So, ongoing foofaraw about Neuralink is ongoing.
If we postulate several huge advances - not just the ability to stick wires in the brain, but a meaningful, bidirectional brain-to-computer interface - what will happen?
Will it cause Illyanitis? Or, rather, the problem that happened* to most of the memory chip recipients?
Assuming there are somehow no problems, an obvious progression is having everyone's brain networked.
Which will serve Big Brother just fine; you won't even have the privacy of your own thoughts. But let's disregard that aspect for the moment.
When we attain the Great Transhuman Networked Hive Mind, the collective intelligence will be stupendous, no?
No.
Look how every human hive mind works, if there are more than a very few members, and those carefully selected. The loudest, craziest, and most aggressive end up dominating, and the knowledgeable and thoughtful are silenced. With brain networking, the thoughtful ones wouldn't even be able to think (Harrison Bergeron, call your office).
You don't get the sum of the intelligence, let alone something transcendent. You get the sum of the stupidity... and maybe something transcendent. Very briefly.
Imagine a brainstorming session of a thousand randomly-selected people. Now multiply by eight million. And give the group real power, in real time, to act on its whims.
Fermi Paradox, here we come!
* Will be going to have happened? I don't have a copy of Dr. Streetmentioner's book, and I don't even know if it covers presumably-fictional future past tenses.
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