Mind reader

Telepathic Powers

When people are asked what one super power they would most want to have, mind reading comes a close second to flying. Some popular authors call it a fun psychic skill that's naturally available to just about everyone but it's being inhibited by our lack of belief in it. It's such an interesting idea that it's easy to wish it were true. But if someone is actually reading minds, what would they be doing with it? Are they reducing poverty, limiting the actions of the insane, blocking terrorists and spies, unmasking lies for the public, or even just sending 'I love yous' to each other? Judging from the way the world goes, apparently not. And maybe that's for the better, since just as with normal skills, telepathic abilities would provide us with a new way to really foul things up. Many insane or perverted people think they're telepathic -- could you picture the insanity they could cause in other people if they really were? There would even be the chilling possibility of developing real telepathic "thought police" who would investigate you by reading your thoughts. Sci-Fi and horror, rolled into one.

There are a growing number of scientists (and wanna-bes) who believe that the human race will eventually create high-tech devices which will enable us to do the same kinds of things we usually think of as telepathy. Think of it as 'telepathy for geeks'. By implanting little receivers or chips into minds, they'd be able to send, receive, and directly transpose into another's chips. There are many hurdles to overcome, including the slight differences in how each of our brains operate, and ways to encrypt in a reliable manner. I suspect that this geek-telepathy would eventually become a new medium for harassing messages, trolling, junk mail, spam, tweet blizzards, image intrusions, trojan horses, worms, pop-ups, and viruses, in which case it would drive us crazy.

Many just-plain-folks report having some sort of telepathic abilities. There are some things in life that are hard to explain outside of telepathy: think, for instance, of how our mothers seem to be able to make us feel guilty no matter how far away we might be. The reported telepathic abilities usually come in the form of mental communication with one particular person only. That's often the psychological effect of being emotionally close to someone for awhile. Being emotionally close could provide a possible kind of telepathy, in the sense that such closeness could possibly bring about moments of someone else being included in the edges of a person's consciousness. (In this case, consciousness means the 'community' of all that is you. There could perhaps be an 'overlap' with someone else