Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

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Graham Kennedy
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Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Graham Kennedy »

I am watching The Forsaken, and a thing just happened that sparked my interest.

Lwaxana Troi is visiting DS9, and an item of jewellery was stolen from her in Quarks. Odo asked her if she could sense any guilt from anybody in the room. She said no. He looked around and saw an alien man walking towards the door. Odo walked over and grabbed him, and forced the man to turn out his pockets. He found the broach amongst other stolen items. Odo then said that the Dopterians are distant relatives of the Ferengi, so it stood to reason that Lwaxana would not sense guilt in him.

Okay, so here's the sequence of events.

1) An item is stolen
2) The police urge a telepath to scan everybody in the area
3) The scan eliminates everybody but a short list of people present
4) The police them target those it didn't eliminate and forcibly search them

Does this strike anybody else as a remarkably fascistic way for the police of DS9 to operate? I will say, we have no idea what laws DS9 operates under; Federation, Bajoran, some combination of the two. And we don't know much about either Federation or Bajoran law.

But the police asked a telepath to mind scan an entire room full of innocent people! Are there not issues of mental privacy at work here? Is there not some presumption of innocence? Does Odo not need some level of evidence before he can forcibly detail and search people?

Imagine if this happened today. No telepaths exist today of course, but say the police went to a bar where a theft had occurred and forced everybody there to undergo a polygraph. (Polygraphs don't work either but let's pretend they do for the sake of argument.) Let's say that for most everybody the polygraph eliminated them, but in a few cases the polygraph was inconclusive. The police then set about forcibly searching everyone who was not ruled out. Can you imagine the legal nightmare that would result from this behaviour?

The Federation seems to have no legal right to mental privacy whatsoever. I was thinking about this the other day when I was expanding my review of The Drumhead. Picard frequently has Troi do readings on people he is talking to, without any permission, without any warrant. The attitude seems to be that your mind is an open book to whomever wants to plunder it.

There are one or two counter-indications. For example, I vaguely recall some comment once about Troi playing poker. She would know if somebody was bluffing, you would think, but I seem to recall her saying once that she didn't check out people's thoughts. Well, why not? If she has the legal right to do so then what's the problem?

Then there's the TNG episode Violations. Some alien telepaths are travelling on the E-D and one of them takes to invading the thoughts of others; mind rape, if you will. Everybody agrees that this is a terrible thing, that he will be punished for. But it's the aliens themselves who will punish him. Although his actions occurred on Federation territory, nobody suggests that he has broken any Federation law. But if there's no right to mental privacy, why does anybody think he did anything wrong? In this case his actions did do physical harm too - left people in a coma state as I recall. But is that the only reason it bothered people?

Then there's The Price, where everybody was shocked to the core that Devinoni Ral used his empathic abilities to gain an advantage in negotiations - even Troi, who has been doing the exact same thing for Picard for years now.

If the Federation takes the attitude that your thoughts are public property, then Troi should be cheating at poker, she should be happily manipulating people left and right, and she should have shrugged Ral's behaviour off. If it takes the attitude that you have some right to mental privacy, then why are there apparently no legal protections in place for that right?

Yeah, I know, the answer to all of the above is "Bad Writing". JMS did this soooooo much better on Babylon 5.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Blackstar the Chakat »

But the police asked a telepath to mind scan an entire room full of innocent people!
Well, I think that's more along empathic talent, like Deanna to sense the emotion of guilt over the crime. And emotions aren't really private in the first place, some are just better at hiding them then others, just like others can read the emotion better then others. While not using mental empathic abilities some can read body language better. The mental abilities of Mrs. Troi is mearly an extension of that. At least that would be the defence I'd use.

As far as other legal concerns while some might feel violated by being 'read' by telepaths, to the telepaths it is probably no different then us using our eyes or ears. How would you like it if a group of aliens said you aren't allowed to use your eyes while hanging around them? So the legal concern here is a two-way street.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Graham Kennedy »

If you played poker with a person and lost heavily, and then discovered that the person was a telepath who had been reading your thoughts all along, would you be bothered?
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by KuvahMagh »

GrahamKennedy wrote:If you played poker with a person and lost heavily, and then discovered that the person was a telepath who had been reading your thoughts all along, would you be bothered?
Yes and No. If you played with someone who could count cards, lost then found out... it sucks but its not illegal in Modern Society, so long as it is done without the aid of electronics...
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Graham Kennedy »

KuvahMagh wrote:Yes and No. If you played with someone who could count cards, lost then found out... it sucks but its not illegal in Modern Society, so long as it is done without the aid of electronics...
Counting cards is a mental skill that anybody can do, in theory, and it only increases your odds significantly (not sure you can even do counting cards in poker anyway). Telepathy is something that is an inherent trait, and it gives you a near 100% advantage. It's more like marking the cards than counting them.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

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GrahamKennedy wrote:
KuvahMagh wrote:Yes and No. If you played with someone who could count cards, lost then found out... it sucks but its not illegal in Modern Society, so long as it is done without the aid of electronics...
Counting cards is a mental skill that anybody can do, in theory, and it only increases your odds significantly (not sure you can even do counting cards in poker anyway). Telepathy is something that is an inherent trait, and it gives you a near 100% advantage. It's more like marking the cards than counting them.
I don't think so, you aren't doing anything other than using your natural abilities... it sucks yeah but I wouldn't say it is illegal. Not disclosing that would be immoral, at least to me though.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

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KuvahMagh wrote:
I don't think so, you aren't doing anything other than using your natural abilities... it sucks yeah but I wouldn't say it is illegal. Not disclosing that would be immoral, at least to me though.
There's a fair difference between cheating at cards and causally scanning the mids of those around you. It was illigal in B5 for a reason, to much potential for abuse.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

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Cpl Kendall wrote:
KuvahMagh wrote:
I don't think so, you aren't doing anything other than using your natural abilities... it sucks yeah but I wouldn't say it is illegal. Not disclosing that would be immoral, at least to me though.
There's a fair difference between cheating at cards and causally scanning the mids of those around you. It was illigal in B5 for a reason, to much potential for abuse.
I've never even seen an ep of B5 though I've heard about it and would like to. I've never even seen it on TV here though...
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Aaron »

KuvahMagh wrote:
I've never even seen an ep of B5 though I've heard about it and would like to. I've never even seen it on TV here though...
Your in luck, Wally World has season one for 29.95.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Graham Kennedy »

KuvahMagh wrote:
Cpl Kendall wrote:
KuvahMagh wrote:
I don't think so, you aren't doing anything other than using your natural abilities... it sucks yeah but I wouldn't say it is illegal. Not disclosing that would be immoral, at least to me though.
There's a fair difference between cheating at cards and causally scanning the mids of those around you. It was illigal in B5 for a reason, to much potential for abuse.
I've never even seen an ep of B5 though I've heard about it and would like to. I've never even seen it on TV here though...
B5 actually put a lot of thought into how to handle telepaths. There was a government organisation called the "PSI corps". If you were telepathic you had to either join up, or take regular injections to kill your telepathic abilities, or go to prison. Members of psi corps were under strict restriction about who they could and could not scan. For instance the results of a telepathic scan were not admissable in court, because it would create a situation where a government body was basically determining guilt or innocence. The ramifications of the corps and telepathy in general were one of the major themes of the show throughout its run.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by KuvahMagh »

Interesting, I'll look into picking it up, go on Vacation on the 13th... will see what happens.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Blackstar the Chakat »

GrahamKennedy wrote:If you played poker with a person and lost heavily, and then discovered that the person was a telepath who had been reading your thoughts all along, would you be bothered?
Well, I'd be pissed sure, but I wouldn't count it as cheating. It's a mental ability, like counting cards. I doubt casino's would be big fans of telepaths
There was a government organisation called the "PSI corps". If you were telepathic you had to either join up, or take regular injections to kill your telepathic abilities, or go to prison
Well that's just outright discrimination.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

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Blackstar the Chakat wrote:
Well that's just outright discrimination.
No, it's self preservation. This is a group of individuals that are capable of reading the thoughts of anyone and at high levels being used as weapons.
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by KuvahMagh »

Cpl Kendall wrote:
Blackstar the Chakat wrote:
Well that's just outright discrimination.
No, it's self preservation. This is a group of individuals that are capable of reading the thoughts of anyone and at high levels being used as weapons.
So kind of like River in Firefly/Serenity...
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Re: Telepathy and legal rights in Trek

Post by Aaron »

KuvahMagh wrote:
So kind of like River in Firefly/Serenity...
Far more extreme than that, a freed Teep in the later seasons is compared to a nuclear bomb in usage.

I must correct myself though, I claimed this was not discrimination. It is but that assumes it is bad, discriminating against a group of people that can read your thoughts, ware you like a glove or destroy ships and stations is only prudent planning.
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