of controlling these "virus" outbreaks in canon by simply self-destructing the infected ship.
Darthmeow504's idea maybe the closest to the truth it seems as how they have been shown in canon, just because a couple of minor hero borg have been freed from the collective and be all "Humanish" again, the majority seem to fall into madness like the mini Collective Lore was controlling in ST:TNG - Descent without some alternative collective consciousness they are unable to cope.
That isn't happening in STO. Starfleet is still not in the business of conquest. Name one planet or star system that the Federation or Starfleet forcefully brought into the fold.
There is a lot of fighting going on*, but we haven't conquered anyone or anything.
The only thing that one could really describe as a contest of ownership might be the Dyson Spheres - but the Spheres are uninhabited. The Voth, Romulans, Klingons and the Federation are interested in it, but the last 3 cooperate on it.
But none where like the Federation. Most civlizations we have seen or heard about in Star Trek are either based on just a single race (Voth, Klingons, Romulans, Cardassians) or have a single dominant race that subjugated the other races (Dominion, Iconians).
The Borg aren't swayed by the personal beliefs of those they assimilate, they assimilate knowledge and technology, not ways of life. Probably no one wanted to be assimilated, therefore they should have swayed the Collective to stop assimilating people then. It doesn't work that way.
I don't know if it's ever been touched upon in anything but it could also be that assimilation is written into the borg's ai side similar to AI in Asimov's creations having the 3 laws. Only choices that allow the eventual assimilation of a target are allowed.
But that doesn't make it any less dangerous.
Quite frankly it wasn't too effective the first time, either. The Collective seems to be well-practiced at getting rid of unwanted ideas.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
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And nearer the home territory of the Borg, the Turei led an alliance in the 15th century to defeat the Vaads the first time around.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
But it seems these alliances didn't last, probably because they only existed to deal with one single thread. The Federation existed for more than that.
I don't argue against using more dreadnought. I am just saying that, if we continue to fight the Borg and don't falter, the Borg will have to see that their methods aren't working, and they must try something new.