Is anyone else not buying the Buggers' story?

Question

I never really bought the Buggers' story that they didn't realize humans were thinking creatures.

The quote the queen uses is something like "We never thought intelligence could arise in a species which cannot dream one another's dreams" or the like. So far so good, right?

I can see how during the first contact they'd slay the astronauts... "Turning off their radio" as it were. They could reasonably think they weren't hurting anybody, because drones are like fingernails. At this point they must have thought they could eventually contact the humans' queen.

The entire First Invasion can be written off this way. But during the Second Invasion ... the humans attack them with sophisticated tactics. They shoot them with nuclear missiles, from spaceships. This can't possibly be instinctive behavior. They had to have realized that there was an intelligence running the humans, whether they could telepathy-talk with it or not.

Bugger units landed on Earth. Remember Ender on the colony world? He discerned pretty quick from artifacts that the Buggers were rational. Couldn't the BQ (Bugger Queen) have figured this out while "scathing China"? Skyscrapers, artificial lights, heck, straight-line roads might have been a tip. I haven't read the book where China gets scathed, but it sounds pretty metal.

To me it seems like the BQ knew darn well that something non-animal was happening on Earth, and was going to slay or displace it anyway.

So, my question... What am I missing here?

Answer 1

There was never any doubt in the mind of the Formic Queens that humanity had an intelligence, they simply didn't understand that all humans, individually, had intelligence and individuality.

Formic society was extremely limited, consisting of a very small number of queens, who each commanded thousands or millions of drones. Those drones were part of the queen, yet had no individual intelligence.*

The queens expected humanity to function similarly. Even when they were invading Earth, the concept of an entire society of beings with individual bodies - ONE body to ONE mind - was completely alien to them.

War for the formics had always been a pretty formalized thing - drones would be slaughtered en masse, but they were considered disposable and no real damage was done. When one side gained an advantage and could threaten the opposing queen, that queen would surrender. They only rarely killed another queen.

It wasn't until they studied Mazer's attack plan and realized that it had taken the humans that long to understand that the formics had a single queen that it even occurred to them that humans might be individuals. As a species, they recoiled in horror, knowing that they had slaughtered thousands or millions of queens (to their eyes), not a similar number of drones.

So I'd say that what you were missing is that the Formics (Buggers) didn't think that humanity was non-sapient or non-intelligent, they simply didn't understand that we are individually intelligent.

*Other answers have pointed out that later books (which I have not read) include drones which are, indeed, intelligent. This fact in no way changes my answer, as the general pre-Ender formic society seems to consider them an abomination and/or an anomaly.

Answer 2

I believe you are right to question the Hive Queen's story. The first formic war could be chalked up to a misunderstanding by a terraforming crew, but the second invasion was war. We can't really know if they thought they were killing sentient beings or just drones, but we do know one thing - The Hive Queens lie.

In Shadows in Flight, Bean's children

have an encounter with sentient male drones that tell a different story than the Hive Queens tell. Hive Queens claim that the drones are merely their appendages, controlled by the mind and empty without the will of a Queen directing them. The male drones show that this is not true. Drones have enough intelligence to perform almost any task without any direct interference from the Queen. Sometimes, they rebel against the Queen and exert independence, but are quickly shut down by sheer force of the Queen's will. The Queens have learned to enslave the drones completely, and lie to Ender, and perhaps themselves, about the nature of the slavery.

This shows that the Queens are liable to tell very large lies to either ease their own consciences, or appear of higher morality to Ender, the humans, and the father trees.

I find it very unlikely that the HQs were ignorant of their actions against the humans. I think they either had a change of heart, or were simply rebuffed. But whether or not they actually believed individual humans were block-headed drones, which I doubt, they certainly intended to kill any undeniably sentient human queens if they existed. In the best case, they assumed humans were varelse, with no means of communication for diplomacy.

Answer 3

I guess the Bugger Queen's reasoning process can be conceived by analogy.

Imagine you are a schoolyard bully who routinely beats people up and steals their lunch money, but will never outright murder one of your schoolmates. Stealing is accepted in your school and nobody condemns this, but murder is not.

One day, a new schoolkid enters your school. You beat him up and steal his lunch money, as usual. The next day, he returns and pushes you off the 10th floor railing. On the way down, you realise that when you punched him in the face, you had killed off millions of his cells. Each one of these cells was a sentient being in itself. To you, killing some cells is simply part and parcel of stealing. To him, killing some cells amounts to murder.

Since the Bugger Queens had never encountered a race that is sentient on the organism level in addition to the hive mind level, they assume that any intelligence displayed by humanity (such as attacking with nuclear missiles) is part of the normal resistance encountered when they are fighting for territory. As such, they ignore it. Only when they notice that humanity is aiming to kill all Bugger Queens in retaliation do they realise that humanity is retaliating for the death of sentient beings.

Answer 4

Short, direct answer, straight from the original novel:

We are like you; the though pressed into his mind. We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. We though we were the only thinking beings the universe, until we met you, but we never dreamed that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other's dreams. How were we to know? Believe us, believe us, believe us.

The Formics knew there was intelligence; but it was of a totally different nature than what they expected.

It's as if we discovered that not only was there an intelligent civilization on an alien world, but breathing the atmosphere somehow murdered thousands of inhabitants.

Answer 5

The two answers already given deal with the situation from the in-universe point of view. I would like to point out an another approach to this problem. That is - the perception of intelligence (since OP used this term).

You seem to think that the usage of advanced tools is a definite proof of intelligence. For humans it is logical to view the world that way - we are definitely intelligent, and we are the only species to use spaceships and nukes, so one fact is connected to the other, right?

Wrong. Right? Maybe??? The fact is, humanity has no frame of reference on this matter. We do not know any other intelligent species that uses tools as advanced as ours. We are defined by our tool use, and our civilisation is inseparable from tools. But the only (possibly) intelligent species known to us (cetaceans and higher primates) use nothing like these. On the other hand, many animal species generally considered non-intelligent (to give some example, crows, beavers, coral polyps and banded acaras) do use primitive tools and/or construct quite intricate structures, but we do not take those as a proof of their intelligence. We assume that dolphins and higher primates are intelligent based on other factors - that they apparently self-aware, that they have a language and seem to be able learn (to an extent) human and artificial languages, etc. And if the Bugger civilisation is as defined by their philotic communication as we are by our tool use - it would seem logical that they dismiss humanity as a species that although using intricate tools, seems to lack any (known to them) means of communication. Is it possible for a specie to evolve into using spacecraft and nuclear fission? Current data shows that it is highly unlikely... in Earth-like environment. In other environments - who knows? It is not proven to be impossible.

Thus, while it is possible that Bugger queens lied about knowing that humans are intelligent (either as individuals or as a hive-mind) during the second invasion, that lie is at least believable. Just because you met a being that defends its territory and is efficient in that, does not mean it is intelligent. It just means that it is better adapted to its environment. And while "intelligence" currently seems as the best choice in adapting to Earth's environment, that might not be true in another environment.

P.S. I'm thinking that "sentience" would be a better term than "intelligence" in this question, but I am not a native English speaker, so I might be wrong.

Answer 6

You're making a few leaps in your assumptions:

I can see how during the first contact they'd slay the astronauts... "Turning off their radio" as it were. They could reasonably think they weren't hurting anybody, because drones are like fingernails. At this point they must have thought they could eventually contact the humans' queen.

It makes no sense to kill the astronauts to "turn off the radio" and then try to contact the human queen. If they wanted to contact the human queen and thought that the astronauts were psychically connected to the queen, they could've used the astronauts.

It makes much more sense that they simply saw the astronauts react differently to their presence (e.g. one panics, the other remains diplomatic, the third one becomes hostile). Their different approaches directly proves that humans are not a hive mind, thus confirming their notion that humans are not intelligent (as they already assume non-hive minds to be incapable of intelligence).

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But during the Second Invasion ... the humans attack them with sophisticated tactics. They shoot them with nuclear missiles, from spaceships. This can't possibly be instinctive behavior. They had to have realized that there was an intelligence running the humans.

If you know how evolution works, then you should see that complex tactics are not always proof of intelligence.

Giraffes didn't always have long necks. No giraffe has ever "thought" to extend it's own neck. There was never an intelligent thought by a giraffe that contemplated how to achieve a longer neck.

However, giraffe's necks still grew over time. Because the giraffes who just happened to be born with longer necks, also ended up as being more succesful (because they could reach more leaves than their short-necked brothers), thus making them more likely to procreate and pass their genes on.

Over centuries, giraffe necks increased in length. This cleverly solved a problem in their environment: being able to reach as many leaves as possible. However, this is not a sign of intelligence.

The same is true of ants. Suppose that ants are not always born with an innate sense of group spirit (living for the colony instead of yourself). Let's say there is a 50/50 coin flip whether an ant is selfish or selfless (for the sake of example).
We can already conclude that the ants are not intelligently deciding to be selfless or selfish. It is simply their genetic makeup that invariably drives their behavior. The ants are not intelligent.

So let's say 100 ants exist, 50 selfish ants and 50 selfless ants.

The selfish ants live by themselves. Even if they try living together, their selfish nature will eventually break any alliance that they have.
The selfless ants, however, start working together, and their alliance does not break (because they all observe their common shared ideal, and don't resort to selfish behavior).

As it turns out, a colony is much stronger than a sole ant, and after a year many more selfish ants have died (compared to the selfless ants).

If this same pattern repeats itself time and time again, then the selfless ants are more likely to survive and procreate. Over time, this means that the ant population disproportionately favors selflessness over selfishness (genetically speaking).

Over centuries' time, the ants will be selfless. But they did not bcome selfless intelligently. It happened evolutionarily.

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The humans' tactical approach may simply be a consequence of their genetic makeup. Centuries of evolution may have proven that humans who do have tactics are more successful (evolutionarily speaking) than humans who do not have tactics; thus making "tactically inclined" humans genetically predominant over a long period of time.

Your assumption that human tactics prove human intelligence are not necessarily correct. Human tactics could also have emerged as a long-term consequence of evolution.

Note that I only addressed human tactics, but the same principle applies to everything else, including the fact that humans use weapons.

• So did Neanderthals. But someone alive in 2017 doesn't consider a Neanderthal as intelligent. If the Buggers are sufficiently advanced, they will consider human weaponry as "laughably simplistic", and not as an indication of intelligence.
• The weapons may have been developed by another species, and humans have gotten their hands on them before their civilization reached a point where they're intelligent enough to build them themselves (like a child who finds a gun and plays with it).
• Many animals make their own weapons (venom), but their bodies automatically (genetically) produce this weapon. The animal does not intelligently know how to make venom.

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Could the Buggers have realized that humans are intelligent?

Yes, you are right about that.

Should the Buggers have invariably realized that humans are intelligent?

Not necessarily. The indications of intelligence that they "should have seen" are not irrefutable evidence. There are explanations that can forgo the acknowledgement of human intelligence.

Furthermore, it stands to reason that the Buggers' notion that "non-hive-minds cannot possible be intelligent" inherently prejudiced the Buggers to assume that humans cannot possibly be intelligent regardless of wielding weaponry and tactics.

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Consider what a (figurative) echo chamber is:

In news media, the term echo chamber is analogous with an acoustic echo chamber, where sounds reverberate in a hollow enclosure. An echo chamber is a metaphorical description of a situation in which information, ideas, or beliefs are amplified or reinforced by communication and repetition inside a defined system. Inside a figurative echo chamber, official sources often go unquestioned and different or competing views are censored, disallowed, or otherwise underrepresented.

I would argue that a hive mind is inherently an extreme echo chamber. A hive mind only has one opinion, so they are not experienced in how to handle conflicting ideas. The same wrong notion ("non-hive-minds cannot be intelligent") gets repeated over and over, to a point where it is assumed as a common truth, and no longer as an unproven assumption or a rumor.

And once you accept something that common truth, then you won't easily be swayed to believe the opposite. So it's perfectly possible that the Buggers never reevaluated their prejudices, even if they could've noticed human tactics and weaponry.