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Writer's Block: Mind reader
Jul. 5th, 2010 02:42 am[Error: unknown template qotd]
Huh. This question sent my brain through some more interesting twists than I expected.
Knee-jerk response: fuck no. Not only are a lot of my thoughts private, but I wouldn't want to know too many of my loved ones' either. That way lies trouble.
Next thought: but what about a complete stranger? It would be interesting to know what another person's thoughts are like -- to know in a sense what it's like to be them -- as long as it wasn't someone I had to interact with in "real life," and it might not be so bad to have them know all about me too, as long as we'd never meet each other.
But that last part's the kicker. There'd be no way to guarantee it, because anyone who had access to all my thoughts would know my name, my appearance, and exactly where to find me, and there'd be nothing stopping them from hopping on a plane and tracking me down someday. Not to mention they'd also have access to my Social Security number, my bank account information...um, yeah. Scratch that idea.
Then I see that a couple of people on the Answers page have mentioned animals. Now there's a thought. It'd be almost as interesting to know what an animal thinks, and I'd no longer be risking identity theft...well, as long as the animal I picked wasn't, say, a chimp with access to the Internet. And it might not even be so bad to pick an animal I knew personally -- after all, learning how their thoughts tallied with their actions would help me better understand their species in general.
This is, of course, assuming non-human animals have any thoughts that we could comprehend as such, which is obviously a big if. And that question brings up a slightly more disturbing one: if a cat or dog or some such creature suddenly had a human's thoughts running through its mind and didn't know how to deal with them, would it be driven mad by the experience? I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that.
It also occurs to me that, human or animal, I wouldn't want to take this deal unless I could shut off the receptive aspect during unpleasant moments. I don't know that I could handle even a pet's dying thoughts, for example.
Hell, I'd need to be able to shut it off any time, or I'd never get any sleep unless our sleep cycles happened to synchronize. And even then, shared dreams would be a little too weird.
But given those constraints, and assuming it wouldn't cause any harm on the other end, I guess I'd be up for a domestic-critter mind meld.
Or a wild-critter one. Shit, that's actually a tough choice: understand cats better, or find out what it's like to fly? Hmm. Do I get to pick another critter when the first one dies -- is it one per lifetime or only one at a time?
(Sheesh, I suspect I've already wandered beyond the bounds of the question as intended.)
Huh. This question sent my brain through some more interesting twists than I expected.
Knee-jerk response: fuck no. Not only are a lot of my thoughts private, but I wouldn't want to know too many of my loved ones' either. That way lies trouble.
Next thought: but what about a complete stranger? It would be interesting to know what another person's thoughts are like -- to know in a sense what it's like to be them -- as long as it wasn't someone I had to interact with in "real life," and it might not be so bad to have them know all about me too, as long as we'd never meet each other.
But that last part's the kicker. There'd be no way to guarantee it, because anyone who had access to all my thoughts would know my name, my appearance, and exactly where to find me, and there'd be nothing stopping them from hopping on a plane and tracking me down someday. Not to mention they'd also have access to my Social Security number, my bank account information...um, yeah. Scratch that idea.
Then I see that a couple of people on the Answers page have mentioned animals. Now there's a thought. It'd be almost as interesting to know what an animal thinks, and I'd no longer be risking identity theft...well, as long as the animal I picked wasn't, say, a chimp with access to the Internet. And it might not even be so bad to pick an animal I knew personally -- after all, learning how their thoughts tallied with their actions would help me better understand their species in general.
This is, of course, assuming non-human animals have any thoughts that we could comprehend as such, which is obviously a big if. And that question brings up a slightly more disturbing one: if a cat or dog or some such creature suddenly had a human's thoughts running through its mind and didn't know how to deal with them, would it be driven mad by the experience? I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for that.
It also occurs to me that, human or animal, I wouldn't want to take this deal unless I could shut off the receptive aspect during unpleasant moments. I don't know that I could handle even a pet's dying thoughts, for example.
Hell, I'd need to be able to shut it off any time, or I'd never get any sleep unless our sleep cycles happened to synchronize. And even then, shared dreams would be a little too weird.
But given those constraints, and assuming it wouldn't cause any harm on the other end, I guess I'd be up for a domestic-critter mind meld.
Or a wild-critter one. Shit, that's actually a tough choice: understand cats better, or find out what it's like to fly? Hmm. Do I get to pick another critter when the first one dies -- is it one per lifetime or only one at a time?
(Sheesh, I suspect I've already wandered beyond the bounds of the question as intended.)
