Language/writing systems in a telepathic society

[Jerian]

So this idea came to me when I was walking home today.

In a society where telepathy is universal (ie everyone can communicate telepathically), what would happen with spoken language, and writing systems?

My first thought: "Can anyone communicate with anyone, or does said telepathy have a range?"

If the former, then the society would fall apart. Everyone's mind would constantly be a mess of thousands to millions of other people talking. Such a society would doubtlessly collapse rapidly, if the people don't go extinct first.

Thus it would have to be the latter.

Spoken language would not exist. Simply, it would never have been created. Likely, the people would never even have come up with the idea of using their mouths (or whatever they would have in place) for communication. As soon as they got within close range with someone else, they'd just transfer all the ideas they need to to the other person's head. However, this comes at a danger: your thoughts can be read. Which could be used as a valuable weapon: people who hold critical information would need to remain isolated to prevent someone from sneaking up and stealing their thoughts (unless said society has enough control over their minds that they can hide information they don't want found out.)

Sometimes, if I'm pissed, I subconsciously think "Fuck so and so". Would they hypothetically be able to read said idea? Our would they have two parts of their brain: One for transmitting thoughts, and another private one, where your thoughts cannot be read?

Depending on how good memory is, written language would or would not exist. If perfect, no written language would exist. You would merely use your brain as one massive fucking sticky note. One may argue sending messages long distances would require written language, however.

Writing systems would be completely difference. I can imagine it'd be sort of a syllabary, but instead of each symbol representing a syllable, each symbol would represent a thought. They'd likely come up with ways of classifying thoughts, to make it more organized/easier, for example, they'd have a symbol meaning 'to do something', or a symbol 'needs to be done', but there'd be no way of saying or pronouncing this. Upon reading text, the thoughts would just go straight into your brain, and you'd understand what's happening.


The next issue: How would they interact with other species? If their brains are compatible, they'd communicate telepathically. But could species A understand the thoughts of species B? Or would this lead to a whole new idea of mental languages? Would it even be possible to learn the mental language of another species?

If species A has telepathy, and species B does not, how would A and B interact?

A cannot implant ideas into the mind of B, but also has no way of speaking, thus B would remain completely oblivious to the fact A is trying to communicate.

A could, potentially, show B some writing system, but without the ability to explain the symbols, B would continue to remain oblivious to the meaning until they could eventually translate it.

If A is telepathic, they may not have the ability to hear sounds: evolution wise, they may pick it up for survival, though beyond the stone age, they'd have no more use for it, so they'd eventually lose it. So they could not, in this case, hear, should B be talking.



Getting a little less speculative, and a little more scientific, now.

What is telepathy? Do I have the ability to think a thought, and have that thought spontaneously appear in someone else's head? How would that work? Does that exist within the realm of physics? Such a universe would require the laws of physics to be bent, or at the very least be different from earth.

What if the thoughts transmitted are just vibrations, but on a different spectrum range then perceivable by humans? We can only perceive a tiny portion of sound vibrations in the air. What if said species operated on a completely different range- one where the air waves can be affected by neuron pulses. Or, by outputting radiation? In which case, species A and species B could interact if either had advanced enough technology to read the wavelengths outputted by the other, and had it transmitted into one's own (where it would then need to be translated into audible language. Well, that is to say the sound of neurons can be translated at all like language).



... thoughts?

[Rodlox]

... thoughts?

Several.

excellent speculation you've raised.

If the former, then the society would fall apart. Everyone's mind would constantly be a mess of thousands to millions of other people talking. Such a society would doubtlessly collapse rapidly, if the people don't go extinct first.

picture yourself in a crowded room or sidewalk....technically, you hear all the conversations and noises around you, even if you can't distinguish words (or in the case of the noises, what's making the sounds)....but the brain filters what you hear, based on if your attention is on one or two things.

Depending on how good memory is, written language would or would not exist. If perfect, no written language would exist. You would merely use your brain as one massive fucking sticky note. One may argue sending messages long distances would require written language, however.

if everyone is telepathic, the passed-down-over-many-generations things like the Torah and the Illiad become vulnerable....vulnerabler.

when passed verbally over generations, the texts can fall prey to changes in transmission ("I'm not going to rhyme, I'm going to sing"), problems of memory (including the situations where a community is wiped out).

when written down over generations, the texts can fall prey to copying errors ("is that a deliberate squiggly line, or a smear?"), bad weather (say a flood hitting the library).

i would guess that telepathy would be vulnerable to both....(though it would escape the pitfall of being dependent upon a single person relaying the account to a succeeding reciter, the society may need a way to -- wait, actually, would they need a way to stop changes from being made? ("my wife left me - she loved Patroclus, so I'll have him fall on his sword in the story!" vs "I think it'd be a better story if Patroclus wasn't in it so much")

The next issue: How would they interact with other species? If their brains are compatible, they'd communicate telepathically. But could species A understand the thoughts of species B? Or would this lead to a whole new idea of mental languages? Would it even be possible to learn the mental language of another species?

If species A has telepathy, and species B does not, how would A and B interact?

Neandertal(sp?) is a good fiction book exploring this premise. you may or may not agree with its conclusion, but its worth a look, imho.

If A is telepathic, they may not have the ability to hear sounds: evolution wise, they may pick it up for survival, though beyond the stone age, they'd have no more use for it, so they'd eventually lose it.

we still have lots of things we picked up for survival, but didn't use much after the Stone Age.
(the ability to hear sounds still comes in handy, for example - avalanches, stampedes, maneating predators, etc)

[el imiradu]

I saw your tweet about this and thought it was interesting. I think you have considered a lot of the main points. As your post shows, there are so many variables to consider - range, memory, how personal your thoughts are - that it is difficult to give answers that are applicable in every case, or even impossible.

[Tanni]

So this idea came to me when I was walking home today.

In a society where telepathy is universal (ie everyone can communicate telepathically), what would happen with spoken language, and writing systems?

My first thought: "Can anyone communicate with anyone, or does said telepathy have a range?"

If the former, then the society would fall apart. Everyone's mind would constantly be a mess of thousands to millions of other people talking. Such a society would doubtlessly collapse rapidly, if the people don't go extinct first.

If thoughts are transmitted by electromagnetic waves, it would have a range. If you don't want a (restrictive) range, you have to come up with some hyperenergetic waves being able to pass trough hyperspace with hyperlight speed. In some extreemly advanced science fiction, they've gone that way. There are species where every individual can use telepathy, and there are species where telepahty only occure by chance as some kind of mutation. The individual in question is therefore called a mutant. Mutants usually can ''shield'' themselves from the reception of other thoughts. A mutant who can't will most likely die or get crazy at a very early age. You also can state that in your telepathic race, telepathy will typically not show up before a certain age, so that they still have a need to develop a normal language. Or make it something which needs some advanced practice to achieve. You will need to focus on a certain thought, so if there are many, the individual ''espering'' (from extra sensual perception) will only recieve a background noise.

Thus it would have to be the latter.

Spoken language would not exist. Simply, it would never have been created. Likely, the people would never even have come up with the idea of using their mouths (or whatever they would have in place) for communication. As soon as they got within close range with someone else, they'd just transfer all the ideas they need to to the other person's head. However, this comes at a danger: your thoughts can be read. Which could be used as a valuable weapon: people who hold critical information would need to remain isolated to prevent someone from sneaking up and stealing their thoughts (unless said society has enough control over their minds that they can hide information they don't want found out.)

Look at http://www.elfquest.com for people who need to ditch telepathy and develop a spoken language because of some enemy would be able to read their minds.

Hidden Years 06

Hidden Years 07

Anyways, you are free to choose the rules telepathy has to follow in your conworld. Select them carefully, to not run into the kind of problems you listed.

Sometimes, if I'm pissed, I subconsciously think "Fuck so and so". Would they hypothetically be able to read said idea? Our would they have two parts of their brain: One for transmitting thoughts, and another private one, where your thoughts cannot be read?

In said SF series, there is at least one species who has two kind of minds: one for ordinary thoughts, one for things related to the (survival of) whole race. They not even use logic, but entelechy.

Depending on how good memory is, written language would or would not exist. If perfect, no written language would exist. You would merely use your brain as one massive fucking sticky note. One may argue sending messages long distances would require written language, however.

As pointed out above, having telepathy does not necessarily exclude spoken or written language. There were and still are oral cultures.

Writing systems would be completely difference. I can imagine it'd be sort of a syllabary, but instead of each symbol representing a syllable, each symbol would represent a thought. They'd likely come up with ways of classifying thoughts, to make it more organized/easier, for example, they'd have a symbol meaning 'to do something', or a symbol 'needs to be done', but there'd be no way of saying or pronouncing this. Upon reading text, the thoughts would just go straight into your brain, and you'd understand what's happening.

Thoughts can be rather complex and messy. In this case, it would be very unlikely for a writing system to show up.

The next issue: How would they interact with other species? If their brains are compatible, they'd communicate telepathically. But could species A understand the thoughts of species B? Or would this lead to a whole new idea of mental languages? Would it even be possible to learn the mental language of another species?

In said SF series, telepathy is something more or less universal. Of course, you need that to rapidly establish communication between otherwise unintelligible languages.

If species A has telepathy, and species B does not, how would A and B interact?

A cannot implant ideas into the mind of B, but also has no way of speaking, thus B would remain completely oblivious to the fact A is trying to communicate.

A could, potentially, show B some writing system, but without the ability to explain the symbols, B would continue to remain oblivious to the meaning until they could eventually translate it.

If A is telepathic, they may not have the ability to hear sounds: evolution wise, they may pick it up for survival, though beyond the stone age, they'd have no more use for it, so they'd eventually lose it. So they could not, in this case, hear, should B be talking.

Depending on the kind of telepathy (pictural, oral, abstract, ...) the telepathic species will also have some notion on what else is out there, hence less restricted by just being able to communicate by means of telepathy. As telepathy is also about getting feelings and emotions, they have quite a deep knowledge of what's going on and what that does mean to the individuals they recognize. We know about ultrasonic positioning although we don't hear ultrasonic sounds.

Getting a little less speculative, and a little more scientific, now.

What is telepathy? Do I have the ability to think a thought, and have that thought spontaneously appear in someone else's head? How would that work? Does that exist within the realm of physics? Such a universe would require the laws of physics to be bent, or at the very least be different from earth.

You need make up what telepathy is in your conworld. You can implement it by means of magic, so you aren't restricted by some kind of (pseudo) science, or by a more scientific approach e.g. by using hyperwaves or so. You should try to stay consistent. If you use the latter approach, the thoughts have to be encoded into the pseudophysical medium of transportation, which is in essential the same as if someone has to encode his thoughts into soundwaves.

What if the thoughts transmitted are just vibrations, but on a different spectrum range then perceivable by humans? We can only perceive a tiny portion of sound vibrations in the air. What if said species operated on a completely different range- one where the air waves can be affected by neuron pulses. Or, by outputting radiation? In which case, species A and species B could interact if either had advanced enough technology to read the wavelengths outputted by the other, and had it transmitted into one's own (where it would then need to be translated into audible language. Well, that is to say the sound of neurons can be translated at all like language).

It is not that much a matter of the frequency range. You have billions of neurons working in parallel. What of this neuronal activity constitues the thought you want to transmit, what constitutes other thought you want to keep private, and what is just neuronal activity controling bodyly functions?