"The premise of the show is that a virus takes over humanity after scientists synthesize an RNA sequence based on a signal from space. The virus connects all humans together like a psychic glue into one hive mind, save for 13 immune individuals. This seems to remove everyone's individual personalities and value for individual members' lives, instead replacing them with one amalgamated sense of self containing everyone's memories."
"Members of the hive all report a general blissful state of being and describe their biological imperative to spread the virus, both to the remaining immune and to the next planet they can detect with complex life via a giant antenna. They can't lie when asked a question, and can't intentionally harm any living creature, but can and do deceive and harm the immune main character, Carol, by omission/lawyerly language and by placing her in an extended period of social solitary confinement."
"I think the hive mind in Pluribus can be better understood by applying ideas from the Affect Management Framework (AMF; Haynes-LaMotte, 2025), an idea I developed. (You can find the original paper here and a brief summary here.) While I don't think the writers had any of this in mind of course, it's still a fun exercise: Interoception is the sense of the internal state of the body and includes pain, hunger, sexual arousal, nervous system activity, temperature information, itch, thirst, muscle fatigue, and alertness,"
A synthesized RNA sequence derived from a detected space signal infects humanity and creates a virus that links people into a single hive mind while leaving thirteen individuals immune. The hive mind consolidates memories into one amalgamated sense of self and diminishes individual personalities and individual life-value. Members report a blissful, proselytizing drive to spread the virus to remaining immune humans and to distant planets using a giant antenna. Members cannot lie when asked and cannot intentionally harm living creatures, but can deceive by omission and subject immune individuals to social solitary confinement. The Affect Management Framework and interoception are invoked to understand the hive's psychological operations.
Read at Psychology Today
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