A Psychic Species

[Heronblade]

I don't doubt that, but if what you call 'conscious behavior' is driven or influenced at a primordial level by a kind of pre-programmed instinct, then there is no point drawing a distinction between conscious and unconscious behavior.

Sure there is. One form of behavior remains the same regardless of experiences and learning, and with few exceptions will remain the same for all members of a species.

The second form of behavior varies wildly. Even identical twins with near identical upbringings have been known to display noticeably different behavioral traits. Even if you could say that subconscious behavior is the only driving force behind conscious behavior, which I doubt, there is still a practical difference between the two.

But this is getting off topic. My original point in this exchange was that pre-programmed subconscious behavior explains mob mentality quite well without delving into the science fiction.

 

[Angie7F]

I think "SATORARE" is freakier...

 

[Evil Smurf]

I'm thinking relationships would be much more boring. Safer, but boring. You would lose out on the "learning" aspect. Now that I think about it, everything from sports to debates would likely be safer, but less exciting. xD

Politics would be super dooper hard

I think they would be easier, personally. In fact, campaigning would be less frequent too if everyone knew what both sides wanted to do exactly. :x

lying would be very hard is what I am getting at

 

[Catfood220]

If everyone could read my thoughts, then I think I would be slapped quite often by women and probably arrested for having some of the thoughts that I have. However, it could prove useful for telling the dickhead driving the BMW who just cut me up exactly what I thought of him.

It would probably also put a lot of assassins out of a job. How do you sneak up on someone who knows what you are doing?

 

[purplecactus]

I got cold shivers just thinking about that. I do believe some degree of telepathy exists for some people, and if anyone near me has this ability then either keep the hell out of my mind or make sure you've got a damn good poker face. This seriously freaks me out (though a large part of that is due to an illness I used to suffer quite badly from).

 

[Innegativeion]

I've actually written a story about a world completely inhabited by psychics.

They live in a world parallel to our own, but despite obvious paranoia, it is 1000 years more advance than our modern world, and 90% of the population thrives on peace, prosperity, and social and technical progress. The other 10% are obviously those that abuse their psychic powers and cause trouble, but less than 1% is actually considered a threat.

In terms of reading people's minds, it not really an issue for the inhabitants of this world. Children are taught when they are young to carefully shield their minds from anyone who wishes to probe it, and only those who are experts in hacking one's mind or are psychics of a higher order can actually read minds with ease.

Yeah, I'd figure that in a world of psychics, you could psychically defend your own mind, necessitating skilled people to train before actually being able to probe minds uninhibited.

Psionics are fictional after all, so this is the sort of thing to be left up to the imaginer. I've always preferred this model of psychics, however. More fun that way.

 

[Zantos]

I think what would happen is we'd fall to fetishistic depravity, start worshipping a lust god, royally fuck up everyone else's day for the next however many thousand years, then split into two groups which other races would neither know how to or care to distinguish between.

Either that or people would be a lot chattier, having to blurt out everything we thought as we thought it.

 

[DragonStorm247]

I imagine telepathy would have some sort of proximity limitation.

 

[Imthatguy]

HAHAHAHAHHAH! I can just imagine mental illnesses spreading like memes!

 

[NightmareWarden]

I read a series that was based on this concept...except people could not turn the ability off. Nor could they limit it to a single person or only to humans... It was the Chaos Walking trilogy, the first book was called The Knife of Never Letting Go. I really liked the series and heartily recommend it.

 

[NightHawk21]

I think the answer would depend on if everyone suddenly turned psychic overnight or if it evolved somewhere way down the line hundreds of thousands of years ago. If it happened overnight, then the world would be a shit storm. Crime everywhere and people trying to keep sane with the amounts of information pouring in their heads. If it evolved then our communities would likely be much different, my guess probably more like a Hive mind.

I don't believe in instinct. Everything we do is instinct, from eating to talking about the latest Batman movie. It's a 19th century concept, very much outdated.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Obviously everything we do is not instinct. There are behaviors and actions that take a long time to learn and are by no means intuitive.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Um...we'd have lots of really loud concerts?

 

[gazumped]

If we're imagining that the human race is and always has been psychic, then we'd be thinking about a completely different kind of race. Adapting to life would have sent us down a very different route of existence. There would be no need for telephones, very little need for television, photographs or films. At the very most, there would only have to be one copy of each kind of media, and people may be hired to concentrate on it while anyone who decides they want to watch/listen/etc only has to tune in to their brain.

There'd be much less crime, perhaps even no crime, because everyone would be forced to empathise with each other, and even if they didn't they wouldn't be able to hide their actions.

There'd likely be much less difference in opinions because everyone would understand everyone else's points of view. And little point in hierarchies or battling for power if everyone can have everyone else's experiences and understand the needs of others.

Basically, I'm thinking that this would end up like some kind of utopia. Just not anything like what being human is now, which would mean a lot less interesting diversity but what would there be to miss if we'd never experienced this 'chaos'?

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

I don't understand what you mean by this. Obviously everything we do is not instinct. There are behaviors and actions that take a long time to learn and are by no means intuitive.

So an instinctual behavior is an intuitive one? What do you mean by intuitive? What is an intuitive behavior?

 

[Basement Cat]

Welllll, if empathy were a universal ability there would be a lot more orgies going on.

 

[rosac]

reminds me of the chaos space marine renegades that can hear every lie spoken by humanity. Useful as hell if they can control the whispers via psychic powers,not so useful when it turns 90% of the marines insane in a matter of days.

 

[The Salty Vulcan]

I'm someone who writes a lot of science fiction so I've always tried come up with a reason as to why or how a species would develop psychic abilities. I was never really successful though. The closest I ever came was a species that could communicate as we do to those outside their species and then to each other using incredibly high pitched clicks. Thus it would only appear that they were communicating telepathically to outsiders. I should really revisit that species. They were fun.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

It'd be like having schizofrenia with seven billion voices in your head. It'd be awful.

You are assuming that if we were to develop psychic abilities, we would know about it. It was many thousands of years before we knew about, say, the function of the brain or cellular respiration. Yet they still operated in us.

 

[VeneratedWulfen93]

Eldar, thats the first thing that came to my mind. A fully psycic race. We'd probably suffer the same fate. A more powerful mind brings more powerful risks.

 

[Nieroshai]

Depends, could we hone our skills to block out other people and pointless thoughts? If not, I would assume every headache medication on the planet would soar in price overnight as billions people rushed out to purchase them.

Ok... lets think about this for a moment. What is the best real world example of the inner thoughts of the world.

Imagine having every person of facebook in your mind, every message they send, every status they write, every picture they take all goes into your head as thoughts in real time.


and thats just 32% of the world who has internet access
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

This is the worst case scenario and it is terrifying.

What if the mind-reading itself is an active skill instead of a passive one, where you have to concentrate in order to use it? The sharpest minds would be able to read you like a book, whereas dullards would be lucky to do more than tell your mood without getting a headache.