[Iain Baker]

If you are struggling to get you head around what the Great Darkness might be, how the Shivan's can be a superintelligence whilst not being conscious etc. then I recommend watching this video which I stumbled upon today:-)

The most relevant stuff starts at about 13:47

https://youtu.be/pQVYwz6u-zA?t=826

Unless I have gotten the wrong end of the stick about the whole thing of course :-)

[SaltyWaffles]

Not quite? The Great Darkness is strictly "thinking about itself, forever, and consumes all other consciousness into thinking about itself". The example in the video is subsuming the universe into consciousness but NOT just to think about itself. Kinda-sorta like the Borg--it assimilates, but it does not just think about itself.

The Shivans get by by A) not centralizing its intelligence and thus keeping its consciousness too disjointed and separate to be vulnerable, B) using an inherently destructive thought process, thus actively countering "think about me" attacks because any such thought gets attacked and destroyed immediately by all other thoughts, and C) not thinking far ahead or planning ahead, thus not needing centralized intelligence or constant high-level thought processes which could be vulnerable to "think about mes".

[Iain Baker]

Not quite? The Great Darkness is strictly "thinking about itself, forever, and consumes all other consciousness into thinking about itself". The example in the video is subsuming the universe into consciousness but NOT just to think about itself. Kinda-sorta like the Borg--it assimilates, but it does not just think about itself.

True, but the video does a good job of explaining that a superconsciousness could theoretically subsume the universe and this might not be good news for us, or other life in general. Whether the superconsciousness subsumes everything to think about itself or for experience in general probably doesn't make much difference to the end result - we are still screwed