Do we even know: does the Borg queen truly control the collective, or is she rather a manifestation of something still more deeply hidden?
Perhaps at the core of the core, it really is a collective? I suppose this like (edit: level) of argumentation is useless, like that thought experiment of glass mountains on the moon, but still I wonder.
It depends on who’s writing the episode. In First Contact she was implied to be an avatar of the Collective rather than an individual that controls it. Or possibly a gestalt consciousness formed as a byproduct of the Collective’s structure of interlinking minds. The VOY writers didn’t really get it, though, so she became a true individual on that show and in her future appearances.
She is very much in control. In unimatrix zero double episode, she commands self destruct of whole cubes just because one drone was not under her complete control, that’s how much she is afraid of any independent thought.
Right, so she is like a program running with sudo permissions on a Unix machine. She holds the hidden, backdoor keys to control the thoughts of the mere “drones” below her, even as each ship itself had a singular authority (iirc?) who could do similarly for those “below” them. But what I mean is, what above moving back “up” that chain - does she likewise have hidden backdoor keys to control her thoughts, which she would not necessarily (or even likely) be aware of herself?
That, and even if she has sudo perms so to speak, that doesn’t necessarily make it impossible for her to be a manifestation or byproduct of the borg collective consciousness.
There is/was no cube hierarchy. You have the Borg queen and then everything else. Ship sizing wasn’t an indication of anything there than use case iirc.
Plus, a collective, as well as one ran by a leader, has no use case for a tiered authority structure. Unless compromised, Borg already always know the current plan. Thats why any ship could destroy every other ship.
I dunno, that seems like a ginormous gaping security hole, if any ship containing mere drones could be compromised - even the tiniest ones with the least powerful engines (& thus shields, etc.) - and then it in turn could decide to blow up the queen… and/or literally all other ships. Any collective with such a feature baked-in sounds like it would not remain in existence for all that long, unless there were literally no other species nearby it that were even remotely close to their level of technological development.
Oh… that’s very interesting. Is that from the lore? Was it on purpose? It doesn’t matter bc either way it’s fascinating to think about how the “corruption” of the original purpose lead to the masses being controlled by a central figure with absolute authority.
Or another way to say that is that their society itself evolved and adapted to face their external circumstances, but anyway somehow it always ends up with an elite cadre of illuminati-like figures on top, and everyone else is just an entirely disposable peon.
Which makes me wonder now about whether the ocean of changelings themselves has things like “rulers”.
Do we even know: does the Borg queen truly control the collective, or is she rather a manifestation of something still more deeply hidden?
Perhaps at the core of the core, it really is a collective? I suppose this
like(edit: level) of argumentation is useless, like that thought experiment of glass mountains on the moon, but still I wonder.It depends on who’s writing the episode. In First Contact she was implied to be an avatar of the Collective rather than an individual that controls it. Or possibly a gestalt consciousness formed as a byproduct of the Collective’s structure of interlinking minds. The VOY writers didn’t really get it, though, so she became a true individual on that show and in her future appearances.
Blah blah it’s a special case done b/c of the time travel blah - maybe something along those lines? :-)
In First Contact, when she died, all of the regular Borg immediately dropped dead.
She is very much in control. In unimatrix zero double episode, she commands self destruct of whole cubes just because one drone was not under her complete control, that’s how much she is afraid of any independent thought.
And how much control she has over the rest.
Right, so she is like a program running with sudo permissions on a Unix machine. She holds the hidden, backdoor keys to control the thoughts of the mere “drones” below her, even as each ship itself had a singular authority (iirc?) who could do similarly for those “below” them. But what I mean is, what above moving back “up” that chain - does she likewise have hidden backdoor keys to control her thoughts, which she would not necessarily (or even likely) be aware of herself?
That, and even if she has sudo perms so to speak, that doesn’t necessarily make it impossible for her to be a manifestation or byproduct of the borg collective consciousness.
Exactly - this conspiracy theory could go all the way to the core, and beyond! Or not, but it’s fun to think about anyway:-).
There is/was no cube hierarchy. You have the Borg queen and then everything else. Ship sizing wasn’t an indication of anything there than use case iirc.
Plus, a collective, as well as one ran by a leader, has no use case for a tiered authority structure. Unless compromised, Borg already always know the current plan. Thats why any ship could destroy every other ship.
I dunno, that seems like a ginormous gaping security hole, if any ship containing mere drones could be compromised - even the tiniest ones with the least powerful engines (& thus shields, etc.) - and then it in turn could decide to blow up the queen… and/or literally all other ships. Any collective with such a feature baked-in sounds like it would not remain in existence for all that long, unless there were literally no other species nearby it that were even remotely close to their level of technological development.
Each drone is a brain-cell of the collective brain, the Queen is the personality that eventually formed.
Still sucks, Borg were better as unpersonal
In order to interact with other groups they evolved a figure head
Oh… that’s very interesting. Is that from the lore? Was it on purpose? It doesn’t matter bc either way it’s fascinating to think about how the “corruption” of the original purpose lead to the masses being controlled by a central figure with absolute authority.
Or another way to say that is that their society itself evolved and adapted to face their external circumstances, but anyway somehow it always ends up with an elite cadre of illuminati-like figures on top, and everyone else is just an entirely disposable peon.
Which makes me wonder now about whether the ocean of changelings themselves has things like “rulers”.