Hatrack River Forum: If we were laid bare...

This is topic If we were laid bare... in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :

OK, blatantly-able-to-be-taken-out-of-context title, but I suppose I'm becoming famous for that...

What I really want to know is what would happen if everyone on earth had a mind-to-mind connection. If everyone was able to speak to another person's mind and feel what they felt.

It would be an amazing change. You would immediately be able to tell who was more complex than another person. You would immediately be able to feel another person's pain. You would immediately be able to tell that guy who cut you off in traffic to shove it somewhere unpleasant.

But would you want to? And it would be a killing pain after a while. If you had weak shielding, you would be bombarded constantly by the troubles of hungry babies, PMS-y women, and kids with mosquito bites.

What it all boils down to is would it be better or would it be worse?

Posted by Erik Slaine (Member # 5583) on :

I'm with the protagonist of Robinson's Time Pressure! If you are truely telepathic, and can read my mind, you gotta die!

Posted by Synesthesia (Member # 4774) on :

worse. I hate having empathy...
It's agonizing.
But then, there would not be so much talking and people would understand each other instantly... it depends...

Posted by meltingsnowman (Member # 4559) on :

Worse, I would miss the sounds of peoples' voices.

Posted by ludosti (Member # 1772) on :

Even if we all could feel each other's feelings and speak directly to each other's minds, it would not necessarily lead to greater understanding. We would constantly be innundated with extemporaneous information and emotion - so much so, that I doubt if we would be able to function. Even if we could somehow manage to function, there is no guarantee that we would all interpret each other's feeling the same way (hence, no guarantee of perfect understanding). The pessimistic part of me doubts that everyone would use such information to do good - greed, selfishness, and corruption are too rampant.

Posted by T. Analog Kid (Member # 381) on :

It would have to be like a phone: both parties willingly participating and making an open connection... otherwise, as everyone points out, it'd be too noisy.

Posted by Black Fox (Member # 1986) on :

I think of it like this most people seem to take from granted that one mans thoughts are just like another, thus if someone could read a mind they could read everyones mind. To me it makes more sense that it would be easier for a person to read a certain group of minds, and be able to pick up vague images from others. You might say that its like the pattern in Octavia Butlers books ( wild seed etc.) However that really wasn't your question.

Here is the thing I believe that being able to know what people are thinking and knowing all the time wouldn't really be that much different from how a lot of people are right now! I mean look at body language, most people are rather horrible liars. we do pretty much know what most other people are thinking, at least I seem to pickup a lot of that. Plus I don't believe thoughts are painful at all, its what the thoughts make our body do. Its the adrenaline and various other chemicals your thoughts flood into your body that make you feel as you do. That and if anything dying is a peaceful thing as in death all their thoughts are shut out, plus is physical pain actually a thought, or simply a nerve impulse. Think of it like that [Wink]

Posted by odouls268 (Member # 2145) on :

Wars. Lots of Wars.

Not to mention shocked, dumbfounded, and wholly offended women the very SECOND they inadvertantly 'hear' what men are thinking.

That stuff about us thinking about sex every four seconds? utter garbage. Not a one of us has anything else to fill the other three seconds with, so why change subjects?

[Razz]

Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :

We would either go crazy, or we would become "the collective" (Species 5618) with one powerful mind controlling all the others...

Posted by Deirdre (Member # 4200) on :

That was my first thought, too--that we'd all be overloaded by other people's thoughts, like the guy in that Borges story "Shakespeare's Memory." After all, that's what usually happens when people born deaf gain their hearing. They're overwhelmed by all this new stimulus because their brains haven't learned how to filter out the white noise.

But if we were born with the capacity for mind-to-mind communication, I think we would learn to use it as well as any other sense. I'm not sure we'd really know each other all that much better, though. No doubt people would learn to fabricate certain emotions when they know other people are reading them, just like people modify their expression and body language now. And I'm sure we'd still edit the thoughts we send others. We just wouldn't have the same physical barriers, which might make us less inhibited.

So basically things would be a lot like they are online...

[ August 29, 2003, 11:38 AM: Message edited by: Deirdre ]

Posted by Pod (Member # 941) on :

just out of curiousity, and mischevious rhetoric,
[Evil]

aren't most people bare when laid? [Monkeys]

[ August 29, 2003, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: Pod ]

Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :

The joke was too easy, Pod. Er, I mean....

Posted by TheTick (Member # 2883) on :

Gee Pod, you've never been in a hurry?

Posted by Pod (Member # 941) on :

i've got nimble fingers, the shedding of clothing is no obsticle. [Evil Laugh]

[ August 29, 2003, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: Pod ]

Posted by Papa Moose (Member # 1992) on :

That can be taken so wrong, Pod....

Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :

Egads! Can you imagine trying to teach in a Middle School classroom with this ability?

Posted by Ryuko (Member # 5125) on :

Yikes, especially if you were good looking.

Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :

This is what I look like laid bare.

Posted by suntranafs (Member # 3318) on :

Needless to say, darnit! [Wink]

Posted by newfoundlogic (Member # 3907) on :

Many advantages on an individual basis... [Evil Laugh]

Posted by Maccabeus (Member # 3051) on :

The same thing that'd happen if you tried to run a computer without any virus protection...

The average person would be "infected" by other folks' irrational concepts on a grand scale. I was working on a novel something like this, tentatively entitled The One-Ied Man; however, it is on hold (as usual... [Wall Bash]