A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** It's a good analogy, but it doesn't really work. If everyone were blind, physical appearance would effectively be meaningless, and at the very least is not representative of a person. Being able to see how other people look would probe something that people wouldn't care about and wouldn't be able to actually determine at all, if everyone is blind then they can understand their physical shape, but not colour or anything purely visual. This means the sighted person can basically only access concepts which the blind society probably doesn't even have words for. However when it comes to the mind it is filled with personal, embarrassing and secret things which are fully meaningful. The mind reader in this situation would be able to obtain information which is actually of consequence and is relevant to the society.

*** What people ''look'' like might be meaningless in this context, true. Not so much, however, what they are ''doing'' when they think nobody can hear them...which is really what the main issue with telepathy is, too: not so much ''that'' somebody can peek into your head, but what might be running through your mind the very moment they do so.

*** In the Dresden universe the summary execution isn't because mind-reading is wrong though, it's because [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|mind magic will turn you evil]].

*** Also, because [[Lawful Stupid|the White Council]] [[All Crimes Are Equal|loves its death penalty]].

*** To be fair, the fact that Buffy can be something of a self-righteous hypocrite is something that the series does often explicitly note, even if it's not addressed in this specific example. Plus, Buffy's case is one of the 'she can't help it' examples, so while it is invasive, getting on her case about reading their thoughts isn't something that's really going to help given that she can't ''not'' read their thoughts, even before it starts to overwhelm her. While, say, Xander is at that point aware that Buffy can read people's thoughts, so could probably make more of an effort to not think things that would embarrass him.

**** Actually, Buffy would more fall into the other category. Yes, she can't help the fact that she can read people's minds. At the same time, though, she was using the ability to cheat in class and tells what her friends are thinking out loud. She also purposely tried to use it to invade her boyfriend's privacy, but only failed because vampires' thoughts can't be read. As for Xander, he was trying as hard as he could to reign in his thoughts, but he's also a teenager. Teenagers tend to think about sex a lot. Also, if you tell someone not to think about X, then chances are that they're going to be thinking about X twice as hard without meaning to. It's basic psychology.

** This is addressed in a very disturbing way in [[Tales of MU]] by taking the opposite perspective. One of the minor characters is a natural telepath of the "can't help hearing people's thoughts" variety. We get a backstory chapter on her at one point, where when her teachers discovered her abilties, they talked to her parents, recommending that she get training to learn to control her abilities so as to not be constantly violating the privacy of everyone around her. But these are not ordinary, reasonable parents; they're basically hippie parents, and their response can be summed up fairly well as "How dare you suggest that there's anything wrong with our daughter that she needs to learn to control, you horrible evil authority figures! Our daughter's abilities make her ''special'', and if other people have a problem with it, that's their own fault!" Between the way it's written and [[Word of God|the author's statements in comments]], it's clear that the parents are supposed to be 100% in the right in this case. This being [[Tales of MU]], of course, [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]] is [[Anvilicious|intentionally in full force.]] It was [[Values Dissonance|quite off-putting to a lot of readers]] [[Fridge Horror|who actually understood the implications of it.]]

 

[[Category:Tropes/Headscratchers]]