Hivemind discussion

Ive been lurking in the sub after binging the show over the last couple nights and it's evident a lot of viewers completely misunderstand what a hive mind is.

It's not an alien entity controlling humanity. There is no secret puppet master pulling the strings. All of humanity has been joined into single consciousness. It's kinda hard to wrap your head around but everyone is still a person, just without individuality. It's kinda like how brain cells are their own units that make up your own consciousness. Or a CPU with 7 billion cores.

They aren't zombies, they are still humans. The single consciousness is a sum of all individual human consciousnesses.

However there are still some pertinent questions, like what's with the no eating animals or even picking apples when the vast majority of humanity were meat eaters? What's with the no lying when most people have no problem lying? And why do negative emotional outbursts affect the hivemind to the point of worldwide debilitation?

Perhaps the hivemind found a new outlook on the meaning of life, or perhaps there's more to the story.

One lingering question for me is who sent the signal in the first place? Are we assuming it's an alien civilization that is joined in the same way? Is it possible humanity was joined into that hivemind and isn't a separate one on its own? Maybe the whole no lying thing is a ruse? The rat in the first episode would kinda hint that the hivemind might be more than just humans. How did the rat know to play dead and bite the scientist. Also why did the scientist seemingly immediately understand the directive to spread it so ruthlessly and effectively? If she truly was patient zero of a hivemind it would probably take her some time to figure things out.