[@Arawak] Not every member of the Collective is involved in research. The fleet recognises that it needs other skills, such as pilots, it just actively looks for engineers, scientists, etc. in a way it doesn't for others. If you would make a good researcher (or scientist or engineer), you're a researcher, if not, then you're free to pursue your own profession, so long as you continue to support the collective. 

As for the demagogue part, most people really couldn't care less. So what if you follow their beliefs at a slightly more fanatic level? As long as you don't cause them any problems, they'd probably just see you as weird. The raised by machines part would be similar. Odd, but no one really cares that much. 

It does touch on one idea I had for the Collective, though: an experimental program in which children are born, then uploaded into a cyberspace in which time moves, say, ten times more quickly, so that 1.8 years later it will be as if they have lived for a full 18 years, and they may be downloaded into a synthetic body to begin service.