Telepathy and its implications for parenting

[Shaggai]

To the first paragraph, all I really have to say is that when I say "demoralization", I mean "If you aren't contributing, you lose free will". That is a very demoralizing thought, and is generally a good way to keep somebody in line. Because free will is good. Destabilization means, in this case, yanking out all the pieces I don't need, yanking out all of their pieces they depend on in so many ways, and then filling it up with the totally dependable meat sacks who are either good people to begin with or weren't before but are now. It's basically terrorism but towards a more constructive and slightly more specific level.

 

As for micromanagement, when I first begin I won't really need it. As I expand, I should ideally have one or two brainwashed people around to help me out, and as I succeed in correcting more and more people, I'll have more and more helpers, though I really shouldn't need all that many. The small numbers will greatly contribute to my ability to fulfill the omnipotent/omniscient part of reinforcement, and allow me to weed out corruption with ease. Micromanaging won't be as much an issue as it may sound. I won't be able to use tactics of much specificity past a certain point, but general tactics along the lines of lack of control, isolation, and more are universal, and can simply be done almost by default.

 

And finally, the ever-present threat of assassination. Assuming I can just scan nearby minds for certain thoughts and patterns, snipers won't be an issue. Assuming this isn't possible, constant, random travel and change of appearance will have already been a part of the strategy from the start, a wave of control would help narrow down the number of minds I need to look through at all times, and basic military VIP procedure should be a great help in shutting down other attempts. Above this all, the combination of spotsearch mindreading and a team of expendable puppets should combine with all other factors, stated or otherwise, to keep me safe from attack. And in all honesty, the majority of assassination attempts will be coming from the government, and I'm already considering coming after me a "dumb move" to be treated like all others. Frankly I'm wondering how they'll get my face, considering the inevitable disguise and likely surgical changes, without me noticing and disposing of them. As long as I keep anybody from truly knowing or being able to target what they think is me, I should be fine.

Problems with the first paragraph:

1. How do you manage this without a vast, probably horribly corrupt bureaucracy?

2. If everything still works, how does it work towards the brainwashing techniques you posted?

3. What probability do you assign to "this all fails horribly about halfway through, resulting in massive devastation across the globe"?

4. What probability do you assign to "when people realize that your successor has no magic powers, they revolt, resulting in massive devastation across the globe"?

 

Problems with the second paragraph:

1. You're managing seven billion people. You can't do that with a small group of people. You can have a small group of people to manage the managers who manage the managers who manage the managers who manage the actual people doing the work, sure. But if there's corruption on any of those other levels you're not going to notice.

2. The suffering caused by the brainwashing techniques (isolation, etc.) seems to outweigh the benefits of your rule. This is seven billion people being brainwashed. Far fewer than 100% of them would have, in your absence, suffered to the same extent as a result of crime, war, etc.

 

Problems with the third paragraph:

1. If they attack in a crowded city, you won't be able to sense them in all the clamor. Also, bombs and a remote detonator. Or drones. If they get desperate enough to ignore collateral damage, there's very little you can do.

2. I think you're vastly underestimating the difficulty of changing your appearance.

3. There are a lot of governments in the world. It'll take a while to get hold of them all.

 

General comments: Sanity. Yours and the kid's. The kid will have to be actively puppeting thousands of people at a time, at the least. Staying sane in the face of that would be a very, very impressive achievement.

[Observer]

Well, we could repeat the same points back and forth over and over to each other, but instead, I'll take your theoretical complication as permission to introduce my own. Instead of attempting to tackle the entire world's crime rates, sifting through billions of people and needing a lot of effort to keep travel rates from coming up, what if I only focus on North America? Years spend building up a reliable intelligence network with puppetry and brainwashing that can be significantly more personal at this stage, and years more spent hunting down unproductive Staying within the US, I even get handy state borders with their own annually announced crime-rates and segmented media stories, making tracking people down even easier. If I'm going to have anybody helping me keep track of all these different people I'm helping with, they will be the kind that checks in with me regularly so I can talk with them. Or actually, just scour their minds for any corruption at all, which shouldn't be there because I don't trust people who have technical free-will. Annual crime-rates in the US have been going down every year, and are currently sitting at a little over a million annually.

 

Normally finding and fixing one million people every year would make me throw up my hands in despair. Luckily, it shouldn't take all that long to notice that any time somebody commits a crime, reported or not, they eventually wind up vanishing. The bigger the quicker. Sure, in the drug business or gangs this might be nothing more than an unexpected promotion to some people, but a job position starts to look less and less desirable when everybody who takes it on instantly vanishes, because find one guy who has knowledge in his brain and have a whole lot more. If nobody notices anything then hey, at least I made a lot of unnecessary people vanish and possibly reappear later as hardworking and honest individuals. If people do notice, I'll fix everybody who needs fixing, and when I die, the crime rates will ideally have plummetted as the criminals were replaced with better people. Sure, it's not permanent, and sure crime-rates will probably climb back up once I'm gone, but since I didn't just kill them, and instead fixed them, their legacy of goodness that would not normally exist, replacing the legacy of crime they would have left that is no longer there, will add up to a much better future.

 

Sure, if these people were dying, and suddenly stopped, things would go poorly. But this is, instead, a large number of criminals suddenly deciding they have better things to do, and a slightly smaller number of politicians suddenly becoming selfless and more willing to screw over their careers for the greater good. All the good they do isn't just going to stop being a thing once I die. Frankly I'm expecting a lot of them to outlive me and keep on being good people long after I'm gone. In the event that somebody traces this back to me, they'll need to work their way through the general obsessive checks associated with important people in dangerous territory, a roving network of  controlled lookalikes, me searching the general populace at all times with both mind's eye and the normal kind for anything suspicious, the fact that this job requires constant, endless movement, the fact that the intelligence network I would ideally have set up for something like this would almost certainly be looking out for any hits that could come anywhere near hitting me, and a dozen other factors preventing mass and singular attacks.

 

As far as insanity in the kid goes, insanity doesn't necessarily mean inoperability, and it's extraordinarily unlikely for me to fail to notice something like that coming up in them. As for going nuts myself, assuming that by some horrific flaw in the insanity plan my lack of marbles actually means anything, the plan will at the very least inform me of my growing madness, giving me a chance to hand the kid over to the most trusted and most brainwashed member of the council, set up a squad of bodyguards/assassins for the event that something goes wrong, and scale the whole thing down to a single state or less and have it fade into the background so that it's hopefully nothing more than an unusually peaceful area. But until that happens, this power will be used.

[Shaggai]

Well, we could repeat the same points back and forth over and over to each other, but instead, I'll take your theoretical complication as permission to introduce my own. Instead of attempting to tackle the entire world's crime rates, sifting through billions of people and needing a lot of effort to keep travel rates from coming up, what if I only focus on North America? Years spend building up a reliable intelligence network with puppetry and brainwashing that can be significantly more personal at this stage, and years more spent hunting down unproductive Staying within the US, I even get handy state borders with their own annually announced crime-rates and segmented media stories, making tracking people down even easier. If I'm going to have anybody helping me keep track of all these different people I'm helping with, they will be the kind that checks in with me regularly so I can talk with them. Or actually, just scour their minds for any corruption at all, which shouldn't be there because I don't trust people who have technical free-will. Annual crime-rates in the US have been going down every year, and are currently sitting at a little over a million annually.

 

Normally finding and fixing one million people every year would make me throw up my hands in despair. Luckily, it shouldn't take all that long to notice that any time somebody commits a crime, reported or not, they eventually wind up vanishing. The bigger the quicker. Sure, in the drug business or gangs this might be nothing more than an unexpected promotion to some people, but a job position starts to look less and less desirable when everybody who takes it on instantly vanishes, because find one guy who has knowledge in his brain and have a whole lot more. If nobody notices anything then hey, at least I made a lot of unnecessary people vanish and possibly reappear later as hardworking and honest individuals. If people do notice, I'll fix everybody who needs fixing, and when I die, the crime rates will ideally have plummetted as the criminals were replaced with better people. Sure, it's not permanent, and sure crime-rates will probably climb back up once I'm gone, but since I didn't just kill them, and instead fixed them, their legacy of goodness that would not normally exist, replacing the legacy of crime they would have left that is no longer there, will add up to a much better future.

 

Sure, if these people were dying, and suddenly stopped, things would go poorly. But this is, instead, a large number of criminals suddenly deciding they have better things to do, and a slightly smaller number of politicians suddenly becoming selfless and more willing to screw over their careers for the greater good. All the good they do isn't just going to stop being a thing once I die. Frankly I'm expecting a lot of them to outlive me and keep on being good people long after I'm gone. In the event that somebody traces this back to me, they'll need to work their way through the general obsessive checks associated with important people in dangerous territory, a roving network of  controlled lookalikes, me searching the general populace at all times with both mind's eye and the normal kind for anything suspicious, the fact that this job requires constant, endless movement, the fact that the intelligence network I would ideally have set up for something like this would almost certainly be looking out for any hits that could come anywhere near hitting me, and a dozen other factors preventing mass and singular attacks.

 

As far as insanity in the kid goes, insanity doesn't necessarily mean inoperability, and it's extraordinarily unlikely for me to fail to notice something like that coming up in them. As for going nuts myself, assuming that by some horrific flaw in the insanity plan my lack of marbles actually means anything, the plan will at the very least inform me of my growing madness, giving me a chance to hand the kid over to the most trusted and most brainwashed member of the council, set up a squad of bodyguards/assassins for the event that something goes wrong, and scale the whole thing down to a single state or less and have it fade into the background so that it's hopefully nothing more than an unusually peaceful area. But until that happens, this power will be used.

You will be noticed. Your brainwashing techniques, at the least, will be pretty damnation visible. Other world governments will do everything they can to overthrow you. It is in nobody's interests to see the US ruled by a totalitarian dictator who nobody knows anything about. You're not going to be able to successfully confine it to North America.

[Observer]

Well, it appears that not only has this post not been posting, but when I finally get it to post all I have in the textbox is a 'd'. Frankly I don't want to type all of that again for the third time, and this debate has kind of run out of humor value. As I've mentioned before, I don't believe a word I've been saying this entire time and have mostly just been seeing where it goes, which, as it turns out, is in circles. Though I won't argue that forcing goodness into the world could be a good thing, and I generally believe that the ends can justify the means, there comes a point where one bites off more than they can realistically chew, and when the serving sizes aren't getting any smaller regardless of what you tell the waiter. I personally still believe that a power like this has to be used and not wasted, though using it in the aforementioned ways is asking for something to go horribly wrong. It is theoretically possible to pull it off, but it would require a perfect-play run on the first try with very little room for error, something that, while possible, simply isn't plausible. Taking into account more people on earth with more powers, it simply becomes a convoluted juggling routine where the batons are flaming wolves and the ground is hot coals. 

 

So I guess what I'm saying is, I've lost interest in talking in circles, more or less agree with the arguments against me, will give kudos to Tien'sPetLurg for deciding to use the powers at the very least, and would like to hugely congratulate Shaggai for an excellently engaging discussion. It's not every day I get to exercise my inner sociopath in a debate without getting kicked, so I thank you all for indulging my mania.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Observer

[Tien'sPetLurg she/her]

1. I'd use it to help my child. Since he has a language disability and autism, I think it could help me understand what makes him feel unsteady or what he gets from repetitive behaviors etc. I think it would help us avoid misunderstandings. If he was down, I could see if he's fixating only on negative memories so I could remind him of happier times. I'd use it to bring balance.

2. Since he has developmental issues, I'd delay his ability. I'd want a chance to instill some morality. I wouldn't remove it bc I am assuming others have this ability (or could have it) in this imaginary world. In many ways his "playing field" isn't level so I wouldn't want to handicap him. In truth, our regular world allows for him to be a target for manipulation. The world you describe seems scarier if many had this kind of power.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Tien'sPetLurg

[Shaggai]

Well, it appears that not only has this post not been posting, but when I finally get it to post all I have in the textbox is a 'd'. Frankly I don't want to type all of that again for the third time, and this debate has kind of run out of humor value. As I've mentioned before, I don't believe a word I've been saying this entire time and have mostly just been seeing where it goes, which, as it turns out, is in circles. Though I won't argue that forcing goodness into the world could be a good thing, and I generally believe that the ends can justify the means, there comes a point where one bites off more than they can realistically chew, and when the serving sizes aren't getting any smaller regardless of what you tell the waiter. I personally still believe that a power like this has to be used and not wasted, though using it in the aforementioned ways is asking for something to go horribly wrong. It is theoretically possible to pull it off, but it would require a perfect-play run on the first try with very little room for error, something that, while possible, simply isn't plausible. Taking into account more people on earth with more powers, it simply becomes a convoluted juggling routine where the batons are flaming wolves and the ground is hot coals. 

 

So I guess what I'm saying is, I've lost interest in talking in circles, more or less agree with the arguments against me, will give kudos to Tien'sPetLurg for deciding to use the powers at the very least, and would like to hugely congratulate Shaggai for an excellently engaging discussion. It's not every day I get to exercise my inner sociopath in a debate without getting kicked, so I thank you all for indulging my mania.

Thank you as well. I'm generally of the "the ends justify the means" persuasion as well, so it was good for me to have reasonable grounds to argue against that sort of position. 

[Tien'sPetLurg she/her]

I'm assuming these powers aren't limited to me or just my offspring. If this was something several people in a population could do...and you happen to have the ability...I don't think a person would willingly discard an ability/advantage. In a world of people where 85% are born with 1 arm---you get 2-- do you opt to lop one off? Nope. You might fight with 1 arm tied behind your back but you could still enjoy the use of having 2 arms sometimes.

[Observer]

The implications of a world where powers are the majority, rather than the minority, can be quite serious. Steelheart demonstrates how laws would begin to completely fail ala Screw the Rules, I Have Powers, and even if the law enforcement had them, a power like control or mind-reading is still capable of rocking the system. Actually, it brings to mind Scadrial, and how society can advance with Mistings and Feruchemists running around. Sure, law enforcement can take down these threats with their own powers, but it's kind of a glass cannon thing. The criminal's first strike is likely to do so much damage that stopping them preemptively becomes the only way. I guess what I'm saying is, how would this theoretical world even function properly without the help of some kind of future-sight?

[Shaggai]

The implications of a world where powers are the majority, rather than the minority, can be quite serious. Steelheart demonstrates how laws would begin to completely fail ala Screw the Rules, I Have Powers, and even if the law enforcement had them, a power like control or mind-reading is still capable of rocking the system. Actually, it brings to mind Scadrial, and how society can advance with Mistings and Feruchemists running around. Sure, law enforcement can take down these threats with their own powers, but it's kind of a glass cannon thing. The criminal's first strike is likely to do so much damage that stopping them preemptively becomes the only way. I guess what I'm saying is, how would this theoretical world even function properly without the help of some kind of future-sight?

That amount of damage would simply become the norm. People would just get used to it. It's terrible, but it's true.