Suppose you had the ability to read minds. How would you use that skill?

Definitely try to get money somehow. Walk around scanning brains for information and look for an opening to pull some Robinhood operations.

Depends on the details, and on what I knew about the psychic abilities of other people in the world.

Best case would be the ability to, without detection or anyone being able to trace it back to me, detecting the critical secrets of the most powerful agents of evil in the world, and then (also anonymously) revealing those secrets to people who could and would take effective action using those secrets, to unravel the power of such people.

I know this is supposed to be a fun question, but I would learn how to block my ability to read minds. I would hate that.

I have severe paranoia (everyones always watching me and everything I do all of the time) and anxiety, so I would scream if I could read minds.

I also do not want to do bad or good with it because it is an invasion of privacy.

Oh, you don’t want to know!

@Blackberry…lord I wish Bendrew built in a LOL button!

Extortion.

But really, it depends on the extent of the power. Is it targeted? Is it limited to what the target is thinking at the moment? Can I delve into their memories without them knowing or thinking about it? What is the physical range? A few metres? Kilometres? Lightyears? How accurate is it? Is it thoughts? Images? Words? Vague impressions?

I really don’t know. I’d love to try understanding how other people think, but I’m sure I’d also enrich myself. I have no political asperations, I don’t waste time and energy with revenge.

I would make a Charles Xavier like school for gifted youngsters. To find others like me. To teach students how to use gifts responsibility.

I think it would be depressing.

You’d go insane @seawulf575!

I don’t think I would want this power. You would tell yourself not to use it to find out what others thought of you, but at some point it would be too tempting, and you would use the power. Friendships would no doubt be destroyed in some cases, because you might discover that someone you thought was a good friend actually didn’t think that much of you.

By the way, if you have ever read Voyage of the Dawn Treader (one of the Chronicles of Narnia). one of the characters, Lucy, goes through exactly this same experience. She reads of spell that lets you know what others are thinking, finds out what her “friends” are saying about her behind her back, and just like that, the illusion – and the friendship – are gone.

You might say that it would ne better to know what others are thinking about you, but I think it could end of being really hurtful, and I wouldn’t want to go through that.

But, for this question you have to pretend that you have it, whether you like it or not @LifeQuestioner.

Well I would start by never voting for Trump.

@Dutchess_III well, then I would probably become a recluse, because I wouldn’t want to be around people, or at least ones whose opinions of me matter.

Me too @LifeQuestioner!
But at that you could still read their minds and I don’t think that would be good either.
We present the facade we want people to see but what’s actually going on in our minds could be something completely different.

@Dutchess_III true, but without knowing the exact parameters, I couldn’t really comment further. Do you have to be relatively close to the person at the time? Do you have to at least be thinking about them? I would hope some of that would be the case, also because otherwise, you would be being flooded with thoughts from I don’t know how many people at the same time, which I would think would drive you mad. And how would you sleep?

Right? I mean, I was relatively close to my husband of 22 years, and I know I wouldn’t want to know every thing in his mind! I’d be pissed ALL the time!

@Dutchess_III I do wish however, that I could know what my cats were thinking!