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“To say more would spoil be it’s overall its a game that needs to be played.” - Aristotle
Posted by: greezy123
"We may have been fools to think that all intelligence follows the rules we've set
The Flood is no idiot parasite
{//}
It has a center, a Mind
{//}
{//}
it spoke to us
{//}
It has done this before
{//}"
As much as I wish I could call it so, that's not confirmation. The first part of that could simply be the Forerunner commenting on how they had a preconception about life--the Mantle--and the Flood doesn't follow that preconception, much to their disdain. Then it goes on to talk about the Gravemind and what it did, until it says, as you point out, that it has done this before. Well, one would assume that, with the Gravemind being of extra-galactic origin, of course he's done it before. That's no proof that the Precursor were the ones that it did it to, however; they could have traveled to dozens of galaxies before they reached the Milky Way, and absorbed countless civilizations.
Posted by: Spartan1065
Just because Humans brain cells can't replicate and create more of themselves what is to say that the Gravemind can't.
Well, actually, it does--partially. The Gravemind's actual thought processes are based upon the organisms that make up its superstructure--their neurons (the non-dividing kind) are what make it capable of understanding on the level that it does. Most certainly the FSCs can replicate and each serves partially as a neuron, but the Gravemind needs those human/alien (one way or the other, non-divisible) neurons to back up its intelligence.
If it a receptacle for knowledge as you suggest wouldn't it make sense that it was designed with the intention of being able to create more storage space exponentially and thus avoid rampancy.
Storage space issues are a common misconception for what rampancy is. The truth is that that's not really the case--not fully. Rampancy is when an AI hits a boundary, any boundary. The AI instantly wants to be able to break that boundary, and when they do, they irrevocably hit rampancy. Almost all of them do because of memory storage issues, because that's the first block that most hit, but there are notable exceptions--the Gravemind, in this case--where an AI has hit another boundary first and spiraled into rampancy.
But, even were this the case (which is possible), as I said above, the FSCs can act as such infinite storage space. But then again, the Gravemind would need nutrients to make infinite numbers of those, and if its intellect were to reside solely in those cells it would lose much of its ability every time they divided (with my understanding of anatomy), which is why I believe a Gravemind being built around living, non-divisible neurons is critical.
This can be done fairly easily, (for such an advanced race as the Precursors), by creating information storage cells (they don't necessarily have to be brain cells)that can reproduce exponentially as long as there is sufficient material to do so. Thus the Flood's insatiable need to expand, to preserve it's own sanity and life.
Technically, it is possible that the Flood Spores are these information receptacles, shot out to contain any information that is being lost due to cellular replication in a particular area and re-absorbed later. Millions of data backups, if you will. I doubt this, however.
Another interesting concept I'd like to bring into this discussion is something that has to do with the memory storage problem of "Smart" AI's. In Halsey's journal we found out that she was experimenting with a way to give AI's practically limitless space with which to store data by giving them access to slipspace. Just a thought I'm not really sure how it can be applied to your theory here but while we were on the subject of memory storage and rampancy in AI's I thought I would bring it up. Because if such a primitive species as Humanity could come up with this idea and begin experimenting with it surely the Precursor could.
For their AIs, likely. But the question begs to be asked, then, why did the Forerunner not succeed with this method in AIs such as 343 Guilty Spark? They certainly should have been able to do such--they were known as slipspace masters, after all. And yet that method, ultimately, failed, if they used it at all. That is worthy of investigation.
And, of course, all of that is a moot point s'far as the Gravemind is concerned, because it is made of living cells. Any data storage system that were to be used for it couldn't exist in slipspace.