VLSI%DEC-MARLBORO@sri-unix.UUCP (04/09/84)
From: John Redford <VLSI at DEC-MARLBORO>
It sounds like "The Tomorrow People" makes the same mistake that a lot
of authors do in visualizing what a superior being would be like. They
seem to think that some form of psychic powers are the next step up.
Stapledon's Odd John had them, many of Heinlein's heros have them, and even
ET can levitate rubber balls. I actually heard some movie reviewer saying that
that scene proved that ET had an Einstein-class intellect. These people
are confused about what makes humanity different from the other animals.
Let's look at some of the common psychic abilities. Telekinesis, the
ability to move objects at a distance, would be a nice thing to have. No more
getting up from your chair to turn off the stereo. But it's actually just
an extension of your hands. Instead of having to manipulate things with
these crude fingers you would handle them directly with your mind. Why is that
likely to be a better way to do things? If you want to lift heavy objects, use
a forklift. If you want to move things at a distance, use a piece of string.
Do you think that you would be more dextrous if there weren't these clumsy
nerve cables between you and the piano? Your central nervous system is
full of unconscious processing to help you move your muscles. If you had
to consciously think of each step involved you would be unable to lift the
lid of the keyboard, much less play Bach sonatas.
In a similar way, teleportation is an extension of your feet. Instead of
walking somewhere you fly or Jaunt (to use Bester's term). Clairvoyance is
an extension of your eyes. You can see things which are otherwise hidden.
Microscopes let you do that too, though. Germanium detectors let you see in
the infrared, and photographic plates in the Xrays. This amazing power of
clairvoyance lets you do rather less than can already be done with commonly
available technology.
In any case, hands, feet and eyes are not what has brought us to where we
are. Other animals have the same or better (well, maybe not quite in the
case of hands. Man is the only animal that juggles). The main reason that
we are not just another minor primate is that we have the ability to
communicate and cooperate and the ability to learn.
There's only one psychic ability that would
affect that, and so it's the only one that I think would be worthwhile.
That's telepathy. Telepathy is an extension of the power of speech, and
speech is mainly what makes us human. Just having a voice provides an
incredible increase in communication bandwidth between individuals.
The direction-indicating dance of the honey bee contains perhaps a couple
of bits per second of information whereas the human voice contains hundreds
or perhaps thousands of bits per second (Modern voice compression techniques
can get it down to about a thousand bps with reasonable fidelity).
Extend that bandwidth again to where people can send whole images
to one another (which takes hundreds of thousands of bits per second)
instead of just words and you've got a qualitative change in the species.
There's one other aspect of telepathy that would cause
real changes in people. Direct mind to mind communication could eliminate
the ability to lie. Compare the social impact of that with the effect of
being able to remotely lift rubber balls!
John Redford
VLSI @ Market
--------LS.SRB%EE@sri-unix.UUCP (04/12/84)
From: "Stephen R. Balzac" <LS.SRB@EE> I agree that psionics are not necessarily parlor tricks. Sure they could be, but on the other hand, in a psionic society a number of things that exist here to serve essentially the same purpose may never get developed. I disagree strongly that psionics makes you a "good" person. If a person is already "good" then he will probably remain so (although what did they say about absolute power?), but suppose your telepath happens to be a sadist? It seems to me that telepathic power will enhance that aspect of him, since he can now experience other's pain directly...