Science of the Borg?

[Evanitis]

7 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

Somewhere in the past, a bunch of individuals, probably very few, thought "hey, let's hook ourselves together and all be one great big mind". And when they did that, they all collectively decided to run out and start assimilating stuff.

Interesting idea. What doesn't make it look feasible to me is that how the collective acts and operates. Hive-mind or not, I can't really see it's actions and methods as a sum of the will of one or more assimilated species. Organic doesn't -think- that way.

The Borg rather reminds me of a rogue AI. Like Skynet, or the Matrix one. I can totally imagine it as it realizes that it's creators have self-destructive potential, and attempting to 'fix' it (the Terminator way) would result in animosity with them. The method they actually use looks like an Ultimate Solution designed by a machine. It minimizes the risks and the waste of resources. And it's universal - worked on every species it met since the unification with the creators.

7 hours ago, GeneralVeers said:

But then you can't have a hive-mind as the Bad Guy if said hive-mind is that easily swayed from its destructive course...

Because of the above, I can totally see it as a good guy. One so terrifyingly constructive that it looks destruction from the outside. The Matrix AI reveals after two sequels that he was just scared but he's ready to cooperate. So.. best friends forever humanity? I always pictured the Borg in a similar way. It just knows better than to negotiate or play mind-games..

Edited February 8, 2016 by Evanitis

[GeneralVeers]

Oop, here goes Veers again, he's really taking up a lot of space in this thread.......like he's trying to assimilate it or something........

4 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

Interesting idea. What doesn't make it look feasible to me is that how the collective acts and operates. Hive-mind or not, I can't really see it's actions and methods as a sum of the will of one or more assimilated species. Organic doesn't -think- that way.

Mmmmm.....I think we can handwave this one. When I read the above, that old line popped into my brain about how people will not act normally in abnormal situations (those few who do, really creep out everybody around them.......) Being part of a brain composed of a few trillion individual brains is certainly not "normal". God knows what kind of conclusions people would reach when they were all plugged into each other like that.

 

4 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

The Borg rather reminds me of a rogue AI. Like Skynet, or the Matrix one.

Naah, the Borg aren't "programmed" so to speak. They're "peer pressured". When you're hosting a party and twenty other people are telling you that shirt you're wearing is lame? That overpowering force that drives you to head to the back room and change? Same thing. Multiply that by a couple trillion and you've got an idea what it feels like when trillions of other minds are telling you to stop humming the My Little Pony theme song and go do something to fix that damaged field collimator.......

[Shpaget]

59 minutes ago, Evanitis said:

Interesting idea. What doesn't make it look feasible to me is that how the collective acts and operates. Hive-mind or not, I can't really see it's actions and methods as a sum of the will of one or more assimilated species. Organic doesn't -think- that way.

Well, we have historical data that contradicts this.

Ottoman empire - they stole children and raised them to fight the very nation they were stolen from. They imposed their own moral and social values on the population on the conquered area and in just a few generations had a new source of warriors and workers. It worked quite well.

It was the same story with pretty much any other long term conquest. Join us or die on the spot. Some opted to fight, but some allowed themselves to be assimilated and ended up fighting another man's war.

[11of10]

Actually, I think that the Borg are more akin to a supercomputer, with every living brain in the collective as a sort of additional CPU, and the Queen just a personification, a front man of the Collective, if you will

[KerbMav]

Assimilation by injecting Borg nano-probes and further surgical alteration makes use of already available infrastructure - it also fits their idea of perfecting themselves and others. The need for life-support etc. simply is a necessity to complete this goal, and therefore not seen as inefficient.

"Seven of nine, tertiary adjunct of unimatrix zero-one" - the Borg designations let me assume that the drones are allocated specific functions, not like a command structure but a communication hierarchy, delegating command decisions down to the individual (ha!) drone.
Every Borg is aware of all information available, decisions are made collectively - but not every information is available to every drone as soon as it is discovered, that is why disconnecting a Borg cube infected with malware was possible without spreading to other parts of the collective.
So, what would be a squad leader in a military organization, in case of the Borg is something like a communication node/relay, exchanging information with a higher layer, receiving new orders/instructions and sharing them with the members of its own layer/group/department. The captain/queen of a Borg cube being a highly advanced, upgraded and specialized (resources are never limitless) part of the collective gathering all information available to a crew/cube in a single mind/brain, enabled and authorized to make wide reaching decisions, even if not in contact to the ... queen of all queens/queen mother/empress/MCP?

[Redshift OTF]

I always thought the Borg Queen was supposed to be a substitute for the Borg collective given that the Borg drones on the sphere featured in First Contact would have been isolated from the real collective at that time and would have worked better with her around.

Why the Borg decided to re-use her as a concept in later Voyager episodes, I can't think of a reason. But then, half the fun of Star Trek is to come up with Trek explanations that fit around the some-what haphazard story lines that the series and films came up with.

[Beowolf]

On 2/6/2016 at 3:06 AM, Scotius said:

But still Borg logistics should be a terrifying snarl of hundreds counterdemands fighting over who gets what when

Yes, but you just described ALL logistics!

[GeneralVeers]

6 hours ago, Redshift OTF said:

I always thought the Borg Queen was supposed to be a substitute for the Borg collective given that the Borg drones on the sphere featured in First Contact would have been isolated from the real collective at that time and would have worked better with her around.

Why the Borg decided to re-use her as a concept in later Voyager episodes, I can't think of a reason. But then, half the fun of Star Trek is to come up with Trek explanations that fit around the some-what haphazard story lines that the series and films came up with.

Naah. Sometimes it's more fun to bust the Fourth Wall and refer to "The Queen" as a plot device.

(Hey, why did the USS Constellation have the number "NCC-1071"? Because the props department simply rearranged the decals on the Enterprise model!! <ba dump PSSH>)

[PB666]

On 2/6/2016 at 7:45 PM, Nuke said:

you left out q who. this not only introduces the borg but this is where q starts taking on the shepard role. most people hate q but when you look at the whole series he starts looking like a not so bad kind of omnipotent being.

I liked the queen, every good sci fi needs a vixen queen to tweek the latent, Oedipus complicated sexual desires of sci-fi nerds. 7 of 9, beta-sed seriously what do you think the producers were going after.

I always like in star trek when they wanted to make the women seem beautiful they would make them look all fuzzy.

Ask yourself what happened to SGU, then look at their story lines.

35 minutes ago, GeneralVeers said:

Naah. Sometimes it's more fun to bust the Fourth Wall and refer to "The Queen" as a plot device.

(Hey, why did the USS Constellation have the number "NCC-1071"? Because the props department simply rearranged the decals on the Enterprise model!! <ba dump PSSH>)

Are you complaining, most of the space stuff now a days is CGI, they used to portray the enterprise under attack by bouncing up and down on a fishing line. Of course then we can also beat up on lost in space.

[GeneralVeers]

Complaining? No. Making fun of people who try to come up with reasonable inside-the-fourth-wall explanations for stuff? Definitely!

Yeah, there are places for an Oedipus-tweaking vixen queen, but the Borg Collective is not one of those places. Seven of Nine? Nice. Lt. Uhura? Nicer. Lt. Uhura in a short skirt and leather boots, deliberately posed side-on at the comm station? A lot nicer. Lt. Helen Noel from "Dagger of the Mind"? Old school hottie and also not afraid of a fight (the fact that she fights like a girl makes her seem real and believable, whereas Black Widow from the Avengers movies is just ridiculous).

Borg Queen? Yeah, not needing that cold shower any more.