watervole | How does telepathy work?

How does telepathy work?

Now given that telepathy doesn't actually exist, it's a bit difficult to come up with good physics...

However, this is Stargate, and thus any reasonably convincing pseudoscience will do. :)

I have a character with a limited degree of telepathy/empathy. Usually comes across as being lucky at playing cards, guessing what people will do next, that kind of thing. Rarely extends to actual mind-reading (except when under the influence of things caused by aliens/alien technology/etc.).

It has no distance limitation (we're talking interstellar here), but definitely words best in physical proximity.

It also works best with people the telepath has an emotional connection with.

I have a couple of canonical alien devices that can heal/tweak human physiology. (Hey, this is Stargate SG-1, they have stacks of alien artefacts that have to be shipped to Area 51, so they can't be used to solve a problem in the next episode.... I'm shipping some of them out again <grin>)

What can I do in terms of pseudoscientific explanation (because I like my pseudoscience to be as close to real science as possible) to describe/manipulate this ability?

I'd love to come up with something that included electromagnetic radiation, but as far as I can see, the lack of a distance limitation means that speed of light screws up that theory.

Anyone care to suggest mechanisms by which telepathy might work?

Let your imagination run riot!

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I kinda like the idea of a biological imprint which causes the telepaths brain to match the other persons, which means the telepath would have to be in contact with the other person at least once. No idea how to pseudoscience it.

I recall one SF story that used twinned/tripleted telepaths to keep in contact with spaceships which used a time dialating field, so the telepaths that stayed on Earth aged normally while the exploring telepaths (and the rest of the people on the ships) skipped years during the traveling. It was very cool. When an Earth twin died (often of old age), the ship telepath that matched them had to retrain for other work on the ship.

Sub-space might be a way around distance, maybe some telepaths can instinctively bypass realspace with their thoughts. Still, that seems more useful for transmitting thoughts than 'reading' them.

It might be that the character's telepathy doesn't come to them as distinct other thoughts but more as 'this is right' and responding to the subconscious impulse, as in 'no, stand pat', 'raise', 'kick the table over and run'... until encountering the gadget which adds a new level of awareness and directed control.

Robert Heinlein's 'Time for the Stars', that one. The principal character actually manages to establish telepathic links with his twin's daughter and then granddaughter. They used the triplet telepaths to keep in touch with other ships and groups of ships.

YES! Thank you!

I loved that novel! (I think my copy may have fallen apart along with some of my other early Heinleins)

Sub space is a handy kind of concept.
Ah ha! A quick check via the Wiki shows that subspace is canonical in Stargate and is used for ftl communications by several alien species.

Therefore, a telepath might as well use it too.

Now, the next logical question is whether electromagnetic radiation can be sent through subspace... Because the brain can generate that, so all we have to do is to trick it to travel a different way.

I may be able to make something work with this - thanks.

Great! Hope it works out. :^)

Try looking at Quantum Entanglement, I think that doesn't have the light speed limitations. But whether it fits your other needs I don't know.

Good suggestion, but having read it up just now, I don't think it will work - https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement

but thanks for the idea - I hadn't thought of that one.

Thoughts are electrical, and therefore would cause magnetic fields, which could also induce electrical currents (thoughts) in other brains. However that explains a receiver rather than a sender, and not of course the distance thing.

As reapermum says, go for quantum entanglement, and after all some are saying our brains are quantum computers. I've used that in explaining teleport and how people not wanting to use it would screw it up. Handwavium!

Feng shui house suggested subspace, and combining that with e/m radiation may do the trick. Although you're correct that it would not explain reception. (it would work for Cally...)

The problem with quantum entanglement is that you have to tangle a pair of particles in the first place. Also, you can't control the action on the particle, so your message would arrive, but be a rather random message.

Perhaps your telepath can get round that by being able to send only to people previously contacted close-up, when their different/mutated brain could quantum-entangle with the other person's. Possibly it's a theory that someone puts forward for something not yet understood.

And hey, I've read much worse science in fiction!

World Building Stack Exchange is a great place to look for answers to such questions. Here's one such discussion of biologically plausible telepathy: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/12294/can-telepathy-and-telekinesis-exist-in-biological-creatures

Looking at the Related links on the right hand side of the page will show you the similar conversations.

How does telepathy work?

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