I feel like the big difference between the Pluribus hivemind vs either of the two most obvious comparisons—Meta’s social networks and LLM’s like ChatGPT—is that those two are corporate-owned. Pluribus is “imposed” in a lot of the ways they are but not all: if the “psychic glue” description ends up being true that’s a lot more grassrootsy, a lot more like “just a really, really good language”, like the Tower of Babel undone and human communion healed and perfected. And unlike the fantastic Body Snatcher’s trilogy or misguided and un-thought-through “upload” transhumanist fiction, the “that’s fun for my copy, but how about me?” template doesn’t apply either. It’s less getting “scanned and copied” and more “joining up”.
And if those descriptions of “oh it’s so great we’re all still here we’re just swimming around lovingly in each other’s thoughts so happily” are not true, if that’s a rugpull waiting to happen, we’re getting closer to the kind of science fiction I don’t like. We’ve seen the hivemind be duplicitous and work surreptiously and deceptively already so there’s no guarantee that they’re telling te truth, but, if the story is gonna be about whether or not they’re telling the truth, that’s gonna be a so much more boring story than if it’s a “okay here is how it works; we’ve been honest about how it works, would you join and if no why not and if yes why” story which to me is much a more interesting dilemma and situation to explore. And Rhea Seehorn is great. I’m so happy that she gets a new vehicle to really shine in.