Assimilated telepaths (borgpaths!)

maiki
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I always thought the borg assimilating large numbers of a telepathic race like betazoids would be kind of a doomsday scenario for a lot of people right.

The borg already send in drones to download computer files and get root on computers when they meet a new space fairing culture. Imagine if they can download your thoughts / intellect at a distance. Would they care about adding “your biological distinctiveness” to their collective if they had your mind and tech? Could they implant suggestions to decrease resistance to assimilation?

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@trashHeap I know, the impact could be astounding.

Also, they’d sense when a thing they were doing was causing you fear, and would alter their tactics to maximize that to cause entities to falter, etc.

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Also they could anticipate anything new, right? If picard knowing the broad strokes about the cool deflector dish blast they planned to use to kill him allowed the borg to anticipate and adapt around it. Then it seems likely reading your mind a few momments before any possible attack would be enough to defuse almost any danger from any telepathy vulnerable species.

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Do betazoids have direct telepathy, though? I’d say very few survive the process with their abilities intact. Or more likely, they are trapped in their own personal mental prison.

Gawd, how great to just talk nonsense about fiction!

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I’d argue that Betazoids would be better equipped to exist in the Collective. They’re already used to “hearing” many other minds.

Hmm, I wonder then if that means they would be able to resist assimilation better? Or, they’d be assimilated but wouldn’t mindlessly follow the Collective’s orders, since they’re used to hearing lots of minds already?

… I would watch a 2 hour special on this topic. I feel like the panel should have at least 2 people with black turtlenecks on. And infographics.

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This particular non-sense fiction universe is pretty bad at quantifying it’s kind of telepathy as is. Im not sure I wanna go down the rabbit hole of what quantifies “telepathic speech” versus “direct thought connections”.

BUT TO DO IT ANYWAY BECAUSE I CANT STOP MYSELF

There are species with telepathic gifts beyond betazoids who communicate in the form of images or even experiences and memmories. Though in that case Llwaxana Troi was the ambassador who was also deemed most capable of learning their telepathy implying betazoids can do this too with some strain.

Though even if they couldnt the borg could go after such other telepathic species as well.

[An asside, Diana and her mom think to each other in English; that can’t be the universal translator. I know its mostly a conceit for the audience; but thats kinda fucked up too, considering how much screen time “cool” more violent cultures like Klingon get their native language covered.]

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As many times as Deana’s mind gets overpowered when another pseudo telepath or energy being wonders by; im not sure overly sensitive minds are in fact advantageous to resist mental attacks.

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Yeah, I think it makes them vulnerable. I just like it when telepaths also have cool inner mind powers. ST is loosey goosey enough to presume, and based on Picard’s descriptions; I think they probably segment more deeply, so they are both more easily controlled by the hive, but remain a secondary observer.

That is actually important to their usefulness beyond a non-sensitive Borg: without their splinter mind in the back seat, they wouldn’t even be able to sense!

This plays out as really amazing subversive results that affect the hive, but it in fact reacts to and expects. In order to access their sense data stream a Borg mind has to negotiate subconscious compromises that “infect” other hosts in the local network.

How this plays out with Troirg is having a sense of the emotional spectrum of nearby targets. The more information they draw from their secondary mind, the more two things happen:

  1. Nearby Borg begin using Troi’s speech patterns
  2. They begin to ignore “innocent” targets, instead fixating on a particular emotion to track and assimilate

A cube has to account for each of these things when deploying borgpaths. Since the secondary mind is required, each one remains an imperfect tool in the arsenal.