It's a Blessing to Have No Shared Thought

For some God-awful reason, I once paid money to attend a speed-dating luncheon. There was a lot about the experience that was less than ideal: the food, the peacocking, the humblebrags—it was all quite unpleasant.

Participants were expected to ask each other questions from a prepared sheet meant to keep conversations between strangers moving while, presumably, preventing anyone from saying anything too inappropriate. Everyone received a different list of questions. Mine included: “What is your favorite genre of music?”, “What would your ideal day be like?” and “If you were a superhero, what would you want your superpower to be?”

To my surprise, four of the six people I asked said they would want the ability to read minds.

Maybe these people thought mind-reading would give them an edge in the speed-dating market. For me, though, their answers raised an entirely different question: Why would anyone want this as a superpower?

It would be terrible.

Here’s why.

Throughout the day, my thoughts range from petty to trivial to occasionally emotional, depending on what is happening. I shudder to imagine my mind being an open book for society to read. The greater good could never be served by knowing that I once spent three solid minutes intensely contemplating whether eating a bean-and-cheese burrito for breakfast had been a reasonable decision or evidence that I had given up on life.

My ruder thoughts aren’t particularly productive either, and my attitude is rarely well hidden in the first place. Did I want to attend the 7:00 a.m. Monday meeting about parking-pass protocol? I think my facial expression adequately conveyed my position on the matter. No telepathy required.

As for my fellow speed daters, they didn’t need access to the specifics of my thoughts to know I felt awkward about the whole event. I openly told each of them how I felt anyway. Mind-reading, therefore, seems like an enormous waste of a perfectly good superpower.

Things become even less appealing when you consider what it would mean to know the true thoughts of everyone around you.

For evidence, I beg you to look no further than an internet comment section.

Online comment boards give people a degree of freedom to say whatever bizarre, cruel, pointless, or inflammatory thing happens to enter their minds. Now imagine receiving all of that directly into your brain, in real time, everywhere you go.

Would you really want the thoughts of internet trolls livestreamed directly into your consciousness as a superpower?

I think only a masochist would find that appealing.

Bullies have thoughts. Jerks have thoughts. Boring people have thoughts. Not every thought produced by a human brain is insightful, interesting, or beneficial to anyone else. Some of them are barely beneficial to the person thinking them.

There is another problem: people can simply be wrong.

Mind-reading would tell you what someone thinks, but it wouldn’t tell you whether that thought bears any resemblance to reality. Your amazing superpower might therefore reward you with an entire evening of listening to someone internally explain how lizard people are taking over Instagram, or how the fact that you spoke slowly during a meeting obviously means you’re planning to sleep with the boss.

Congratulations. You can read minds, and the mind you’re reading is an idiot.

Of course, the details of the superpower would make it better or worse. Being able to selectively read one person’s mind would certainly be preferable to hearing everyone’s thoughts all the time. Access to memories rather than passing thoughts could also make the ability considerably more useful.

Even then, I’m not convinced I’d want it.

I’m perfectly happy being my own little island when it comes to my thoughts, and I suppose I’ll never entirely understand people who feel differently. There is something to be said for accepting the polite exterior other people present to the world and appreciating that this is all you are required to deal with.

Besides, you generally don’t need supernatural powers to get a reasonable idea of what someone thinks. Listen to their tone. Watch their expression. Pay attention to how they describe something.

And if someone tells you they’re having a wonderful time while staring miserably at their speed-dating questionnaire and picking at a disappointing lunch, perhaps extend them the courtesy of not looking any deeper.