egregore

But would becoming a group mind even be a bad thing? After all, much of our meaning in life comes from moments that feel suspiciously like being part of a group mind—beyond ecstatic dance, there is sex with someone you love, dancing together in the desert, singing in a chorus, listening to music, a mother holding her baby just recently physically... See more

we might not have any internal mechanisms that can differentiate who our thoughts and emotions belong to.

If group minds do change the behavior of their constituents, and so are not epiphenomenal (and more, presumably, like our minds), they must do so in some mechanistically explainable way. That is, just as neurons make the decision internally to fire an action potential or not, a member of a group mind would make decisions internally too. So it... See more

In occult practices, such joint ritual and concentration has traditionally been the way to summon an egregore —the occult term for a psychic entity much like a group mind

In the ancient sense , the "watchers" were guardians, aware but neutral. In the context of a group egregore , this watchfulness can take on a more controlling role — overseeing and subtly guiding the group's actions in ways that constrain individuality and lead to conformity , even to the point of irrationality or harm.

Even then, the frame itself might be useful. At a personal level perhaps it’s worth remembering that those feelings of outrage—you know the kind, the ones that fill you with such anger you just have to speak out right now , the kind where you’re summoned as if by strings to contribute your little piping neuronal voice to that huge ongoing mind of... See more

Beyond the argument from equivalence, there’s another argument for group minds. This is the argument from modularity . Modularity is a common hypothesis in cognitive science (and evolutionary psychology), which is essentially that parts of your mind act like mini-minds themselves, and then pass on their results.

Integrated Information Theory has a similar conclusion to what we reasoned about the split-brain patients: if you are a part of a system that gets connected into a much larger consciousness, your consciousness is subsumed. Like a smaller soap bubble merging with a larger one.