Psychic Abilities For Humans?

[Timo]

Maybe, but the question is, how does a human being do that kind of "reading?" The human sensorium is not equipped to detect electrical impulses in anything. If some kind of mutant did somehow have a new electrical sense, why would it only work on other people's brains instead of, say, electric wiring in a building? How could they sense something as subtle and low-energy as the electrical activity in another person's brain without the signals being swamped by all the environmental EM fields around them?

The very same thing could be said of eyesight. We are constantly swamped by extremely intense noise visually, yet not overwhelmed by it, because our brain (boosted by some prefiltering in the sensing organs themselves) easily copes with such problems in general. A telepath would learn from birth to cope with noise the very same way, probably even using the same regions of the brain to do it (no wonder Miranda Jones couldn't read cards the usual way!).

In practice, reading the activity of another person's brain requires surrounding the head with a sensor array that's stationary relative to the brain, so that it isn't confused by movement.

Only in practice, not in theory. The signals to be detected are of relatively high frequency and could easily be read in milliseconds: manmade sensors simply are way too primitive to cope, just like early cameras only worked on immobile targets of photography.

If nothing else, it would require an enormous antenna to take readings of such precision from that kind of distance

Depends on the distance. Spock gets up close and personal with his fingers (supposedly the sensors are there), and there's more surface area in his fingers than there is in the typical antenna elements of a MEG system.

(Not unless, maybe, you had a number of different telepaths spread out at some distance around the subject with their brains linked in an interferometric array.)

Might help explain Spock's "destruction of Alderaan" sensations in "Immunity Syndrome": not only is networking needed for the sensing, but also makes the sensing inevitable for all the networked elements! And of course Vulcans may have evolved into being more powerful transmitters than the average humanoid, in addition to having the reception sense.

Then again, the standard human body cannot detect the electromagnetic signals involved in EEG or MEG based telepathy. If we accept a mutation allowing for "supernatural" reception, we can just as well postulate it is for subspace rather than EM radiation, as both are equally real phenomena in the Trek universe (insert other jargon for other universes).

...Why do they still have a spoken language for one?

Makes sense: language is a matter of pure learning, and a telepath would be a natural learner, able to skip the preparatory process and go straight to the part where the skill exists. If there's a need to speak, the Betazoid telepath can "cheat" his or her way into it in realtime, regardless of the language being used.

Mind you, we never heard of a Betazoid language existing. Lwaxana speaks English to our heroes. Or perhaps French to Picard - hard to tell, what with the Universal Translators installed in the cameras recording the adventures!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

In my opinion Betazods are an idea with worse execution than, say Vulcans and Medusans, because, as I said before their species-wide, constant, extremely powerful telepathy seems to leave no mark on their physiology, psychology or society. Why do they still have a spoken language for one?

Because it isn't constant. Telepaths as powerful as Lwaxana and Tam Elbrun seem to be anomalies. Other Betazoids we've seen appear to have more moderate abilities -- some hardly more powerful than the half-human Deanna. So it seems likely that quite a few Betazoids would still need verbal communication at least to supplement their telepathy.

Besides, despite how it's dramatized in stories, I doubt very much that telepathic communication is just verbal communication without the mouth moving. If they're generated in different ways and arose from different evolutionary origins, then they probably convey information in significantly different ways, like taste vs. smell. The voiceovers we hear are just an analogy for their communication, translated into terms a human audience can understand. So if they don't serve exactly interchangeable functions, then one wouldn't necessarily take the place of the other.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

And Betazed is, by all accounts, a popular planet for offworlders to visit, so Betazoids would need a way to speak to them. Visitors to Betazed might not be comfortable with telepathy - they might see it as an invasion of privacy. And I can definitely see their point.

 

[Silvercrest]

But I can't recall ever coming across an actual professional work of fiction that provided much of an explanation for what psionics was and how it worked.

Jack Vance's "Nopalgarth", aka "The Brains of Earth", gives it a reasonable shot.

 

[Orphalesion]

Mind you, we never heard of a Betazoid language existing. Lwaxana speaks English to our heroes. Or perhaps French to Picard - hard to tell, what with the Universal Translators installed in the cameras recording the adventures!

Timo Saloniemi

Yes we do . In the episode with the Sheliak Deanna teaches Picard the Betazed word for tea (or was it liquid?) as a point to prove how difficult inter-species communication would be without the UT.

]

Because it isn't constant. Telepaths as powerful as Lwaxana and Tam Elbrun seem to be anomalies. Other Betazoids we've seen appear to have more moderate abilities -- some hardly more powerful than the half-human Deanna. So it seems likely that quite a few Betazoids would still need verbal communication at least to supplement their telepathy.

Besides, despite how it's dramatized in stories, I doubt very much that telepathic communication is just verbal communication without the mouth moving. If they're generated in different ways and arose from different evolutionary origins, then they probably convey information in significantly different ways, like taste vs. smell. The voiceovers we hear are just an analogy for their communication, translated into terms a human audience can understand. So if they don't serve exactly interchangeable functions, then one wouldn't necessarily take the place of the other.

Tam Elbrun was treated as exceptional. But of the few Betazoids we've met I don't think anybody(except Lon Suder, another anomaly) was portrayed or stated as having "less powerful" telepathy than Mdm. Troi. I always understood Lwaxana was more skilled in probing the minds of off-worlders. Tlp. communication among Betazoids seems to be easier (since even Deanna can do it).

I am aware that telepathic communication would not just be words without the lips moving. Yet it would be a form of communication and, as you said, would mean Betazoids would have evolved along very different lines. So it was not necessary, from a world building standpoint to give them verbal speech as well (imho) We even meet a telepathic species in Dark Page that has no verbal language and needs to be taught to develop one by Lwaxana and Troi.
The only reason Betazoids still have a verbal language is because they develop telepathy during puberty, but detail could have been dropped.

I understand it was a necessity for the TV show to have Deanna and Lwaxana actually talk to help helpt he acting and because it would have been needlessly complicated (and probably expensive) to have Sirtis record all her lines as voice overs and likely quite annoying after a while.
Still there could have been other ways to portray Deanna and the other Betazoids as having an alien mindset. Ways that might have benefited the character.

 

[Marsden]

I think the obvious answer - which isn't very satisfying as an in-story explanation for why it was there to begin with but went away - is that things like that make the human characters less relatable for the audience. Especially with the majority of sci-fi fans, whom (I like to think, anyway) don't believe in such hokum as psychics.

If we include things like "saving" a person's mind like it was a program and loading into one, (even taking over an android in TNG) then it doesn't seem like too much of a strech.


But psychic is not specific enough, is it telepathy, telekenesis, precognition, clairvoyance, clairaudience, or all together?

Some of those are certainly harder to believe than others, but when a "sapient personality" can be created by a computer or a persons mind can be saved to storage (on tape, of course), the brain is just another computer and telepathy is just wi-fi, which would also be magical in the 60s.

 

[Starborn Dragon]

Sorry, but, I'm going to have to disagree here.

Telepathy is very much thought transmission and reception without the interaction of other body functions. It is often portrayed like this in the comics, and even a couple of times in Star Trek.

For example, communicating with a space born being like that giant amoeba, and Spock's telepathic communication with V'Ger, sensing his puzzlement over why there has been no attempts at communication.

How can there be lips moving when receiving thoughts from a being like the Horta that does not have an organ like lips?

 

[Christopher]

Tam Elbrun was treated as exceptional. But of the few Betazoids we've met I don't think anybody(except Lon Suder, another anomaly) was portrayed or stated as having "less powerful" telepathy than Mdm. Troi. I always understood Lwaxana was more skilled in probing the minds of off-worlders. Tlp. communication among Betazoids seems to be easier (since even Deanna can do it).

But sending and receiving intentional communication is different from reading people's secret inner thoughts, like Lwaxana did so effortlessly (and invasively) with the Antedeans in "Manhunt." Compare that to Sabin Genestra from "The Drumhead," who was able to do no better than "I believe he's telling the truth... I get no sense that he's lying." Sabin was, as far as we know, a full Betazoid, but he was no better at reading thoughts than Deanna, more an empath than a full mind-reader. He could tell that Simon Tarses was hiding a terrible secret, but couldn't tell that it was about his Romulan ancestry rather than anything to do with the explosion. And Norah Satie calls Sabin's instincts "uncanny," which would be unlikely if a typical Betazoid were able to pluck the detailed truth out of someone's head as effortlessly as Lwaxana did.

Also, Suder in "Meld" said "Most Betazoids can sense other people's emotions." Not "read other people's thoughts." True, he was speaking only about emotion at that point, so it's not conclusive, but in combination with the Genestra example, it suggests that the average Betazoid's abilities may be closer to Deanna's level than Lwaxana's. No other Betazoid we've seen has been able to rummage through other people's deepest thoughts as easily as Lwaxana -- even if she isn't always honest with herself about what she finds there.

I am aware that telepathic communication would not just be words without the lips moving. Yet it would be a form of communication and, as you said, would mean Betazoids would have evolved along very different lines. So it was not necessary, from a world building standpoint to give them verbal speech as well (imho)

Missing my point. What I'm saying is that since verbal and telepathic communication are different, there could be a legitimate evolutionary need for them both to exist -- the same way that we have both taste and smell, and both a sense of hunger and a sense of thirst, and both a sense of heat and a sense of pain. They're related, but distinct, so they coexist. It would be a fallacy to say that one's existence would leave the other without a purpose. They may serve complementary purposes.

We even meet a telepathic species in Dark Page that has no verbal language and needs to be taught to develop one by Lwaxana and Troi.

Except they clearly have nearly all the basic anatomy they need for speech, and simply need a "vocal enhancer" to "make sounds," like the tone generators used by people who've had laryngectomies. So the atrophy of their vocal cords is probably a recent evolutionary change. And Lwaxana overtly stated that Cairn telepathy is more intense than the Betazoid version, a whole flood of images at once. Since their modes of telepathic communication are different, it isn't logical to expect them to have the exact same effect on their ability to speak.

Given the evidence of such a wide range of different Betazoid sensitivities, from Lwaxana's "I can instantly tell you're planning a terrorist act" to Suder's "I can't even sense my own emotions," I have no problem with the idea that many Betazoids do need the power of verbal speech, at least in certain contexts. As you say, it is necessary for their children, which is surely all the explanation we need.

 

[Orphalesion]

But sending and receiving intentional communication is different from reading people's secret inner thoughts, like Lwaxana did so effortlessly (and invasively) with the Antedeans in "Manhunt." Compare that to Sabin Genestra from "The Drumhead," who was able to do no better than "I believe he's telling the truth... I get no sense that he's lying." Sabin was, as far as we know, a full Betazoid, but he was no better at reading thoughts than Deanna, more an empath than a full mind-reader. He could tell that Simon Tarses was hiding a terrible secret, but couldn't tell that it was about his Romulan ancestry rather than anything to do with the explosion. And Norah Satie calls Sabin's instincts "uncanny," which would be unlikely if a typical Betazoid were able to pluck the detailed truth out of someone's head as effortlessly as Lwaxana did.

Also, Suder in "Meld" said "Most Betazoids can sense other people's emotions."

I see, thanks for compiling those examples. I honestly did not know about the Lon Suder one (there are quite a few parts of Voyager I have not watched or not watched since I was a young child)
So I stand corrected, it does seem that true telepathy (however it works) is the exception among the Betazoids.

It's really a pity that we learned so little about that species...

Missing my point. What I'm saying is that since verbal and telepathic communication are different, there could be a legitimate evolutionary need for them both to exist -- the same way that we have both taste and smell, and both a sense of hunger and a sense of thirst, and both a sense of heat and a sense of pain. They're related, but distinct, so they coexist. It would be a fallacy to say that one's existence would leave the other without a purpose. They may serve complementary purposes.

Oh sorry, here I wasn't clear. I'm one of those people who endlessly thinks about how one could make the different extraterrestrials in Star Trek more unique and well "alien" Of course there can be an evlolutionary need for both (like your example of taste and smell) What I meant was that mute, purely telepathic Betazoids might have been more exotic and alien.

 

[Christopher]

So I stand corrected, it does seem that true telepathy (however it works) is the exception among the Betazoids.

No, that's not what I'm saying -- just that there's a range of sensitivities to it. Your typical Betazoid may be able to read the minds of those willing to be read or to communicate telepathically, but as with any trait in a population, there's going to be a bell curve around the typical, with some having really powerful telepathy, like Lwaxana or Tam Elbrun, and others having much weaker telepathy, like Deanna or Lon Suder. (Or Rennan Konya, the Betazoid security guard I created for the novels. His ability to read thoughts and emotions is weak, so he's trained what telepathy he has to read the motor cortex instead and thereby sense people's physical reactions and moves as soon as they begin to make them.)

The thing is, society conditions us to reduce people's traits to "normal" and "exceptional," but that's a lie. Any attribute has a bell curve, and what's "typical" is just the middle of it. Most people are going to be off to one side or the other. We put too much stock in averages because they let us be lazy -- it's easier to pretend that almost everyone fits into the same box than it is to recognize each person's uniqueness. But defining an average is only meaningful if you also define the bell curve around it, the extent to which the population diverges from it in both directions.

 

[USS Triumphant]

the brain is just another computer and telepathy is just wi-fi, which would also be magical in the 60s.

Telepathy is very much thought transmission and reception without the interaction of other body functions. <snip> How can there be lips moving when receiving thoughts from a being like the Horta that does not have an organ like lips?

^ This. Very much this. Telepathy is "just wifi", but you're forgetting that not every computer has that - it has to have a wireless network adapter, either built-in or external. Where is the "wireless network adapter" for our telepathy? Science can't tell us, despite people looking for a long time, and I think that's probably because there ain't such.

Edit: Bear in mind, I'm talking about in the real world. In Trek, there's obviously an extra mechanism at work that doesn't exist here.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

telepathy is just wi-fi

For that analogy to apply fully, you'd have to posit not only a telepathic antenna, but also a specific telepathic transmitter. In other words, a telepath could read the thoughts of only those people who were specifically telepathically sending them.

Computers put out lots of electromagnetic radiation, but wireless interfaces (in their normal mode of operation) receive only wireless broadcasts into the network protocol stack. Electromagnetic energy emitted by unshielded computers that is not specifically intended to carry signals to be read by other agents can be intercepted and processed for interesting hacks (such as reading the keystrokes that someone types!), but such reception does not constitute something that is "just wi-fi," by any stretch of imagination.

 

[Pauln6]

telepathy is just wi-fi

For that analogy to apply fully, you'd have to posit not only a telepathic antenna, but also a specific telepathic transmitter. In other words, a telepath could read the thoughts of only those people who were specifically telepathically sending them.

Computers put out lots of electromagnetic radiation, but wireless interfaces (in their normal mode of operation) receive only wireless broadcasts into the network protocol stack. Electromagnetic energy emitted by unshielded computers that is not specifically intended to carry signals to be read by other agents can be intercepted and processed for interesting hacks (such as reading the keystrokes that someone types!), but such reception does not constitute something that is "just wi-fi," by any stretch of imagination.

Blakes 7 Cally could send messages to anyone but could only read the thoughts of her own species. Not really sure how that worked. Since sound waves travel through the air anyone can hear them. Maye psychic sound waves simply operate on a different plane, encrypted to match the brain waves of someone you know and causing their earbones to vibrate as if receiving conventional sound waves. It would suggest you need line of effect but if travelling on a different plane solid objects on our plane would not impede the signal.

 

[Nebusj]

Tam Elbrun was treated as exceptional. But of the few Betazoids we've met I don't think anybody(except Lon Suder, another anomaly) was portrayed or stated as having "less powerful" telepathy than Mdm. Troi.

Incidentally, in the novel the episode was based on, Tam Elbrun was a human, part of the esper class of humans. (I just read the novel this past week.) Most intriguing to me about the novel is that it mentions starships having assigned to them esper-powered ship's counsellors, and this in a novel from the 1970s. The prescience to Next Generation is remarkable.

(There's some rather important differences in the novel's role for ship's counsellors, I should say, including a major one I quite dislike.)

 

[Starborn Dragon]

the brain is just another computer and telepathy is just wi-fi, which would also be magical in the 60s.

Telepathy is very much thought transmission and reception without the interaction of other body functions. <snip> How can there be lips moving when receiving thoughts from a being like the Horta that does not have an organ like lips?

^ This. Very much this. Telepathy is "just wifi", but you're forgetting that not every computer has that - it has to have a wireless network adapter, either built-in or external. Where is the "wireless network adapter" for our telepathy? Science can't tell us, despite people looking for a long time, and I think that's probably because there ain't such.

Edit: Bear in mind, I'm talking about in the real world. In Trek, there's obviously an extra mechanism at work that doesn't exist here.

Actually there is real world technology that can answer your question, even if I don't know how to explain it.

You do know about the technology for quadriplegic patients to allow them to communicate with computers, don't you?

 

[Christopher]

Incidentally, in the novel the episode was based on, Tam Elbrun was a human, part of the esper class of humans. (I just read the novel this past week.)

And wasn't named Tam Elbrun. The social-misfit telepath character in the book was named Div Harlthor. The Deanna equivalent was named Mora Elbrun, and there was a character in the starship crew named Tamner. (Sample chapters are available here, if others are interested.) I guess someone decided that "Div Harlthor" was too hard to pronounce or didn't sound good out loud.

Most intriguing to me about the novel is that it mentions starships having assigned to them esper-powered ship's counsellors, and this in a novel from the 1970s. The prescience to Next Generation is remarkable.

Well, there's a lot of science fiction featuring "espers" or telepaths in various roles. I'm fairly sure there have been others in which military units or spaceship crews have included telepath specialists. For instance, Larry Niven's "The Soft Weapon," like its TAS adaptation "The Slaver Weapon," has a telepath among the Kzinti crew.

So it's not that any one book was prescient about Star Trek -- it's that Star Trek was drawing on ideas and themes that had already been established in earlier science fiction, TNG no less than TOS before it.

 

[Marsden]

the brain is just another computer and telepathy is just wi-fi, which would also be magical in the 60s.

Telepathy is very much thought transmission and reception without the interaction of other body functions. <snip> How can there be lips moving when receiving thoughts from a being like the Horta that does not have an organ like lips?

^ This. Very much this. Telepathy is "just wifi", but you're forgetting that not every computer has that - it has to have a wireless network adapter, either built-in or external. Where is the "wireless network adapter" for our telepathy? Science can't tell us, despite people looking for a long time, and I think that's probably because there ain't such.

Edit: Bear in mind, I'm talking about in the real world. In Trek, there's obviously an extra mechanism at work that doesn't exist here.

Well, remember the context of my statement, please. I'm basing this on at least two in universe examples, admittedly on in TNG, The Schizoid Man and I, Mudd. There are others, too, specifically What are Little Girls Made of?
and even The Turnabout Intruder.

In this context the brain is just another computer and a personality is just a "program" That's the context of my statment. I don't entirely agree with the wifi statement myself, actually, I just put that out for discussion. No wonder they think Data and that stupid EMH are alive, they have everyone reduced to being a program on some level.

CC,
Another part of my point was that wifi didn't exist in any form in the 60s and it would have been magical in appearance at that time even though it's just another mundane thing now.

 

[Christopher]

Another part of my point was that wifi didn't exist in any form in the 60s and it would have been magical in appearance at that time even though it's just another mundane thing now.

Err, not really. "Wifi" is just a shorthand term for wireless networking, i.e. radio communication between two or more devices. They did have radio well before the '60s, so the idea of machines communicating by radio would not have seemed remotely "magical" to anyone in the civilized world. In fact, the first wireless computer network, ALOHAnet in Hawaii, began development in 1968 and went into operation in 1971.

In fact, TOS did show instances of computers interfacing through remote signals. In "The Menagerie," Spock uploads the course to Talos IV directly into the ship's computer from the starbase computer, so that no one in the crew would know the destination. In "The City on the Edge of Forever," Spock expresses a desire to tie his tricorder into the ship's computer -- which could be taken as a desire to establish a physical link, but in context the implication is that he's talking about a wireless interface from a distance. And "The Changeling" shows Nomad remotely downloading medical data from the library computer prior to "repairing" Scott. Spock asks Nomad not to draw data faster than the computer's capacity, making it clear there's a direct interface engaged. So the concept of computers connecting wirelessly definitely did exist at the time. (Although that's in spite of "Miri," where data from one computer had to be relayed by voice and manually entered into another.)

 

[Marsden]

Another part of my point was that wifi didn't exist in any form in the 60s and it would have been magical in appearance at that time even though it's just another mundane thing now.

Err, not really. "Wifi" is just a shorthand term for wireless networking, i.e. radio communication between two or more devices. They did have radio well before the '60s, so the idea of machines communicating by radio would not have seemed remotely "magical" to anyone in the civilized world. In fact, the first wireless computer network, ALOHAnet in Hawaii, began development in 1968 and went into operation in 1971.

In fact, TOS did show instances of computers interfacing through remote signals. In "The Menagerie," Spock uploads the course to Talos IV directly into the ship's computer from the starbase computer, so that no one in the crew would know the destination. In "The City on the Edge of Forever," Spock expresses a desire to tie his tricorder into the ship's computer -- which could be taken as a desire to establish a physical link, but in context the implication is that he's talking about a wireless interface from a distance. And "The Changeling" shows Nomad remotely downloading medical data from the library computer prior to "repairing" Scott. Spock asks Nomad not to draw data faster than the computer's capacity, making it clear there's a direct interface engaged. So the concept of computers connecting wirelessly definitely did exist at the time. (Although that's in spite of "Miri," where data from one computer had to be relayed by voice and manually entered into another.)

Yes, because people at home watching a show on their 11" b/w tv wouldn't think computers themselves are magical, right?

 

[Christopher]

Computers, maybe. Radio? Of course not. That's the simple part. I think my smartphone is amazing, but what's amazing is the processing power and software that lets it do so much. The way it communicates with other devices, though, is just two-way radio. In that sense, it's no more than a fancy walkie-talkie. That particular aspect of the device would've been perfectly understandable to 1940s audiences, let alone 1960s.