What does a world with supers look like?

[violence in the media]

What about telepaths? Given that there is current research into brain imaging to determine what people are thinking, what level of accuracy would telepaths have to exhibit in order for them to be recruited by police and government forces?

Slightly more accuracy than they'd have to demonstrate in order for police and government forces to just shoot them in the face. Seriously. If a government learned for a fact that someone existed who could pluck any secret out of anybody's head merely by getting within a mile of them, that person would have the life expectancy of a glass tennis racquet.

Really? You don't think the temptation to use that to your advantage would make someone invested in the idea of protecting this person? Besides, this person has super powers, what makes you think shooting them in the face is even possible? This isn't even an interesting discussion until you throw out the idea that killing any given telepath is useful or accomplishable.

We're talking about why Superman is bad at fighting white collar crime, and it's largely because his powers don't let him do such a thing without holding the world hostage. Good thing that there are other superheroes, with different powers, that we can look at.

[Amra]

The problem is that the telepath may well have a) deathbed insurance on those secrets, and/or b) sufficient telepathy to foil his shooter.

As with most supers, antagonizing them is much riskier than just recruiting them.

That just doesn't hold up.

a) No. Any "deathbed insurance" they had, they'd have to let people know what they had in order for it to be effective. Once you know what secrets someone has, you can take deniability countermeasures. And then shoot them in the face. Deathbed insurance doesn't work; ask Alenxander Litvinenko. Or rather, his widow.

There's nothing, nothing, any telepath could have gleaned that is as terrifying to an intelligence agency as what they might glean in the future.

b) Whut? You don't think the people with the secrets are going to do their own shooting, do you? And even telepaths have to sleep. If they can do more than just read minds - like completely taking over somebody's brains - then we're back into force majeur territory.

You'd never be able to trust a telepath. Recruiting them is infinitely harder than just making the problem go away.

Like I said, if telepathy was an emergent phenomenon across the globe and we needed our own telepaths to counter the other guy's telepaths, then we'd recruit telepaths. But just one telepath? From the minute that their existence becomes widely known, they're a dead man walking.

[Username17]

Yeah, Wanted is basically DC, but in my opinion with all the heroes gone the villains appear to be on the level of Marvel's heroes. The most powerful characters are probably only as powerful or useful as Iron Man, Thor or maybe Nova.

Maybe its just because the characters seen mostly are Deathstroke, Catwoman and Toyman and the BBEG is... ummm... can't remember the name and Google seems to have died, but its a Batman villain who Catwoman kills, but you mostly see it on a Batman level of power. Which ignoring JLA team ups and fan-wankery is basically Marvel level power.

Both Marvel and DC operate what are essentially different worlds at wildly different power levels that don't really make any sense when mixed. For DC it's essentially the world in which New York is "Gotham" and the world in which New York is "Metropolis." For Marvel it's the Avengers continuity and the X-Continuity. The events in a book written for one continuity pretty much assume that the stuff in the other continuity is not happening. And yeah, there are crossovers. There are crossovers because they sell comics. But those should be treated with the same level of circumspection we would apply to "What Ifs?"

Wanted focuses on Catwoman and Deathstroke. The main villains are pretty much Clayface and Joker. That pretty much puts it in Gotham-verse territory, even though Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bizarro appear.

---

In the X-Continuity pretty much everyone gets "one power" and that power usually makes you a threat on a military battlefield if it is a good power. Cyclops, for example, is armed with an antitank weapon with limitless ammo. That's good, but he's still just a guy. With the exception of frankly dubious Phoenix Saga Reboots, everyone has to worry about normal police ganging up on them and taking them down.

In the Avengers universe, Thor and Hulk pretty much endorse the existing governments by allowing them to persist. In much the same way that Superman and Green Lantern's tacit approval is required for mundane Earthly bureaucracy to continue in the Metropolis dominated sphere.

-Username17

[Amra]

Really? You don't think the temptation to use that to your advantage would make someone invested in the idea of protecting this person? Besides, this person has super powers, what makes you think shooting them in the face is even possible? This isn't even an interesting discussion until you throw out the idea that killing any given telepath is useful or accomplishable.

We're talking about why Superman is bad at fighting white collar crime, and it's largely because his powers don't let him do such a thing without holding the world hostage. Good thing that there are other superheroes, with different powers, that we can look at.

You've just contradicted yourself. On the one hand, we're talking about a person with the power "telepathy", which is a different discussion from Superman because the telepath doesn't have world-controlling super-powers. On the other hand, we're now talking about a telepath that it isn't "accomplishable" to shoot in the face, so we're... talking about a Superman scenario.

I'm certainly not suggesting that nobody would see more advantage in keeping the telepath alive and using them for their own ends. The thing is, you only have to kill someone once. If you can't kill or even control them, they're a force majeur and a law unto themselves.

So let's set out our stall here. What powers and immunities does our putative telepathic superhero have, other than "reading people's minds"? For this to have legs, we've got to come up with a suite of powers that mean the telepath can't be killed by any of the hundreds of organisations that would want him dead, but is sufficiently vulnerable to "persuasion" of one sort or another that an intelligence agency will be certain enough of their cooperation to make use of their powers.

I'm not saying we can't posit a superhero that fits the bill, just that nobody has yet.

[angelfromanotherpin]

a) No. Any "deathbed insurance" they had, they'd have to let people know what they had in order for it to be effective. Once you know what secrets someone has, you can take deniability countermeasures. And then shoot them in the face. Deathbed insurance doesn't work; ask Alenxander Litvinenko. Or rather, his widow.

Dude, he's a telepath. He doesn't have to write shit down. He may very well be able to send all of the info he's gleaned to anyone - possibly everyone - within his range before he dies.

There's nothing, nothing, any telepath could have gleaned that is as terrifying to an intelligence agency as what they might glean in the future.

An intelligence agency is made up of people. If the possible downside to the telepath's continued existence is the embarrassment of the agency, but the consequences of antagonizing the telepath is the ruination of the lives of the people responsible, then those people will not make the decision that leads to personal ruination.

b) Whut? You don't think the people with the secrets are going to do their own shooting, do you? And even telepaths have to sleep. If they can do more than just read minds - like completely taking over somebody's brains - then we're back into force majeur territory.

I don't care who's doing the shooting. Button men have secrets too, secrets that stand between them and death row. Who's going to take that job?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Of course, there's also no guarantee that having a policy of shooting telepaths in the face won't cause some other kind of problem. What do you do when Ms. Mindscanner is married to Superman or has regular tea chats with Magneto or is next in line to the Amazon throne? Hell, sending hit squads against innocent people you don't like is going to draw the attention of Spider-Man, let alone an entire community.

[Kaelik]

Having a policy of shooting telepaths in the face is going to result in having telepaths mind control the President.

Amra, you are frankly being untenable here. Lots of governments try really hard to have shit no one else does.

Nazi Germany did experiments to try to give people telepathy. Clearly people think they can guarantee cooperation.

Fuck, your contention is that is some telepath uses his mind controlly awesome to arrange to meet with the CIA director, and then when he meets, says, "I'm a telepath, I can read minds, I want to work for the US government, you are thinking about that assassination attempt that failed on the French Prime Minister." That the CIA director is going to whip out a gun and shoot the guy.

That is fucking retarded, and even if the Director was that colossally retarded, he'd just get mind controlled to put the gun down.

[hogarth]

In the Avengers universe, Thor and Hulk pretty much endorse the existing governments by allowing them to persist.

Thor, maybe, but the Hulk? If you read old Hulk comics (or the Thing or any other strong-but-invulnerable hero), a "simple" knock-out gas bomb is usually enough to stop him (when required for plot reasons).

[Parthenon]

Are we talking about telepaths who can just read minds or are we talking about those who can read minds, control others and change their memories? In terms of the latter, as long as their spree of mayhem doesn't go too far they can probably do whatever they want. Working out what they can do is as difficult as... a very difficult thing. However, the first is a more interesting case.

What useful information can telepaths really get? How likely are they to come across something that is at all useful? And then, most importantly, what on earth are they going to do about it?

Going to the press or the police is useless because they need something called evidence. Getting people willing to do things for you is difficult and time-consuming. You'd need to convince people you can read minds before they believe you, and then make sure they don't tell anyone else.

Basically, as long as all they can do is read minds and not change them, then I can't see one telepath being all that useful.

Most of the time, the best they could do without letting everyone know is to be able to control the course of conversation and change their body language and reactions to be able to affect how other people react to them. Sort of like a much more effective Derren Brown. Terrifying, but too small a level to really change the world, especially once people work out whats going on.

Maybe they could, with huge difficulty and likelihood of exposure, work out what experts in the stock exchange think is likely to happen and make money, but without some evidence of where their thoughts are coming from then they are likely to be investigated with risk of mind-reading coming out.

[Grek]

What you do is go to Vegas, use your telepathy to win at cards over the course of a few months, invest the money(using your telepathy to insure you're getting a good deal) and the just pay people to shoot the bad guys.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Are we talking about telepaths who can just read minds or are we talking about those who can read minds, control others and change their memories? In terms of the latter, as long as their spree of mayhem doesn't go too far they can probably do whatever they want. Working out what they can do is as difficult as... a very difficult thing. However, the first is a more interesting case.

Parthenon's question raises another problem with the kick murder option. You may know a person can read your mind, but you don't know what the rules are. Can they control your mind? What is the range? You don't know.

In the shadow of that uncertainty, who takes the chance of pissing this guy off?

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know what, though? They don't even have to be telepaths for this to work. Because, you know, there's a really famous superhuman whose most famous power is breaking mind control and forcing people to tell the truth.

[ibanez]

Thor, maybe, but the Hulk? If you read old Hulk comics (or the Thing or any other strong-but-invulnerable hero), a "simple" knock-out gas bomb is usually enough to stop him (when required for plot reasons).

Actually, the Hulk can fucking hulk out. During the World War Hulk crossover he pretty much destroyed everyone, including The Sentry who is pretty much plot device power. He took up base in NYC, defeated the entire US army gave everyone an ultimatum. So if the Hulk doesn't like your government he can seriously shut your shit down.

Most people believe the Hulk is just a strong man like the Thing or Juggernaut but pretty much the more pissed off he gets the more powerful he gets with no upper limit. At one point he nearly cracked the earth.

[Crissa]

You go to Vegas, win a teeny bit, then get blacklisted from all the clubs.

There's more out there than there used to be, but if you win, they love you for awhile... But they love you best when you lose.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

You go to Vegas, win a teeny bit, then get blacklisted from all the clubs.

There's more out there than there used to be, but if you win, they love you for awhile... But they love you best when you lose.

-Crissa

I'm pretty sure the point is you enter a bunch of Poker tournaments.

It's not like reading the balck jack dealer is all that helpful. You already know what numbers he hits and stays at, and he doesn't know the next card in the deck any better than you, and probably worse.

And no one can blacklist you for winning poker tournaments. You could look last years whatever champion in the eye and tell him exactly what cards he has, if you didn't cheat to get that knowledge and just claim to be able to read him, no one can do anything.

EDIT: Course, all you have to do as a mindreader to get a million bucks is go see James Randi.

[Amra]

Are we talking about telepaths who can just read minds or are we talking about those who can read minds, control others and change their memories?

I'd been working on the assumption that we were talking about the former in the absence of any indication to the contrary.

In terms of the latter, as long as their spree of mayhem doesn't go too far they can probably do whatever they want. Working out what they can do is as difficult as... a very difficult thing.

Absolutely. I've already set out my stall that someone with really serious mind-control/reality-bending/action-at-a-distance powers falls into the same category as Superman. If they're super-smart on top of their brain-bending mojo, there's no reason at all why they couldn't end up ruling the whole goddam world, depending on how many people they can affect at once.

What useful information can telepaths really get?

Again, it depends. You can't talk about what your telepath can do until you've talked about what your telepath can do. Let's put some actual parameters around this for the sake of all talking about the same goddam thing and assume that our telepath exists in the following scenario:

• * There is only one telepath, as far as anyone knows
  * The telepath is very smart, as in "real-world genius" levels of intelligence rather than "can-do-Reed-Richards-comic-book-science"
  * The telepath can pull any information out of anybody's head and do it quickly, performing a "brain dump" download that takes minutes rather than hours or days
  * The telepath can function normally, even hold conversations, whilst doing his thing: he has the firmware update that allows background download of content...
  * The subject is unaware of the intrusion
  * The telepath's range is finite, but long; say, a few miles
  * The telepath does not need to have had any direct contact with the subject of their brain-reaming at any point
  * The telepath can scan the surface thoughts of everyone in their radius to search for someone thinking about a particular thing of relevance
  * There is no known way of blocking the telepath's power
  * There are no other superheroes

Now let's talk about limitations:

• * The ability to read minds is their only power
  * They can only learn which subjects they need to examine for particular information either by being told or because the subject is actively thinking about that topic
  * They don't gain any special insight into the information the subject has: the veracity of the information gained extends only to what the subject believes to be true

So, the amount of useful information this telepath can get is "lots". What they can do about it may well be an amount approaching zero.

How likely are they to come across something that is at all useful? And then, most importantly, what on earth are they going to do about it?

Everything or nothing, depending on what that information is. If the telepath had overheard a Mob boss's plans to bomb a DA's car, an anonymous tipoff might be enough to prevent it. If he wants to get that Mob boss put in jail, he's going to have to learn an awful lot more stuff and compile a dossier for the authorities to act upon.

Going to the press or the police is useless because they need something called evidence.

Thank you, yes.

Getting people willing to do things for you is difficult and time-consuming. You'd need to convince people you can read minds before they believe you, and then make sure they don't tell anyone else.

Basically, as long as all they can do is read minds and not change them, then I can't see one telepath being all that useful.

For my money, the absolute level best thing a telepath as described above could do is to stay anonymous and work outside any systems. A smart telepath is going to realise that if news of their abilities gets out, they're going to be toast. Even if they manage to get on-side in a government agency, any life they had planned as a normal, free citizen is over.

Maybe they could, with huge difficulty and likelihood of exposure, work out what experts in the stock exchange think is likely to happen and make money, but without some evidence of where their thoughts are coming from then they are likely to be investigated with risk of mind-reading coming out.

Nonono... there's no need! Likewise, all the cheating-at-cards bullshit is bullshit. Why bother risking you'll be found out in a casino? Think about it: is this person ever going to fail an exam? Or a job interview? Or at any kind of negotiation where knowing exactly what the other guys know gives you a huge advantage?

The anonymous telepath could be the highest-paid shrink in the world, a fantastic trial lawyer or a really bigtime company director in their day job. So long as they're clever, and careful, and don't pull any aggro down on themselves serious enough to warrant someone sending them a polonium greetings card in the mail, they could have a supremely successful and rewarding career to fund anonymous crime-fighting do-gooder activities. All without anyone ever discovering how and where they get their information. To me, the Millionnaire Playboy With Secret Identity thing works really well with a telepath in the eponymous role, except that he never ever needs to put his underpants on over his tights in order to do his thing.

He'd have to be an expert at covering his tracks, but becoming an expert in something when you're a genius IQ telepath is not hard. That's a concept I could see working rather well.

EDIT: Lago, I think we just got you a super who'd do white-collar crime-solving rather well

[Parthenon]

Going to Randi brings up a previous point: would a mind reader want to go public? You'd be slightly harder to be stolen by information agencies, and you could willingly tell people secrets and you'd b believed slightly more. Thats not really all that useful.

And another thing, if they do go public, would anyone believe it?

[Kaelik]

Going to Randi brings up a previous point: would a mind reader want to go public? You'd be slightly harder to be stolen by information agencies, and you could willingly tell people secrets and you'd b believed slightly more. Thats not really all that useful.

And another thing, if they do go public, would anyone believe it?

Would I believe it after James Randi willingly handed over a million dollars after extensive tests that he himself designed/agreed were fair, and later vouched that this guy was seriously reading some peoples mind, or at least seeing into the past/future/place he could not be?

Hell yes.

Would government agents be sent to shoot him?

Hell no.

Fucking A, Amra's just a crazy conspiracy theorist telling us all that the evil government is not just evil but stupid, and regularly shoots people for no fucking reason.

I'd been working on the assumption that we were talking about the former in the absence of any indication to the contrary.

I'm not saying we can't posit a superhero that fits the bill, just that nobody has yet.

Have you ever in your entire life seen a superhero who could read people's minds but not influence them?

Fucking A:

Jedi: Read and Influence
Heroes show: Read and Influence
Brainblaster: Read and Influence

Every fucking Telepath ever: Read and Influence.

Every superhero telepath ever posited can use mind rays to prevent you from shooting them. So yes, I think in discussing a fucking superhero telepath they should get to mind ray you to not shoot them.

[Roy]

Well, they are not exactly known for their intelligence...

[Parthenon]

Okay, so if we are talking abut supers any telepath is going to be able to influence minds. And so long as they are able to react normally or even just distracted while doing so they can be hugely successful and get a lot of stuff by using it to help them in working or doing relatively subtle things.

They may not be able to take over the world, but they are extremely comfortable and can do what they want.

---

Any other super powers that would be interesting to debate their usefulness? How about teleportation? I haven't seen Jumper but it would probably be down to Nightcrawler style teleportation or Jumper style teleportation.

Could you take over the world by teleportation? I'm thinking no, but you could become very well off and comfortable.

[Amra]

Would government agents be sent to shoot him?

Hell no.

Fucking A, Amra's just a crazy conspiracy theorist telling us all that the evil government is not just evil but stupid, and regularly shoots people for no fucking reason.

*sigh* You're wilfully missing the point, I suspect, but I'll bite this once.

Firstly: no reason? Seriously, no reason? You're actually saying that the ability of a person who can pull any secret out of anybody's head is not a good reason for at least some people to want them dead?

Secondly: governments don't have to be evil and stupid to do this. Governments and police forces can, and do, dispatch people who are a threat, but that doesn't even matter because - addressing a point that angelfromanotherpin made earlier - government departments are made up of people. People have secrets. Government departments have secrets from other government departments and people with those deparments have secrets from other people within those departments. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the British Prime Minister, the US President, or a Director of the CIA or MI6 are going to sign an order to have our putative telepath executed. They wouldn't need to, and they wouldn't even need to want for it to happen. All that would be required was for one person who didn't want various things uncovered to tip off the right criminal (or foreign government) organisation that a telepath existed and was going to be used in an operation against them.

Christ, I'm currently living in a country where the government is melting down because Members of Parliament are guilty of wholesale tax evasion and a Brazillian electrician was shot in the face on a train by police because he was "wearing a jacket". It's really not hard to imagine a situation in which someone suffers some sort of tragic accident because it becomes known that they can, on a whim, find out everyone's dirty secrets.

Whereas angelfromanotherpin is quite correct in saying that governments try to get shit that other governments don't have, the governments that don't have that shit either want to take that shit for themselves or - failing that - to eliminate that shit from the game. This is why real, actual spies get killed. This is why we end up with people working on nuclear programmes selling secrets to the other guys. This is why even perfectly ordinary people with no super-powers are kidnapped or killed by opposing governments or criminals when they know something too useful or explosive to let pass.

Like I said before, you only need to kill a guy once. Even if lots and lots of people see the advantage of working with our telepath, they have to succeed at saving the guy's life every time while the folks who want him dead only have to succeed once. There are already plenty of people in this world - from intelligence service agents to Mob informers - for whom security has to be tighter than the proverbial duck's arse because of what they know. In general, the threat to them greatly diminishes once what they know has been deployed in whatever fashion. Although, you know, Litvinenko, Markov, Kostov et al might disagree with that assessment.

A telepath changes that equation. Whereas your average joe can't - embarrassing exceptions like Kim Philby aside - do much more than reveal a snapshot of information on specific and limited topics, a telepathic spy can potentially reveal anything about anything without ever blowing his or her cover. Combined with their ability to effectively ignore all extant security procedures, that makes them a correspondingly high-value target for either acquisition or elimination: by my government, your government, the other guy's government or any number of special-interest groups.

Have you ever in your entire life seen a superhero who could read people's minds but not influence them?

I hate to tell you this matey, but I've actually never in my entire life seen a superhero. Because they are made up. And there are many made-up telepaths who can read minds without influencing them.

Fucking A:

Jedi: Read and Influence
Heroes show: Read and Influence
Brainblaster: Read and Influence

Every fucking Telepath ever: Read and Influence.

You are completely and demonstrably wrong. Betazoids. Novels and short stories by Robert Heinlein, Anne Rice, Iain M. Banks, Alan Burt Akers, Piers Anthony, Sheri Tepper, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey and goodness knows how many others. The trope of characters who can read others' minds and/or telepathically "speak" but can't otherwise influence them is very well established indeed, and any assertion to the contrary is clearly false.

Having established that, by all means posit telepaths who can not only read minds but influence them as well. But unless you also establish parameters for their abilities there's little point discussing how they could prevent themselves being killed, kidnapped or suffer lifelong incarceration for their own protection once their existence is known. They might be able to, they might not, it all depends on what they can do.

[MartinHarper]

The anonymous telepath could be the highest-paid shrink in the world, a fantastic trial lawyer or a really bigtime company director in their day job. So long as they're clever, and careful, and don't pull any aggro down on themselves serious enough to warrant someone sending them a polonium greetings card in the mail, they could have a supremely successful and rewarding career to fund anonymous crime-fighting do-gooder activities.

You wouldn't even need to be an anonymous do-gooder much of the time. Just write out a cheque to Amnesty, and get back to making millions from poker tournaments and your day job.

[angelfromanotherpin]

You are completely and demonstrably wrong. Betazoids. Novels and short stories by Robert Heinlein, Anne Rice, Iain M. Banks, Alan Burt Akers, Piers Anthony, Sheri Tepper, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey and goodness knows how many others. The trope of characters who can read others' minds and/or telepathically "speak" but can't otherwise influence them is very well established indeed, and any assertion to the contrary is clearly false.

Those are all fine examples of noncoercive telepaths, but none of them qualify as superheroes. Do you have any examples of people who have worn bodycondoms and fought crime fitting your parameters?

[Username17]

Those are all fine examples of noncoercive telepaths, but none of them qualify as superheroes. Do you have any examples of people who have worn bodycondoms and fought crime fitting your parameters?

Councilor Troi wore a body condom and fought crime. She wasn't a superhero, but being a member of Starfleet she did do those things. Also, there's the Demolished Man.

But your basic supposition that shooting someone in the head because they got the skills to be a very effective spy is completely retarded is correct. Anyone with the resources to do that kind of thing has the resources to try to get a psi-corps together. And the knowledge that if they don't, that their competitors (who also have the resources to put a psi-corps together) will get ahead of them in intelligence gathering capabilities.

Even if there's only one telepath right now, the fact is that some thing made that guy like that - and that means that in twenty years there may be lots of telepaths. And no government or corporation is going to want to find itself twenty years behind that curve.

-Username17

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know what's weird? If there's a lot of superheroes, the world falls apart, but if there's a LOT of superheroes, as in one out of every ten people were superheroes, society wouldn't fall apart.

The biggest problem with Dr. Manhattan or Evil Superman is that there's no one to stop them if they go crazy. However, if you decide to use your flying brick powers to flatten the White House then if every other person was a superhero then you would just get jumped and gangbanged --unless you were able to complete your crime before the retaliation.

If it gets to this point then things like social contracts and government form and life doesn't necessarily have to be an apocalyptic wasteland where muggles are tormented by a handful of demigods. If there was already some pre-existing society then things probably wouldn't even change that much right away. Thor or the Hulk's approval of a government wouldn't be desired or required; they could flail and rage all they want to but they're not going to knock over Saudi Arabia's government because then they'd get their asses kicked by hundreds of other metahumans in that country.