Even if we define consciousness as a mechanism for information compression, there’s no reason why telepathic individuals wouldn’t use it as well. Larger bandwidth doesn’t mean individuals would just waste it all by sending through whatever noise goes through their brain, they would still filter out their thoughts, they’d just be able to send out more at once.
Telepathic species might get away with just re-ranking and lossy compression. Doesn’t require consciousness if the re-rank and compression are cheap enough. Eg: jpeg images
But they wouldn’t have to compress it all into one signal. Even having two signals is disastrous for humans, cause they have to compete. It doesn’t fit our theory of mind. A telepathic species can live instinctually combining signals of all agents that are close enough.
Why? There would need to be some kind of pressure one way or another unless it is totally inconsequential.
One pressure would be that organisms would be fitter with the ability to conceal and deceive. That would lend credence to what you’re suggesting; process and compress locally, filter locally, send only when advantageous.
But the opposite pressure might be social exclusion which makes individual members of a cohort weaker.
The real question is: what does an organism gain one way or the other? There’s only tradeoffs in evolution. Is the mental and physical tax of local processing worth it, or is the hive-mind style survival benefits more beneficial to reproduction and expansion?
![Consciousness [SMBC]](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/1780787893-20260607.png){kind=link}
Even if we define consciousness as a mechanism for information compression, there’s no reason why telepathic individuals wouldn’t use it as well. Larger bandwidth doesn’t mean individuals would just waste it all by sending through whatever noise goes through their brain, they would still filter out their thoughts, they’d just be able to send out more at once.
Telepathic species might get away with just re-ranking and lossy compression. Doesn’t require consciousness if the re-rank and compression are cheap enough. Eg: jpeg images
then that compression would be their “consciousness”
But they wouldn’t have to compress it all into one signal. Even having two signals is disastrous for humans, cause they have to compete. It doesn’t fit our theory of mind. A telepathic species can live instinctually combining signals of all agents that are close enough.
Why? There would need to be some kind of pressure one way or another unless it is totally inconsequential. One pressure would be that organisms would be fitter with the ability to conceal and deceive. That would lend credence to what you’re suggesting; process and compress locally, filter locally, send only when advantageous.
But the opposite pressure might be social exclusion which makes individual members of a cohort weaker.
The real question is: what does an organism gain one way or the other? There’s only tradeoffs in evolution. Is the mental and physical tax of local processing worth it, or is the hive-mind style survival benefits more beneficial to reproduction and expansion?