Changeling Hive Minds · 5:41pm Dec 27th, 2014
The Hive Mind emerges from a sufficient congregation of Changelings (generally at least a hundred, though this can vary based on the intelligence and communicativeness of the Changelings involved). The smarter and better the Changelings at communicating, the fewer needed for a Hive Mind. The Hive Mind itself is not very intelligent -- it's only about as smart as a smart dog, though it can communicate and be communicated with more explicitly.
The purpose of the Hive Mind is routine maintenance of the Hive and distribution of normal resources within it. The Hive Mind lets Changelings know what needs exist and what means exist to fulfill them. This enables a socialistic economy to actually run smoothly, provided that most Changeling activities remain fairly simple. Hive Minds can and have be adapted to other problems. The most obvious example is a "Swarm Mind," which is used for purposes of military and travel coordination.
Changelings generate and link to the Hive Mind by numerous channels including telepathy, empathy, buzz, voice, scent and body language. They receive communications back by similar means. Higher-caste Changelings (such as Royals and Infiltrators) can engage in more complex communications than lower-caste ones (such as Warriors and Workers). A high-caste Changeling such as Ceymi or Compound can gain very precise information from the Hive Mind; lower-caste ones (such as Carry or Cowl) get only vague sensations.
The Hive Mind is not capable of directly operating or taking over the bodies of individual Changelings -- it is far too simple and its channels too narrow in bandwidth. What it can do is impel Changelings with objectives, which if they have no other important objectives, they will pursue. This is most the case for Warriors and Workers. This is of obvious utility in recruiting Workers for important tasks, or ensuring that Swarms attack or retreat in unison.
The benefits of the Hive Mind, in general, are communication and coordination. They enable a culture with only limited technology to function as if linked by short-ranged radio or intercoms. They also allow considerable eusocial coordination, guranteeing that those responsible for tasks will know what needs to be done and feel impelled to do them. The drawbacks are conformity and panic. Less-intelligent Changelings become dependent on the Hive Mind to think for them, and feel lost on their own; and a group of Changelings who suffer some effect that causes fear or pain to many of them at once may be overwhelmed by the emotions flooding the Hive Mind. (Compound's team suffers from this effect at one point in the first chapter of The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime).
The Hive Mind is not capable of creative thought. At most it can solve problems by emergent path exploration. It very much needs the leadership of Royals and the initiative of Infiltrators for competent strategic thinking.
Hive Minds are of ancient origin. The Flutter Ponies were able to link into the hive-like mind of the local part of Gaia, the planetary superconsciousness, and used this ability to better manage Nature. When the Flutter Ponies began merging with the Buzzies, over five thousand years ago, they adopted this into Hive Minds as they became increasingly eusocial. When they were Twisted into the Changelings, almost two and a half thousand years ago, the Hive Minds becamse increasingly responsible for managing the activities of the Workers, and developed further from there.
The Queen -- and other high-caste Changelings such as Princesses and Infiltrators -- are the leaders of the Hive Mind, the ones who intelligently adjust its goals and standards to adapt to changing circumstances and strategic ends. This enables Changeling Hives to behave in truly intelligent fashions.
Without the Hive Minds, Changelings would have to adopt more market-based economic systems and more complex methods of administration. Low-caste Changelings would feel lost without the Hive Minds, though some high-caste Changelings find its persistent, simple-minded hum annoying. (Ceymi does in Collateral Damage).
The Hive Minds prove very useful and adaptable. Changelings keep and refine them after the Shadow Wars. As Changelings expand through the Universe, the system diversifies, with some Changeling-descended groups having fully-sapient Hive Minds that do more and more of their thinking for them, while others utterly-automate the Minds into what amounts to neuro-linked computer systems. The Hive Minds are carried by the Changelings to the stars.
Indepth as always. But the best argument I've eve heard that the changelings are NOT a collective consciousness in that Fluttershy was easily able to bluff her way past some into thinking she was one of them. A right hand, should be able tell itself apart from someone else's right hand.
2681977
Ah, but my Fluttershy did that by linking into the Swarm Mind, because she is Changeling Royalty -- and sired by the same Hive.
Wait... Flutter Ponies and Buzzies are different? I think I've gotten mixed up somewhere.
2684997
Flutter Ponies were the G1 equinoids with butterfly wings. Buzzies were the bee-like humanoid creatures with whom they lived first in symbiosis, then war, and then symbiosis again. Over the centuries, the two races mingled and became one, due to the biomancy of the Flutter Ponies, and that's why the Flutter Ponies started to become more insect-like and eusocial even before the Twisting.
2685001 Ohhhhh, okay... so Discord pretty much used his magic to do what several thousands/millions of years would have done?
2685010
To some extent, yes. What he did that normal evolution would not have done was hunt the Changelings so cruelly that they became very, very good at and utterly convinced of the necessity of hiding, to the point that even fifteen hundred years after his defeat they were still cowering in terror -- though they had long since forgot what they feared. To the point that when a mad Queen appeared amongst them and told them that they were the rightful Masters of all the Earth, they followed her gladly, simply because it meant that they might stop hiding.
2685034 Hmm... dumb Twister. I really feel bad for the Changelings-- they didn't do anything to deserve this.
2682293
I know I'm responding to this very late, but I would appreciate the question being answered.
You stated that, in your variant of Equestria, Fluttershy managed to fool the changelings at the wedding because she, in essence, wasn't fooling them - for a brief moment, she was, in fact, exactly what they thought her to be. (If I understand your previous statements regarding Fluttershy, she is mostly this at all times, but stepped across that last boundary in that particular moment.)
My question is this: How did Rainbow Dash pull off the same stunt a few seconds later? There appears to be nothing in your variant of Equestria indicating that Dash is a changeling or part-changeling, so what allowed her to fool the hive-mind?
2981847
I'd have to watch the episode again to see. I thought that Dashie just punched them out, but I could be wrong ...