What would two people reading each other's mind think? [closed]

Question

Imagine that two people who have the ability to read anyone's mind confront each other. Each one of them knows that the other is able to read minds and so they try to read each other's mind.

Let's call the two subjects Subject A and Subject B:

Subject A starts reading Subject B's mind, but simultaneously, Subject B starts reading Subject A's mind. Assuming that the process of thinking is finite, eventually the thoughts of Subject A or Subject B should lead to something concrete, but apparently, both of them would be reading each other's mind in a endless process that would require an infinite time to get it done. So the question is the following:

Would either of them be able to think something concrete after a finite amount of time?

Answer 1

Have you ever looked into a pair of mirrors that are facing each other? It looks like an infinite tunnel of mirrors, but because the mirrors aren't perfect the farther down the tunnel you look the more blurry it gets.

You could think of mind reading as looking into a window. While you are reading someone else's mind, your window becomes a one-way mirror. So two people reading each other's minds would mostly see the infinite tunnel. Of course, one-way mirrors aren't perfect, so you would still be able to see glimpses of what's hiding behind it, but it does make for an excellent defense against someone who is trying to read your mind.

This also provides for an interesting mechanic - the better you are at reading minds, the more perfect your mirror is, making it harder for your opponent to catch glimpses of what's behind it.

Answer 2

It really depends on how telepathy is working. When you 'read' someone's mind, are you just reading the surface thoughts that they are concentrating on? Is that all you can read?

I expect mind reading to be a bit more than that. I also expect that if you are reading a mind, you also have your own thoughts and feelings floating around in there. So if two people are reading each others mind, they would see what the other person is thinking and feeling about different things as well as their reactions to what they might be finding in their own brain. There might be some 'mirror' qualities, but both of you would be standing between the two mirrors and able to see all of both of you.

Answer 3

If one is reading the other's mind, meaning they are hearing the thoughts of the other person, then this seems like it would create an ever-increasing feedback the same way a microphone placed next to its speaker creates infinite feedback.

The two people would probably die.

Answer 4

There is actually a mathematical proof that this cannot occur in a universe governed by statistics. (I'm trying to dig up the paper, but I can't seem to find it). You cannot have two beings that know about each other perfectly and simultaneously have freewill. If I remember the paper, this even holds true when the knowledge sought is statistical.

Accordingly, the only way for both subjects to read eachother's mind successfully is for one or both of them to give up perfect free will. They must be willing to accept that there are some things they cannot think about during the mind read.

As a trivial example, if both agree to think about a purple balloon, and then read eachother's mind, its easy for both to see a purple balloon. However, as one pushes with more and more pointed attempts to force a paradox (such as trying not to think about what the other is thinking), it gets more difficult to achieve an easy resolution.

Freewill may also be limited by imperfections. All it takes is one grumbly stomach and the process may collapse into a concrete image of a doughnut (thanks, Homer!) A light breeze might even be enough to create a slight decrease in freewill from Person A because they could not think of some particular thing while a light breeze was passing by. This might be enough to create a slight decrease in freewill from person B, because whatever person A was thinking about limited them. This could go back and forth until it collapses to both of them thinking of a concrete thing.

Of course it doesn't always collapse. There is a story of two warriors, with none their equal, meeting to settle their differences on the battlefield. Both warriors strode up, looked eachother in the eye, and then stood there for what must have been hours. Finally, both warriors smiled, and went their separate ways.

Answer 5

It depends on what "reading one's mind" means.

Are you interpreting what they're thinking at the same time? Because that's how what we do when we're reading a book. It's such a peculiar situation and it hurts my brain to just imagine it, but if the "thoughts" are read in the way we recall things by emulating our sensory input, then the interpretation of that data would be the first instance of an individual thought.

I feel like mind-reading wouldn't necessarily preclude the ability to have one's own individual thoughts aside, such as sensing, feeling, interpreting, etc, simultaneously.

Situation:

• Person A: Thinks of a banana.
• Person B: Reads mind, sees banana, interprets data.
• Person A: Reads mind, sees interpretation, interprets it.
• Person B: Reads mind, sees interpretation of interpretation, interprets it.
• Infinite loop, based off of Rob Watt's answer.

Or

• They enter a sort of "lock," one that doesn't loop. I wish I could put it into words but I seem to be unable to at the moment. I may revisit this later.

You can imagine them breaking out of the loop - all they have to do is be able to stop reading.

Your question is

Would anyone of them be able to think something concrete after a finite amount of time?

And I believe the answer to that is a) when the first interpretation occurs prior to the infinite loop, b) each individual's unique thoughts aside from the mind-reading, or c) the first thoughts and senses they exercise upon ceasing their mind-reading. One of those three.

Answer 6

this is a standard inducer/capacitor circuit. a thinks of A and b thinks of B. even assuming instantaneous interpretation, a now has B and b now has A. and of course, in the next 'pulse', we'll have a back at A (from b) and b back at B. you can modulate the frequency at which thought exchange happens by increasing the complexity of A or B. same as the circuit, a larger inducer makes the overall circuit an inducer and vice versa. so if a is much smarter or faster at reading b, the overall exchange is a reading b.

Answer 7

Well, I don't have much mind-reading experience, but I think I can relate to the subject through some basic object-oriented thinking.

Let's suppose that we have our 2 mind readers (Subject A & Subject B), and they each have a set of thoughts that are "active" in their minds (we'll ignore the exact content of the thoughts for the sake of the simulation).
In addition, we'll assume that since they have opened an active channel between their thoughts, that they have synchronized their mental clocks such that over the course of 1 unit of an arbitrary time scale (we'll call it "mind-time") they both refresh their own thought-base, as well as retrieve data from the thought-base of the other. In other words, it takes 1 unit of time ("mind-time") for each of them to first think some new thoughts, and then peek at the other's thoughts.

Assuming that this is the initial setup of the situation, there are two possible ways in which the scenario could proceed, depending on how the telepathic stream is set up:

The obtained thoughts are externally processed:
In other words: reading the other subject's mind allows each subject to access the other's thoughts, but they do not copy them over into their own mind. If this were the case, then the result of this bi-directional mind reading would effectively be a Vulcan mind-meld (insert Start Trek reference here), where each of them has access to all of the thoughts flowing between them in exactly 1 iteration (there are no redundant copies of each thought).

The obtained thoughts are internally processed:
In other words, in order to see the other's thoughts, each must first transfer them over to their own mind. If this were the case, the mind-melded state would be the same as stated above, except that each thought would exist in (T + 1) iterations, with T being the time in "mind-time" since the thought was first created. Consequently, the number of thoughts passing between them would grow exponentially with time, and unless each of them has a mind capable of processing an infinite number of thoughts, they will both eventually end up with splitting head-aches, as well as possibly some neuron-damage.

Answer 8

Yes

I would generally equate telepathy akin to one of the other senses. None of our senses "lock" our ability to think or process other information, listening to music doesn't block out thinking about dinner or what you're also seeing.

In the same way I imagine telepathy would be similar to a sense, you can "focus" on it for better detail, like actively listening and not letting yourself get distracted by other senses; but the telepathy itself would still be on it's own "channel" in the brain and as such you can shift your focus to other senses again.

If telepathy copied a brain state then I suppose a infinite loop could result as you suggest, but that would imply that "reading" a mind was literally placing all of the subjects thoughts in place of yours, sort of like a screwed up reverse mind control.

Answer 9

As stated, it would really help if you were more specific about what is entailed in "mind-reading". But let's compare it to some real-world scenarios.

In normal speech, or when I'm typing like right now, I can be simultaneously thinking about the concepts I'm trying to convey, the speech/text synthesis, that Star Trek episode where Data rattles off a list of mental processes he was considering while kissing his girlfriend, how I should probably be in bed but am instead on Stack Exchange, the fact that I'd really like to get in an hour or so of Fallout 4 so I should type this quickly, and a number of other things that take less precedence like how my right foot has been resting on my left leg for quite a while and the pain in my left leg is increasing but isn't yet bad enough to necessitate moving my foot.

I would expect that reading someone's mind would be similarly non-linear, so A) you're not somehow reading every single little process in their head at once (it would be impossible for you to process that much data anyways unless you completely stopped processing any data in your own brain which would be a rather fatal way to read minds) and B) even if the entire mind-reading process turned into garbled nonsense, the rest of your brain would still be wondering whether that rumbling in your stomach is from the nachos you had at lunch or the giant soda you bought on the way home even though you know you're supposed to be cutting back. Like watching a camera that's watching the screen ad infinitum doesn't somehow cause your brain to hardlock. You just say "whoa, trippy!" then go back to finishing your soda because you'll cut back tomorrow.

I'm not sure how typical this is, but I commonly experience dissociated cognitive functionality, where one aspect of my thoughts appears as another entity in my head. At its simplest, it's just a bunch of voices screaming different things (or sometimes the same thing), with the most pressing urges being perceived as the loudest voices.

In a more interesting case, I often tell myself I need to accomplish some task. At that moment, my mind splits into three pieces. There's my self, then there's the responsible guy, then the lazy guy. In a heartbeat, all three of us know exactly how the conversation is going to play out. I tell the responsible guy I know he's right, but I agree with the lazy guy (who is at that moment telling me he already knows I'm going to slack off so stop bothering to play out the conversation that I'm currently having with the responsible guy who obviously is actually just a facet of me) and remark that it's stupid that I'm having a conversation with myself when I already know the lazy guy is going to remark that I'm going to remark that I agree with the lazy guy and am in fact going to just be lazy.

And then sometimes I'm lazy, sometimes I'm responsible, and sometimes I realize it's not even the right day and I don't actually have anything I need to do. Turns out that my own mind isn't capable of figuring out what it's going to do thirty seconds into the future with very good certainty, despite the fact that there are three voices in one head in complete agreement.

(FYI, the pain in my left leg just got to the point where it necessitated moving my right foot.)

Similarly, I would expect that the act of reading someone's mind which is reading yours would create instabilities because the two minds can't perfectly predict the actions of the other. So the other mind tells you a lie about your own thoughts which you believe as the other mind realizes it made a mistake, then the paradox is perceived differently by each mind, which amplifies the discrepancy. This forces the two minds to act with agency despite seemingly having no choice at all.

(And I just realized I spent more than 20 minutes writing this and won't get an hour to play Fallout 4 and am debating whether I should just go to bed or bother playing a little and risk going to bed even later and being really tired tomorrow which will make me less likely to finish my homework when I get back from work. These thoughts occur to me as I proofread once before hitting submit in another example of non-linear processing.)

Answer 10

Since our brain can concentrate on only one thing at a given time voluntarily, telepathy would be done voluntarily as well and in an attempt to read other person's mind when he/she's reading your, I believe you will be indirectly reading your own mind. As Rob Watts stated the example of 2 mirrors facing each other, it will be a mirror looking at it's own reflection in the other mirror facing it.

Answer 11

Maybe it would be based on distance?

*The psychics sufficiently far apart wouldn't notice each other,

*psychics closer together would be able to make out a few levels of feedback before the signal blurs out,

*but psychics would have to get very close to each other before the feedback got strong enough to give one/both of them seizures

Answer 12

Without information about the way the mind reading ability works we're just spearfishing in the dark.

Let's assume the the mind reading ability is some sort of biological PET that can interpret what the other is thinking. The information, traveling from one brain to an other at the speed of light takes time t. Assuming the processing time is equal to t because of signal processing and reconstruction due to noise and path losses. Any one reading my mind will see what I was thinking 2t seconds ago.

If Subject A reads Subject B's mind, he will see his own mind 2t seconds earlier. Which yields I think I'm gonna read Subject B's mind.

Answer 13

Reading each others' mind cannot be defined as equivalent to reading books. Minds always have a background chatter, which even great saints would have a hard time stopping. So yes both can reach a finite answer but only when they are concentrating not on the mindreading process but on another thought.

Answer 14

Lets propose different idea on mind reading, it was like you can read what someone's thinking(Surface) or you can browse their memory deep down.

So if the question is about ,

Surface Reading

Surface reading can be put in simple terms, one can hear what other person is thinking. So if the two people with the power met, it will be conversation. So likewise a normal conversation, it will be over when one of them left. If none left, it will be an infinite as thoughts are infinite. you try yourself not to think anything ... oh irony is which itself a thought.

Deep reading

It will be more like browsing the pages of a book. Two persons view eachother's biography. It will be infinite as well, Even if one manage to read entire memory, catching the up with lost moments while reading will lead to a Zeno paradox.

So it can't be finite either way.

Thanks Mithrandil for edit suggestion.