If everybody though the same...

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mira
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If everybody though the same...

Post by mira »

Let's create a hypothetical people for a second. Imagine they had reached about our level of technology and lived in a similar way. now imagine that every single person had exactly the same views and opinions. I just killed my brain thinking about this.

If one person has a view that would negatively affect another e.g. dislike for them, then everyone else must too, including the disliked person - but as this person would likely not dislike their self (as then everyone would dislike their self), this view would not exist and nobody would dislike the person as everybody has the same views. Nobody would dislike anyone else.

Take war or greed. These negatively affect others, so nobody would have the same view, so nobody would be for it, so it wouldn't exist. For this very same reason, there would be no prejudice of any form anywhere.

Then what about the concept of free choice? Nobody would believe in restricting it as it would negatively affect people, but everyone thinks the same, so is there really free choice? (this is where my head really started to hurt).

What other bizarre things could occur in such a population? It is indeed an unlikely if not impossible one, as they would likely have died out long before discovering fire, but supposing they somehow did reach such a stage in development, what philosophical dilemmas might come up? What would they think of the trolley problem?

Con-philosophy!

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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by Ahzoh »

If everyone thought the same, all you have is a hive-mind.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by mira »

Ahzoh wrote:If everyone thought the same, all you have is a hive-mind.
What if everybody thought exactly the same thing, but independently? As in there isn't a direct link between everyone that determines what they think, they just innately all think exactly the same thing.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by Ahzoh »

OTʜᴇB wrote:
Ahzoh wrote:If everyone thought the same, all you have is a hive-mind.
What if everybody thought exactly the same thing, but independently? As in there isn't a direct link between everyone that determines what they think, they just innately all think exactly the same thing.
It's still a hive-mind. It's like bees.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by Sumelic »

I mean, it all depends on what you mean by "exactly the same". It's not very well-defined, unless as Ahzoh suggests you just mean that they all have a hive-mind, which is basically one person with multiple bodies that are somehow mentally connected and coordinated together.

Since you say there is no link, it's inexplicable. Why do they all think the same, then? Did the god of this imaginary world just set things up so everyone would think the same by coincidence? You need to know the mechanism to determine what the implications would be.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by elemtilas »

Sumelic wrote:I mean, it all depends on what you mean by "exactly the same". It's not very well-defined, unless as Ahzoh suggests you just mean that they all have a hive-mind, which is basically one person with multiple bodies that are somehow mentally connected and coordinated together.

Since you say there is no link, it's inexplicable. Why do they all think the same, then? Did the god of this imaginary world just set things up so everyone would think the same by coincidence? You need to know the mechanism to determine what the implications would be.
Quite. Another problem with the scenario, along these lines, is the bit about "reaching our level of technology and living in a similar way". How does one arrive at a culture and technological level of "our" sort with everyone thinking exactly the same way?

But to the point: I think we're losing sight of the original condition of the scenario. It's not a hive mind where one persona is manifest in several bodies. It's not a collection of individuals who think exactly the same thoughts at exactly the same time (the implication here would be that everyone in the world also says exactly the same thing at the same time, puts on their clothes at exactly the same time (a bit of a poser if it's the middle of the night and you have to wake up because some berk over on the day side is getting dressed for the day!) and uses the toilet at exactly the same moment. Not sure how public plumbing arrangements would be sorted out...

According to the OP, it's "same views and opinions" that are the heart of the matter. Many people already share a large number of views and opinions, but also think their own thoughts as well. This is why we have political parties, sports teams and religions. I think where OtheB is heading is kind of North Korea writ large and without all the thoughtsmuggling that goes on from China. A place where it's been impolitic to hold differing opinion for so long that it's kind of become bred into the population. Or the situation in 1984.
Take war or greed. These negatively affect others, so nobody would have the same view, so nobody would be for it, so it wouldn't exist. For this very same reason, there would be no prejudice of any form anywhere.
If this is a genetic quality, then yeah. If this is an ingrained social quality, then it might be very likely that èveryone would share the same prejudices (against folks who are not like themselves). And there could thus be war. And war would be horrible because èveryone would see the sense in it, how the Others are so evil and deserving of destruction that no other way out of the mess can be seen. Lokai and Bele.
Then what about the concept of free choice? Nobody would believe in restricting it as it would negatively affect people, but everyone thinks the same, so is there really free choice? (this is where my head really started to hurt).
Some limited degree of choice will exist. Even in North Korea, you can choose whether to clap enthusiastically or break out in tears of orgasmic joy when in the presence of the Fatboy. "Free will" as a concept, probably won't exist within this kind of people. Corporatethink is too pervasive and compelling. Only a very strong personality could break that mold, and would probably be placed in some kind of correctional facility long before they could manifest the maximal effects of their disease.
What would they think of the trolley problem?
Corporatethink of this sort will probably dictate that the guy next to the lever run patriotically pell-mell towards whichever group of victims the trolley is heading for, make a vain but glorious attempt to free the victims, and then be eulogised and memorialised by the surviving group with a big statue and rounds of corporatethinkfully patriotic songs.

The only philosophy that will matter in this scenario is the survival and perpetuation of the myths of the body corporate.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by Constructor »

If everybody is thinking the same thing at the same time, they must be doing the same thing as well. And this is impossible. What if every single one of us decided to take our Audi A4 onto I-5? Well, if we all lived near I-5, we'd all crash into eachother trying to get into the onramp. And is somehow we didn't crash (which is impossible), what would be unfathomable dreadlock. We'd all be trapped. Fire-Rescue couldn't get to us because they'd be trapped as well. And multiple overpasses on I-5 would collapse.

Maybe I'm thinking more literally than you intend, OP, but that's all I've got for now.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by elemtilas »

Constructor wrote:...unfathomable dreadlock...
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by mira »

Constructor wrote:If everybody is thinking the same thing at the same time, they must be doing the same thing as well. And this is impossible. What if every single one of us decided to take our Audi A4 onto I-5? Well, if we all lived near I-5, we'd all crash into eachother trying to get into the onramp. And is somehow we didn't crash (which is impossible), what would be unfathomable dreadlock. We'd all be trapped. Fire-Rescue couldn't get to us because they'd be trapped as well. And multiple overpasses on I-5 would collapse.

Maybe I'm thinking more literally than you intend, OP, but that's all I've got for now.
Yep, you did take it the wrong way. I was meaning it based on opinion or moral. Say one person likes icecream, therefore they all do. Say one of them decides to eat some, only that one does, as it is not a general view, but just an action. They are not thinking the same thing at the same time, they all have exactly the same views and opinions at the same time.
elemtilas wrote:
Constructor wrote:...unfathomable dreadlock...
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by Constructor »

Oops. Gridlock is what I meant.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by qwed117 »

Constructor wrote:Oops. Gridlock is what I meant.
Or maybe just deadlock
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by sangi39 »

Why not go for a medium-level version of the question? Rather than the entire species having "the same views and opinions", why not have there be generational divides, or population-based divides, i.e. once every however many generations or once the population reaches a certain critical limit, the connection begins to break down between individual members of the group and schisms occur and the connection needs to be re-established.

The result here might be that you'd still have conflicts over resources between various groups, and different groups might either have long-term prejudices towards one another or loosely work together, and you might even be able to have things like social class and slavery, with different groups occupying the same area responding to a different "hive mind".

Exactly how that shared mentality is manifested is still a question, but having it break down, I think, can lead to more interesting scenarios, or at the very least ones that are easier to imagine.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by mira »

sangi39 wrote:Why not go for a medium-level version of the question? Rather than the entire species having "the same views and opinions", why not have there be generational divides, or population-based divides, i.e. once every however many generations or once the population reaches a certain critical limit, the connection begins to break down between individual members of the group and schisms occur and the connection needs to be re-established.

The result here might be that you'd still have conflicts over resources between various groups, and different groups might either have long-term prejudices towards one another or loosely work together, and you might even be able to have things like social class and slavery, with different groups occupying the same area responding to a different "hive mind".

Exactly how that shared mentality is manifested is still a question, but having it break down, I think, can lead to more interesting scenarios, or at the very least ones that are easier to imagine.
Possibly, but the whole idea of the thread when I made it was as a thought experiment. There isn't supposed to be a reasonable creation story for such a people as that's not the point of it. Nor was the point of it to be at all realistic. The point of it was to take a single idea and look at it from all sorts of angles to derive some degree of order from it - "if this is x, then y would happen" and so forth. By building these "laws" of sorts around the base idea, one can produce exceptional but not identical ideas for use elsewhere.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by sangi39 »

OTʜᴇB wrote:
sangi39 wrote:Why not go for a medium-level version of the question? Rather than the entire species having "the same views and opinions", why not have there be generational divides, or population-based divides, i.e. once every however many generations or once the population reaches a certain critical limit, the connection begins to break down between individual members of the group and schisms occur and the connection needs to be re-established.

The result here might be that you'd still have conflicts over resources between various groups, and different groups might either have long-term prejudices towards one another or loosely work together, and you might even be able to have things like social class and slavery, with different groups occupying the same area responding to a different "hive mind".

Exactly how that shared mentality is manifested is still a question, but having it break down, I think, can lead to more interesting scenarios, or at the very least ones that are easier to imagine.
Possibly, but the whole idea of the thread when I made it was as a thought experiment. There isn't supposed to be a reasonable creation story for such a people as that's not the point of it. Nor was the point of it to be at all realistic. The point of it was to take a single idea and look at it from all sorts of angles to derive some degree of order from it - "if this is x, then y would happen" and so forth. By building these "laws" of sorts around the base idea, one can produce exceptional but not identical ideas for use elsewhere.
Ohhhhhh, sorry, misunderstood, but I like that we can still tweak the idea and look at different ways of using it for what you might call "practical conworlding", as opposed to "theoretical conworlding" in the form of though experiments.

It's definitely a tough one to answer, and the results you get might come down to various specific details. Is the connection quite weak or quite strong (affecting fewer or more aspects of the individual's thinking patterns)? How might differences be handled (as in you original question, is the ability to hate another individual possible, for example)?

I think at least some of it might come down to how the similarity in thought comes about as well. Is it cultural, inherently biological, or some mixture of the two, as Elemtilas mentioned? If it's cultural then the results will be different from what we might expect to find in a singular, unified, biological hive mind.
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Re: If everybody though the same...

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OTʜᴇB wrote:
Constructor wrote:If everybody is thinking the same thing at the same time, they must be doing the same thing as well. And this is impossible. What if every single one of us decided to take our Audi A4 onto I-5? Well, if we all lived near I-5, we'd all crash into eachother trying to get into the onramp. And is somehow we didn't crash (which is impossible), what would be unfathomable dreadlock. We'd all be trapped. Fire-Rescue couldn't get to us because they'd be trapped as well. And multiple overpasses on I-5 would collapse.

Maybe I'm thinking more literally than you intend, OP, but that's all I've got for now.
Yep, you did take it the wrong way. I was meaning it based on opinion or moral. Say one person likes icecream, therefore they all do. Say one of them decides to eat some, only that one does, as it is not a general view, but just an action. They are not thinking the same thing at the same time, they all have exactly the same views and opinions at the same time.
I'm actually not convinced what Constructor said would not follow from Otheb's premise to at least a moderate, less specific degree, insofar as every person having the exact same value judgements would lead to them making the same, or very similar choices. We can leave some room to people having different bodies and being in different places (say, someone in a cold place versus someone in a warmer place having ice cream), but I don't see what's stopping such a society from having an inordinate number of people opting for a particular occupation, or for marrying a certain type of person (if they have something like marriage). To prevent that they would either need to have very middle-of-the-road opinions about pretty much everything (in such a way that their environment would make many of those choices for them), or they'd need to live in a society where choices are greatly limited, say, some sort of a caste system (and they'd all need to find it splendid).
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Re: If everybody though the same...

Post by mira »

Rosenkohl wrote:
OTʜᴇB wrote:
Constructor wrote:If everybody is thinking the same thing at the same time, they must be doing the same thing as well. And this is impossible. What if every single one of us decided to take our Audi A4 onto I-5? Well, if we all lived near I-5, we'd all crash into eachother trying to get into the onramp. And is somehow we didn't crash (which is impossible), what would be unfathomable dreadlock. We'd all be trapped. Fire-Rescue couldn't get to us because they'd be trapped as well. And multiple overpasses on I-5 would collapse.

Maybe I'm thinking more literally than you intend, OP, but that's all I've got for now.
Yep, you did take it the wrong way. I was meaning it based on opinion or moral. Say one person likes icecream, therefore they all do. Say one of them decides to eat some, only that one does, as it is not a general view, but just an action. They are not thinking the same thing at the same time, they all have exactly the same views and opinions at the same time.
I'm actually not convinced what Constructor said would not follow from Otheb's premise to at least a moderate, less specific degree, insofar as every person having the exact same value judgements would lead to them making the same, or very similar choices. We can leave some room to people having different bodies and being in different places (say, someone in a cold place versus someone in a warmer place having ice cream), but I don't see what's stopping such a society from having an inordinate number of people opting for a particular occupation, or for marrying a certain type of person (if they have something like marriage). To prevent that they would either need to have very middle-of-the-road opinions about pretty much everything (in such a way that their environment would make many of those choices for them), or they'd need to live in a society where choices are greatly limited, say, some sort of a caste system (and they'd all need to find it splendid).
I can find a single—albeit not perfect—example in the real world. Icecream is liked by the overwhelming majority, and I'll ignore others for a second. If an icecream van comes along or there is a shop with nice flashing lights selling icecream, not everyone is going to get icecream are they? They might be preoccupied with something else, or maybe this hypothetical people also have the opinion that they dislike long queues and so once a sizeable queue has formed, people won't join it.

Now what we have is a combination of opinions creating variation in actions. All of the people still share the same ones, but by following opinions, a situation is created that brings another opinion into play that affects other people.
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