Interesting logic, Stephen. Let's explore another possibility. Suppose
thought transfer is common in animals that do not have a complex
language. One might use schooling fish as an example or perhaps a flock
of birds. While other explanations can be suggested for the observed
behavior, thought transfer provides a very consistent explanation. In
addition, this ability would have great survival value. Suppose mankind,
as we evolved, also had this ability, thus accounting for our success
before language evolved. Now, suppose that language, because it is so
much more efficient in providing the necessary communication, replaced
thought transfer. As a result thought transfer became a recessive
ability. Even though this idea has been suggested and explored before by
other people, I think it needs to be given more attention. Like musical
ability or other talents that are randomly distributed in the
population, most individuals would have no awareness of such a talent,
yet they could see that some people seemed to know what to do before the
need became obvious. For example, some people seemed to win all the time
at cards or know when their loved ones were in trouble, etc. The fact
that any single individual did not have these abilities would mean
nothing, any more than a person's inability to play a musical instrument
very well means than no one can do this. Indeed, some people have
suggested ways to amplify this ability. Of course, these ideas are not
accepted because the process is not very reproducible and has no theory
to explain it. (Does this sound familiar?) In addition, as Steven
pointed out, a person with this ability might want to hid this fact.
To get back to science, a lot of scientific study has been done to
reveal the existence of this ability. The results of this work, at least
to me, show that thought transfer is real. But like all such claims,
this belief is rejected by conventional science. My question is, what
would it take to change this attitude? Or is this possibility too scary
for it to be accepted regardless of the evidence or logic?
Ed
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
Edmund Storms wrote:
You are right, Steven, if belief were only required, the reality we
find ourselves in would not work and it would not survive long enough
for us to debate the issue. I suppose we could conclude that the
Darwin process has eliminated this possibility. If this is true, then
this process would have a low-level recessive characteristic, having
been weeded out of the general population.
Of course, there is another possibility that can be confused with
getting something when you want it bad enough. Suppose, certain people
are able to obtain information by mental telepathy. This ability would
give them an advantage in getting their way that could be confused
with belief being the cause. This, at least, is an effect that science
can explore, as has been done on many occasions with supporting results.
Let's consider telepathy a little more closely. I think we can actually
conclude something about the possibility, or at least the likelihood, of
mind-reading simply by an exercise in logic, with a small handful of
reasonable assumptions used to guide the argument.
Point zero -- a baseline assumption: Mind reading involves information
transfer and that transfer must have a mechanism. For the time being,
let's assume there's a physical mechanism and proceed from there.
With that said, we should recognize that there are *two* kinds of
mind-reading: Cooperative -- where the subject /wishes/ to have their
thoughts read -- and non-cooperative -- where the subject does not want
to have their thoughts read, and may not even know it happened.
The first kind -- cooperative -- happens all the time, and it's so
commonplace that we don't even think about it. The information transfer
takes place via waves in a compressive medium. We call such a transfer
"talking".
The second kind is the more interesting kind. Is there a possible
physical mechanism? -- Of course! Brains are more or less electrical
in nature, and EMF is a fine way to transfer information. Let's follow
this a little farther.
Is it conceivable that one could "decode" the EMF radiated by a brain to
distill out the thoughts in that brain? A priori one would have to say
"yes" -- there's nothing obvious which would forbid it. I can think of
two examples off hand which support this:
a) Sharks can "read" the life signs of other creatures by their EMF
emissions. This is not exactly mind reading but it's a first cousin.
b) The CIA was very concerned about printer cable emissions (in the
distant past) because it was apparently pretty easy to pick them up
remotely and figure out exactly what was being printed just from the
"leakage". Printers are not exactly brains but none the less this seems
like a fine Proof of Concept to me.
But now let's take this farther. First, let's think about brain
structure. The brain is a parallel computing engine, with many
electrical impulses happening at the same time. Decoding the output of
this thing would not be simple. This will have implications, as we will
see.
Next, let's assume that at some point in the past someone was born with
the ability to read minds. I would expect this to require a rather
fancy *PHYSICAL* bit of brain "hardware" -- you need to be able to
receive the signals and demodulate them somehow. No matter how much
post-processing you can do, if you can't grab the signals to start with
you are stuck at square 1. "Hardware" is something you don't get by
"learning", you get it by "growing" it ... and from that comes my
assumption that this person was /born/ with the /innate/ ability to read
minds.
This leads us *at once* to two additional conclusions -- but first we
need an additional assumption, which is obvious if you think about it:
-- Mind reading would be an incredibly valuable ability!!
Note that current theory says "politics" -- the constant effort to
outguess other humans and figure out what they're planning in order to
outwit them -- provided the unrelenting selection pressure which led to
the "runaway evolution" of the incredibly over-developed human brain. I
mention this because it's obvious once it's pointed out, and it also
sets off in high relief just how valuable the ability to read minds
would be. In terms of outguessing your evolutionary opponents it would
surely be worth more than an extra 50 IQ points.
So what can we conclude from that? We are considering an *innate*
ability which provides an enormous advantage. Conclusion: In very
short order the genes for that ability will spread through the population.
In short, if *anyone* can read minds, then *everyone* should be able to
do it ... unless the ability only entered the gene pool very, very
recently. Because, if it entered the gene pool in the prehistoric past,
those who had the ability would have parented more offspring and yada
yada you all know the drill.
Anyhow the point of this is that the fact that *I* cannot read minds
leads me to believe it's very unlikely that *anyone* can read minds ...
because I'm part of "everyone" and if anyone can do it, then everyone
should be able to do it (except for a few "mind-blind" people, of course).
OK, that's one conclusion, which already leads one to think the notion
of "mind-reading" is in trouble -- but there's a second. If reading
minds is a huge advantage (and I think it's clear that it would be) then
having your mind read would be a huge DISadvantage. Now let's go back
and think again about the brain structures which would be required to
pull this stunt off. You need to receive the EMF emissions of another
brain, and somehow demodulate them. That seems, on the surface,
fiendishly complex and difficult. On the other hand, if someone had
that ability, it also seems very likely that it would need to be tuned,
designed, and mated to the kind of brain which was emitting the signals.
In other words, the "receiver" would have to be designed around the
exact structure of the "transmitter". (Bear with me even if you think
the argument sounds weak, this is going somewhere significant!)
Now let's ask another question: Given the rather fragile situation in
the preceding paragraph, how hard would it be to change the "sending"
brain just enough to *jam* the signals? Surely it would be easier to
modify a brain to "jam" the signals it produced, thus making its
thoughts harder to read, than it was to design the "receiver" to start
with -- adding noise to a signal is a whole lot easier than demodulating
the same signal! Since having your mind read is a big disadvantage,
having a brain whose thoughts cannot be read -- or cannot be read
clearly -- would obviously be a huge advantage. So, in the presence of
a subpopulation which could read minds, the genes for "jamming" the
brain's transmissions would also naturally spread through the population.
And so, with this second conclusion we foresee a sort of "arms race".
But, as already mentioned, it seems like it must be far easier to "jam"
the signal than to "demodulate" it, so it seems clear which side would
"win" such a race: The brains of the whole population would become
fully "unreadable" in a relatively small number of generations.
And so this leads me to conclude that my inability to read minds -- and,
by extension, reasoning from the huge evolutionary advantage of
mind-reading, the inability of everyone else to read minds -- is not at
all surprising. Indeed it would be very surprising if we could do that,
as the advantages of having a "shielded" brain and the ease with which
we might expect such a "shield" to evolve would seem to militate against
the existence of involuntary mind-reading.
Finally, a thought to leave this with: Any design I can imagine for a
"mind reading organ" would be pretty heavyweight. It would be complex
and it would be costly (in bulk, mass added to the head, etc). (Think
about speech interpretation -- it doesn't happen for free: we've got
significant chunks of brain tissue devoted to our "speech centers".)
Consequently, if it was not in active use, it would most likely devolve
into something useless in relatively short order. From this, I conclude
that, as mind reading seems to be, at best, an extremely rare
occurrence, the likelihood that we're carrying around the hardware with
which to do it at all is very low. Evolutionarily, it's "use it or lose
it" and the more complex and costly the structure, the more accurate
this statement is. We don't use it, so we would surely have lost it if
we ever had it. And if we've lost it, then it's not there at all ...
and claims of occasional rare examples of mind-reading are most likely
incorrect.
