Is Pluribus scientifically correct? Here’s what we know

Apple TV’s Pluribus's nightmare fuel is intimate as it is set in a world where everyone gets absorbed into a hive mind. The unlucky few are left to fend off a polite yet unified “Other,” but could this actually happen scientifically or even by accident if humanity pokes too hard at an alien signal?

Okay, so while you likely won't get assimilated into a singular mind like on Pluribus today, there are ways in which this phenomenon can be dissected.

The show's creator, Vince Gilligan, is often known as the master of “pseudoscience that feels like science.” On Pluribus, he builds a premise on the edge between what we know, what we think we know, and what we can barely explain. Consciousness becomes the biggest culprit.

Pluribus plays with the great unknown, science fiction included

Trying to understand the show scientifically is tough if we are being upfront.

And that's because even after thousands of papers and philosophers, consciousness remains an unsolved riddle. We can map brain activity and understand how your senses work for sure, but why and how all that electrical web becomes your inner “you” is still largely a metaphysical territory.

This is where Pluribus comes in. The show taps into things like quantum mechanics and melds them into everyday human consciousness. It also talks of Buddhist notions of consciousness as a universal feature of the cosmos. Social thinkers like Carl Jung and Émile Durkheim, who introduced the idea of a collective consciousness, are brought up too. But what is this shared DNA?

We feel that's probably the closest real-world cousin to what the "Others" experience. It can be described as a collective responsibility that feels familiar in today's era of trending topics and hive-like online behavior.

But what about scientifically? We don't have an RNA sequence that links all our brains. So the Joining is in the pseudoscience bucket as of now, but Gilligan makes that look extremely legitimate on Pluribus.

Insects prove hive minds exist, just not like this

While humans aren’t capable of hive thinking, the insect world is! For example, ants operate under swarm intelligence, which is a system where no individual “thinks” on their own. The colony responds to chemical cues and instincts that help them coordinate building nests to launching coups...ant-style.

Now, this becomes a point where Pluribus borrows from the ant thinking framework. Zosia (Karolina Wydra) mentions a “biological imperative” to follow commands they don’t know they’re following.

Let's think about Lasius Orientalis here. These species of workers will kill their own queen if they sense the right infiltrator pheromone, though it goes against every biological instinct they have. It's basically the same as the Others’ compliance, even when Carol (Rhea Seehorn) drops the Episode 3 bombshell of “Would you give me an atom bomb?” and they say yes.

The rest is...well, watch the show please.

What Gilligan does is wrap these real biological cues in detail. He is said to have modeled the Others’ movements on schools of fish. Then there are shots of lab work and radio signals. Suddenly, the impossible becomes plausible.

If you have watched Breaking Bad, then you'll know that Gilligan had already mastered this trick wherein 99% pure meth was fiction.

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Pluribus is streaming now on Apple TV+.

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