Telepathy

A. E. van Vogt's novel Slan captures the vast potential and our darkest fears associated with the power of telepathy.

Jommy Cross, the protagonist in the novel, is a "slan", a dying race of superintelligent telepaths.
His parents were brutally murdered by enraged mobs of humans, who fear and despise all telepaths, because of the enormous power wielded by those who can intrude on their private, most intimate thoughs. Humans mercilessly hunt down the slan like animals. With their characteristic tendrils growing out of their heads, slans are easy to spot.In the course of the book, Jommy tries to make contact with other slans who have fled into outer space to escape the witch hunts of humans determined to exterminate them.

Historically, mind reading has been seen as so important that it has often been associated with the gods. One of the most fundamental powers of any god is the ability to read our minds and hence answer our deepest prayers. A true telepath could read minds at will could easily become the wealthiest, most powerful person on Earth, able to enter the minds of Wall Street Bankers or to blackmail and coerce his rivals. he would pose a threat in the security of governments. He could effortlessly steal a nation's most sensitive secrets. Like the slans, he would be feared and perhaps hunted down.

One of the most famous cases of telepathy did not involved a shill but an animal, Clever Hans, a wonder horse that astonished European audiences in the 1890s. Clever hans, to the amazement of the audiences, could perform complex mathematical feats of calculation. If, for example, you asked celever hands to devided 48 by 6, the horse would beat his hoof 8 times. Clever hans, in fact could divide, multiply, add fractions, spell and even identify musical tones. Clever Hans' fans declared that he was either more intelligent than many humans, or he could telepathically pick people's brains.

But Clever Hans was no the product of some clever trickery. the marvelous ability of Clever Hans to perform arithmetic even fooled his trainer. In 1904 prominent psychologist Professor C. Strumpf was brought in to analyze the horse and could find no obvious evidence of trickery or covert signaling to the horse, only adding to the public's fascination with Clever Hans' secret. All he really did was observe the subtle facial expressions of his trainer. The horse would continue to beat his hoofs until his trainer's facial expression changed slightly, at which point he would stop beating. Clever hans could not read people's minds of perform arithmetic; he was simply a shrewd observer of people's faces.

Is telepathy really possible? we have to look inside the brain and see the physics behind the workings of the brain. In the nineteenth century, scientists suspected that electrical signals were being transmitted inside the brain. In 1875 Richard Caton discovered that by placing electrodes on the surface of the head, it was possible to detect the tiny electrical signals emitted by the brain. This eventually led to the invention of the electroencephalograph (EEG).

In principle, the brain is a transmitter over which our thoughts are broadcast in the form of tiny electrical signals and electromagnetic waves. But there are problems with using these signals to read someone's thoughs. First, the signals are extremely weak, in the milliwatt range. Second, the signals are gibberish, largely indistinguishable from random noise. Only crude information about our thoughs can be gleaned from this garble. Third, our brain is not capable of receiving similar messages from other brains via these signals; that is, we lack an antenna. And, finally, even if we could receive these faint signals, we would not unscramble them. Using ordinary Newtonian and Maxwellian physics, telepathy via radio does not seem to be possible.

Some believe that perhaps telepathy is mediated by a fifth force, called the "psi" force. But even advocates of parapsychology admit that they have no concrete, reproducible evidence of this psi force.

But this leaves open the question: What about telepathy using the quantum theory?

in the last decade, new quantum instruments have been introduced that for the first time in history enable us to look into the thinking brain. Leading this quantum revolution are the PET (positron-emission tomography) and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) brain scans. A PET scan is created by injecting radioactive sugar into the blood. This sugar concentrates in parts of the brain that are activated by the thinking process, which requires energy. The radioactive sugar amits positrons (antielectrons) that are easily detected by instruments.

The MRI machine operates in the same way, except it is more precise. A patient's head is placed inside a huge donut-shaped magnetic field. The magnetic field makes the nuclei of the atoms in the brain align parallel to the field lines. A radio pulse is sent into the patient, making these nuclei wobble. When the nuclei flip orientation, they emit a tiny radio "echo" that can be detected, thereby signaling the presence of a particular substance.

If one day we might be able to read the broad outlines of another's thoughts, then would it be possible to perform the opposite, to project your thoughts into another person's head? The answer seems to be a qualified yes. Radio waves can be beamed directly into the human brain to excite areas of the brain known to control certain functions.

In the future, it may be possible to beam electromagnetic signals at precise parts of the brain that are known to control specific functions. By firing such signals into the amygdala, one might be able to elicit certain emotions. By stimulating other areas of the brain, one might be able to evoke visual images and thoughts.

But because the brain is not a computer but a neural network, in which thoughts are spread out throughout the brain, ultimately we hit a stumbling block: the brain itself. So although science will probe deeper and deeper into the thinking brain, making it possible to decipher some of out thinking processes, it will not be possible to "read your thoughts" with the pinpoint accuracy promised by science fiction. Given this, it would term the ability to read general feelings and thought patterns as a Class I impossibility. the ability to read more precisely the inner workings of the mind would have to be categorized as a Class II impossibility.