Genetic Algorithms and Borg Creativity

[2046]

TORRES: The Borg gain knowledge through assimilation. What they can't assimilate, they can't understand.
JANEWAY: But we don't assimilate, we investigate, and in this case, that's given us an edge. We've discovered something they need.

A lot of folks, apparently including the writers at times, have been of the opinion that this would leave the Borg as a powerful but uncreative "race"(*). That is, even if the Borg had need of, say, the internal combustion engine, they wouldn't really be able to fill that need without having assimilated a culture that had them. So, the Borg is powerful, but their Achilles Heel would be, not their interdependency, but their inability to create. To be sure, the Borg come up with ideas, but there's no need to assume that any of them are actually original to any significant degree.

I reject that notion.

1. Adapting stolen technology to work with your own is perhaps even more difficult than having created it yourself, in some cases. Just ponder the difficulty converting an old school Mac program to a Windows PC, or converting a Prius to operate with a Ford 302 to create a Monster Prius.

Some creativity required, there.

2. The Borg almost certainly represent the greatest collection of computer processors in the Galaxy. Even without soulful creativity, the simple use of genetic algorithms and computer simulation ought to enable an extraordinary capacity for apparent, if not real, creativity.

For instance . . . and forgive me for going from memory, here . . . an exploratory experiment a decade or so ago with field-programmable gate arrays and genetic algorithms resulted in some unique events. The FPGAs and controlling algorithms were intended to be allowed to self-create some basic computational program that I no longer recall, and the researchers selected the best out of each generation of programs. The system, which had no onboard clock, developed one of its own based not on standard board clocking such as we might've implemented, but instead on a little-used electromagnetic effect in the system, read and then utilized as a clock based on the effects upon the system. The researchers were suitably impressed, once they finally figured out how the devil the programs were achieving clocking.

In other words, much as we recognize and accept days as such, and but for the planetary spin might have no way to distinguish time periods so easily, so too did a little cluster of electronics effectively come to understand days (if even in a Chinese Room way) based on some electromagnetic field spin, as it were.

To be sure, this and other examples of surprising adaptations by genetic algorithms do not represent real creativity. It was a simple utilization of the environment.

Now consider this among the Borg. Ridiculous computational power and obvious desire and intent . . . surely they could select the best act in a situation from a massive pile of genetic algorithm runs.

The end result? I don't think humanity as presented in Trek would stand a chance in any realistic way. Compared to the Borg the Federation is a rounding error, and the merest fraction of the Collective's efforts ought to be enough to create a juggernaut against which no slow human-creativity-based adaptation could stand, no matter how original and inventive and innovative.

But that's just me.

(*) ... an alternate view could simply be that they just don't review sensor readings very much. But, one would expect the Borg quite capable of assessing 8472 DNA without being in actual possession of it. The entire premise of the statement is thus flawed.

[Sunburst]

You didn't have to type all that.

That episode was written poorly, that's all. They had to make the borg stupid in order to give the Voyager crew a chance to survive.

The borg can obviously be creative...they turned whatever they were into cybernetic organisms...into the culture and race known as the borg.

[Mike DiCenso]

Well, to put it simply, the Borg already demonstrated multiple instances of adaptation and "creativity" many times prior to "Scorpion". Hell, even during "Scorpion", they show that they are able to adapt, though somewhat slowly to S8472's weapons. So the whole line about the Borg not being able to adapt without first assimilating is completely and utterly bogus.

Um, Robert, were you perhaps thinking about submitting this as an article to that canon web site at Ex Astris Scientia?
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

I think the comment was poorly worded but considering the circumstances and that 8472 were a highly evolved and advanced culture with loads of ships so the Borg would have been unable to just overpower them.

Unlike other species the borg and their ships were setup to assimilate rather than destroy so a culture as advanced or more advanced with shields, armour and weapons that the borg could not understand had a huge advantage.

For example not knowing how dominion weapons worked gave a huge initial advantage as they could get through federation shields, that later changed obviously. But imagine if the Fed had no scans or info to work from OR if the tech was so advanced they could not understand it just from scans of its effects?.

The borgs main form of investigation (assimilation) was rendered useless and because of the highly advanced nature of 8472 tech they could not develop a counter from the data they did get from its effects.

[Mike DiCenso]

Actually the Borg and their ships have demonstrated all too well that they have enourmous destructive potential, and are not merely assimilation machines. For example, in the aforementioned "Scorpion" episodes, the Borg have at their disposal a five million isoton yield multikinetic neutronic mine that could affect an entire star system. Also consider that from a practical standpoint their ships have to be tough enough as well as have firepower to allow them to sweep aside all resistance to their assimilation efforts. We have seen this demonstrated since TNG's "Q Who?" and BoBW. Furthermore, in "Q Who?" we see that the Borg adapt in that episode to the E-D's phasers and torpedoes without having assimiliated anyone or anything beyond a basic scouting attempt, and they were already able to defeat the E-D's shields by simply beaming through them with their scout drones.

In both BoBW episodes, we saw adaptation to the new defences and weapons upgrades in the inital opening battles before Picard was kidnapped and assimilated. So how could they do that unless they already have the ability to make intuitive as well as deductive analysis capabilities? How were the Borg in "Scorpion" able to develop increasing resistance to the S8472 weapons without being able to assimiliate any of them?

The list goes on. In VOY's "Dark Frontier", the Borg Queen tells Seven about the Collective's plan to assimilate Earth using a biogenic charge device to disperse nanoprobes. Apparently the Borg came up with this all on their own. So how did they do this if they are not creative? So over all, I think Torres and Janeway's description of the Borg is off the mark.
-Mike

[Kor_Dahar_Master]

Actually the Borg and their ships have demonstrated all too well that they have enourmous destructive potential, and are not merely assimilation machines. For example, in the aforementioned "Scorpion" episodes, the Borg have at their disposal a five million isoton yield multikinetic neutronic mine that could affect an entire star system.

I always thought that the image shown in that clip was of the ship in descent and that means the weapon was one from the original owners.

Also consider that from a practical standpoint their ships have to be tough enough as well as have firepower to allow them to sweep aside all resistance to their assimilation efforts. We have seen this demonstrated since TNG's "Q Who?" and BoBW. Furthermore, in "Q Who?" we see that the Borg adapt in that episode to the E-D's phasers and torpedoes without having assimiliated anyone or anything beyond a basic scouting attempt, and they were already able to defeat the E-D's shields by simply beaming through them with their scout drones.

There is no doubt that their ships are tough and we know they can adapt to normal tech levels of weaponry without assimilation because in VOY's "Dark Frontier" the species they are assimilating is gonna kick their butts with the new borg weapons they had developed until the queen gets seven to adapt their shielding.

But against a enemy with "technology that is Superior to all other species previously encountered" (as Seven refers to it) they obviously had a hard time figuring it out and adapting to it without being able to go down the easy route and assimilate a 8472 scientist.

But i do agree that it was still a poorly phrased comment as it lacked the perspective that seven adds later regarding the fact that 8472 tech is "Superior to all other species previously encountered", when that is included it makes more sense (crappy writing/timing as it pre-empted Sevens comment regarding the level of tech 8472 had).

[Mith]

TORRES: The Borg gain knowledge through assimilation. What they can't assimilate, they can't understand.
JANEWAY: But we don't assimilate, we investigate, and in this case, that's given us an edge. We've discovered something they need.

A lot of folks, apparently including the writers at times, have been of the opinion that this would leave the Borg as a powerful but uncreative "race"(*). That is, even if the Borg had need of, say, the internal combustion engine, they wouldn't really be able to fill that need without having assimilated a culture that had them. So, the Borg is powerful, but their Achilles Heel would be, not their interdependency, but their inability to create. To be sure, the Borg come up with ideas, but there's no need to assume that any of them are actually original to any significant degree.

I reject that notion.

1. Adapting stolen technology to work with your own is perhaps even more difficult than having created it yourself, in some cases. Just ponder the difficulty converting an old school Mac program to a Windows PC, or converting a Prius to operate with a Ford 302 to create a Monster Prius.

Some creativity required, there.

2. The Borg almost certainly represent the greatest collection of computer processors in the Galaxy. Even without soulful creativity, the simple use of genetic algorithms and computer simulation ought to enable an extraordinary capacity for apparent, if not real, creativity.

For instance . . . and forgive me for going from memory, here . . . an exploratory experiment a decade or so ago with field-programmable gate arrays and genetic algorithms resulted in some unique events. The FPGAs and controlling algorithms were intended to be allowed to self-create some basic computational program that I no longer recall, and the researchers selected the best out of each generation of programs. The system, which had no onboard clock, developed one of its own based not on standard board clocking such as we might've implemented, but instead on a little-used electromagnetic effect in the system, read and then utilized as a clock based on the effects upon the system. The researchers were suitably impressed, once they finally figured out how the devil the programs were achieving clocking.

In other words, much as we recognize and accept days as such, and but for the planetary spin might have no way to distinguish time periods so easily, so too did a little cluster of electronics effectively come to understand days (if even in a Chinese Room way) based on some electromagnetic field spin, as it were.

To be sure, this and other examples of surprising adaptations by genetic algorithms do not represent real creativity. It was a simple utilization of the environment.

Now consider this among the Borg. Ridiculous computational power and obvious desire and intent . . . surely they could select the best act in a situation from a massive pile of genetic algorithm runs.

The end result? I don't think humanity as presented in Trek would stand a chance in any realistic way. Compared to the Borg the Federation is a rounding error, and the merest fraction of the Collective's efforts ought to be enough to create a juggernaut against which no slow human-creativity-based adaptation could stand, no matter how original and inventive and innovative.

But that's just me.

(*) ... an alternate view could simply be that they just don't review sensor readings very much. But, one would expect the Borg quite capable of assessing 8472 DNA without being in actual possession of it. The entire premise of the statement is thus flawed.

That entire quote is utter rubbish and coming from Janeway, should be taken with a grain of salt. I mean, this is the same woman who--after going through all the records of Q, concluded that he wasn't a liar. Yes, Q, the entity that Picard--the most diplomatic officer we've seen to date--outright called him a liar and many variations thereof. The guy who had the most dealings with him has pretty much gone on record saying that he wouldn't trust Q as far as he could throw him.

And Janeway thinks that he's honest. Keep in mind that her sources are also the same when considering the Borg; whose primary source of information is Picard.

The entire concept was just stupid and completely spits in the face of how the Borg act and in fact, are stated to act. Ie, its their massive hive mind that allows them to come up with quick adaption methods to countering Federation technology.

But that's not surprising. This was some of the best work from the same people that gave us all of Voyager, which was for the most part, uninspired shit. I mean fuck, they intoduced the space trash version of the Klingons who're too stupid to create/find their own water and think that a line is an effective method of keeping someone from escaping.

Janeway's statement is about as reasonable as assuming that a drone couldn't figure out how to climb up a cliff unless it assimilated a rock climber. What I think the writers were attempting to covney was that the Borg have trouble thinking unconventionally in the manner that we're used to. A human might get an inspirational idea of how to do something where as the Borg would just run it through numerous scenarios, starting with the methods they're aware of and working off of that. They're both creative methods, but one follows a very logical, solid progression.

Therefore, someone could come up with an inspired method of harming the Borg in a way they've never conceived of before, but it's not going to be long before the hundreds of trillions of borg minds reach a similar conclusion and find means to counter them. The idea that the Borg wouldn't have eventually have gotten the nanoprobe trick is just insulting to the viewers.

What really happened is that Voyager got lucky in obtaining the biological data from her infected crewmember and was able to test various methods of countering it with borg technology. In fact, what the Doctor did was no more different than what the Borg do in adapting to enemy weapons; he used the scientific method to see what did work, what wouldn't work, and considered methods of infecting the alien cells.

In fact, we see in just that episode that one drone is in a loop; trying to assimlate the biological matter of the bioship. Logically, it was probably trying to use different methods of assimilation on it--but each method was failing. It was probably going through a list of methods that would work and would probably have, if not for the fact that the bioship left, would have probably eventually come to the same conclusion that the EMH had.