It's common knowledge in star trek that neural patterns are what make up our consciousness. It's stated in voyager episode "warlord" that Tieran has been transferring his neural pattern for a couple hundred years.Still, that doesn't strengthen your point about neural patterns containing the sum total of a person's being. Not that I needed to counter that in the first place, but honestly, your arguments were duplicitous and deserved to be countered.
To wit: you claim the process is perfect. You can't strengthen this claim by pointing to cases where some knowledge is being transferred, particularly not when we know that mental trauma commonly affects ex-Borg.
The Ux-Mal criminals from the next generation episode "power play" transferred their consciousness into troi, obrian, and data. Doctor crusher said they did this by superimposed their neural patterns on them.
Vantika was able to transfer his consciousness by transmitting his neural pattern to bashir in episode "the passenger".
Here's a quote from voyager episode "infinite regress"
The EMH tells you word for word what it is.EMH: This is your neural pattern. The memory engrams and synaptic pathways that define you as an individual. Unfortunately, you're not alone. Thirteen new neural patterns have emerged in your cerebral cortex. Klingon, Vulcan, Terrelian, Human and several others I can't identify.
SEVEN: How?
EMH: They're coming from within you. During your time with the Borg, the Collective assimilated hundreds of different species. All of those neural patterns were integrated into the Hive Mind.
SEVEN: Of course.
EMH: That means they're in your mind too, stored within your cortical implants. Dormant until now.
If the borg were dumb then they wouldn't be able to assimilate thousands of worlds. 7 of 9 wouldn't have been regarded by harry kim as the most intelligent person alive. Judging by your statements all the evidence is there that you're wrong but you're in denial because of a personal bias against the borg. The borg were aided by the EMH doctor's knowledge. It was another artificial lifeform's work, not Janeway.Perhaps it is implied, and I would honestly not be violently opposed to it. What I'm opposed to is the idea that this chaotic bundle of impulses can be perfectly analysed and flawlessly collated, when we know the Borg are dumb. It's not me here trying to act like an ass, but observation: the point of Scorpion (Voyager) as I recall it was exactly that Janeway could aid the Borg... with science. How? Well, it's obvious Voyager can't match the Borg for computing power or scientific data, and if we're talking implications, the obvious one is that the drive and innovation of the Federation is something the Borg lack.
They're not creative. And if they are to build a whole new infrastructure that is to be protected from harm, using personnel who are military end users rather than personnel within the same infrastructure, they'll need creativity and more.
Using an analogy of building a computer from scratch, no single person knows how to do that. How to mine gold, plastic, iron, other raw materials; refining the metals and removing impurities from them, make the circuit boards, processors, computer memory, speakers, lights, electricity in general etc.. etc.. If the borg assimilated humanity, they would be able to tell you in detail step by step how to make a computer from scratch. Assimilation gives the Collective more knowledge about technology than any one scientist, engineer, or other person. If the borg assimilated enough of the empire, the empire would be at a significant disadvantage with the borg knowing more about their technology than even they do.In all honesty, though, I think it would make the greatest amount of sense -- and be the most interesting, dramatically -- for the Borg to separate storage and indexing as concepts. Much like you don't remember all the sites on the Internet, the Borg might be working with a relative small matrix of well-ordered fact and then continually scan and process the rest from the sum total of their assimilated creatures. Perhaps they flag the stuff that representatives of high-order civilisations are emotionally invested in and give that priority. The rest will be there, but part of a vast dataspace that won't necessarily be easy to use until they get around to indexing it.
Following that analogy, say a random Corellian tramp freighter enters Borg space in a TIE and is assimilated. Some of the crew will most likely have been thinking stuff like "why didn't I pack bigger guns/faster engines" as they fought, so the Borg would find out about the existence of said technologies pretty much instantly, but that subjective impression wouldn't be very useful at all. Even knowing that you hook in a Novaldex (TM) module to a TurboBlix circuit to create a Three-Stage Laser (which is also a brand name) won't give them very much more than a hint as to which planetary system(s) they should order their parts from. It's the same with us today.