My entire concept is built upon this. (Well not mind control but emotional manipulation)
In my world mental manipulation is basically the only super power, but has varying degrees. My Villain Protagonist has the ability to induce anger, despair, stress, grief ect. Two of his enemies have powers over Sexual Lust and Fear and nightmares respectively. His mentor has total mastery of Illusions.
I heavily go into the psychological effects this has on the characters and modern japanese views of psychology, Philosophical concepts of minds, and will power. It's a Pandora's box.
Rarely active, try DA/Tumblr Avatar by pippanaffie.deviantart.comIn Project One Fifty Four true mind control does not exist, but the villain tries to change the way the protagonist thinks (a 180% turn) with the most horrible application of operant conditioning I can think of. He reinforces compliant behavior by directly stimulating his brain's pleasure circuit, and punishes deviant behavior by stimulating the brain's pain circuit. This is the affliction of neural impulses that the protagonist never wanted —> mind rape.
I imagine true mind control takes it a step farther: you get more specific neural impulses all over your brain where they're needed for what the controller wants to make you do. You get motor nerve impulses shooting down to your legs and making them jerk into a walking motion when you don't want to or without your prior knowledge (have you ever felt the dream jolt?), so you are not in full control of your own body, it's trying to do things you don't want it to.
But it doesn't stop at the motor cortex, of course. It'll go to your cerebrum, your cerebellum, your occipital lobes, everywhere it can. You're getting thoughts you would think, ever. Plans to do things that you would never do. Emotions and responses you would feel. How would you feel if you found yourself laughing and being happy at a young child's death?
So not only are you not in full control of your body, you're also not in full control of your mind. If you don't know what's going on, you just feel like you're going crazy.
edited 1st May '11 8:09:24 PM by annebeeche
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.![]()
Target one person at a time, the range depends on how long is spent with the target and how long they've been under the effect. The person who uses it is also entirely caste and has ice based secondary powers. Also the lust can be adjusted to the persons favored lust but is triggered the same, like how my Villain Protagonist is effected her unbuttoning her shirt causes him to feel lust but instead of wanting to get in her pants he wants to get in her Aura. due to his Asexuality
She can also project emotional energies she drains into others, Redirecting My VP negative feelings she's been draining into an innocent by standard.
edited 1st May '11 9:20:08 PM by Vyctorian
Rarely active, try DA/Tumblr Avatar by pippanaffie.deviantart.com@ annebeeche
The mind conditioning is a one-time thing? How does the victim remember it? Do they feel like they wanted to do and thus do not think it alien, so cannot differentiate between controlled actions and non-controlled actions?
I think that's the big issue as well is knowing whether you are mind controlled, alongside knowing whether another is mind controlled.
@ Vyctorian
Hm, caste? I'm not sure what you mean by that.
So this is more of a lighter form of mind control, useful for during battle?
@ Expanding topic
One aspect of mind control, outside of the technological difficulties of perfectly controlling a human brain, is that I sense there's serious social problems with it.
What happens if you don't have a reliable method of detection?
What happens if you do have a reliable method of detection?
How fast can you take over a country if you could permanently control one person at a time.
What do you mean a "one-time" thing? I never said that.
I just mean that if you didn't know that mind control was possible, you'd be confused because of all these impulses you're getting, and that's without the alien motor impulses.
Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.In my world, the only form of mind control available is a crude form of telepathy.
It can break concentration, make people twitchy, somewhat paranoid and irritable, or weaken people's resolve through a nagging, vague feeling of despair. Conversely, it can be used to make people feel more at ease, focused or complacent.
Everybody is theoretically capable of it, but talent or proper training are uncommon. Functional Telepaths (extremely rare) often find themselves with jobs in strike teams (disrupting enemy morale is kinda useful), as con men, diplomats or investigators of some sort.
edited 3rd May '11 1:19:17 AM by SavageHeathen
You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.Are you talking about entry-level functional, where everything's there but the quantity/level of control just isn't stellar, or the really good ones who like, get awards and save the day when no one else can?
Anyway.
In my universe, mind control is perfectly possible via:
- Controlling neural impulses in the brain and the like, for people who can affect the physical. Much deeper control, cannot be easily broken, but less direct as it's mostly emotion based. You can't tell someone to go out with you outright, but you can make the person feel happier when you're around.
- Outside of reducing pain or similar health-related cases, which still require a license, 100% of these mind control cases are charged and punishable as felonies unless there's a life or death situation (like preventing a suicide). Very rare, perhaps 20% of all mind control cases.
- Effects: Utter confusion, unless the subject is manipulated carefully enough, to the point where the subject would feel at the mercy of his/her own emotions—but said subject would think of them as his/her own emotions, so control is longer lasted and would probably qualify as More than Mind Control if the subject changed tack and willingly followed orders.
- Telepaths who suppress the subject's thoughts and put in some of their own. Trickier, often shallower as the core personality isn't being affected, and subjects find it a lot easier to break free, but faster-working as it does deal with words.
- Besides licensed interrogators, diplomats, translators, and other such jobs, it's slightly less illegal (30% of the cases are tried and charged with a misdemeanor), but makes up 80% of the total mind control cases for that very reason.
- Effects: The person would likely catch onto the fact that something was wrong, as people have specific mind-voices just like real voices and it takes work to consistently think like another person. So a lot of resistance would come up very soon, and once control was broken it likely wouldn't allow for a second try.
edited 2nd May '11 1:31:47 PM by Leradny
Greg Egan suggests that you're all going for the complicated option. The solution he comes up with is simply modifying the neurons and directly writing in the belief "This is the right thing to do," then letting them get on with it.
edited 3rd May '11 9:29:53 AM by Yej
Breadloaf: It's not that they're perfectly controlled, it's that the control is harder to detect. For example, if you were Happily Married and the thought "I totally wanna fuck (someone who isn't your spouse)" comes out of nowhere, well... it'd be pretty easy to tell that it's not your own thought.
Emotion-based control is less distinct, so the line between subject and controller gets blurred very easily. If you were talking to your best friend and suddenly felt angry, you'd be confused—but would you instantly write it off as "SOMEONE IS TOTALLY IN MY MIND SCREWING WITH ME"?
Yej: And how exactly would you rewrite neurons? That's a lot of base programming to tinker with. What if something went wrong?
Well with privacy laws and such, it does become rather difficult to prove mind control since the guy be outwardly loving to his wife, while cheating on her and then claim mind control.
I have a setting in which they had just developed a very complete sense of mind control, permanent and mostly undetectable on humans. It takes roughly 24 hours per person, the equipment is incredibly expensive so the capacity is around 1 person per day. I was thinking how long it would take to bring down an entire futuristic multi-planetary state.
1) The cheating husband would have to accuse someone known to have the ability of mind control
2) Both the accuser and the suspect would be questioned with similar telepathic techniques. There are defenses, but the average person wouldn't know how to utilize them.
So, no, it actually wouldn't be that much more difficult than an actual court proceeding.
United States Populace: 311,283,746.
Number of Years To Control The Entire Populace of The US: Roughly 852,832
GET CRACKING.
edited 3rd May '11 3:55:42 PM by Leradny
So the justice system heavily relies on telepathic evidence?
Hm, I wonder if that would cause some kind of telepathic upper class in society then.
—-
Sorta, I really don't need to mind control the poor, the disenfranchised or the largely easily manipulated masses. I tackle the key components and power players in the top politics, it takes much less time. There's roughly 100 senators and 500 house representatives, and maybe a dozen or so people in the presidency. I can probably greatly shift politics in the country just by controlling around 15-25 of those people (in fact, I don't need to care about election results, since I can always mind control the winner).
Democracy makes it somewhat more difficult but hardly impossible. The first strike of this type of mind control (before I know it is happening) is the key point. If you don't know of mind control beforehand, it becomes difficult to tell the subtle changes in the workings of politicians. Considering how wildly corrupt non-mind-controlled people can be, you probably can't even tell the difference :)
It becomes substantially worse of course, if the technology is scale-able to a degree (so when I hit around 10 people, I can mind control 2 people per day and so on).
edited 3rd May '11 5:22:18 PM by breadloaf
Oh, goodness no. The justice system in my universe is just ours, with a few added subsets. Telepathic lie detecting is used only in the case of felonies, with reasonable suspicion. You wouldn't break out the big guns just to solve "The Case Of That Kid Who Shoplifted A Sixpack of Beer".
So, 20 days to somewhat less than 2 years. Basic math.
Some masquerade there, mate. There's got to be conspiracy theorists or something.
Also:
1) What organization is orchestrating this plan?
2) Isn't this a MAJOR coercion, breach of privacy, violation of human rights, etc? This plan should be illegal on all counts.
So I suppose the question is how to block really subtle mind control that gives those mind controllers a leg up. I mean we can't expect police to react to every single act of mind vandalism if sufficient number of people are at least somewhat callous with it. Do the police have protect against particularly dangerous people in a gun battle situation?
—-
In Tarus Space, the Commonwealth is being hit in the open by the physical power of a barbarian horde. That's to distract the people from a secret demonic invasion occurring underneath their noses mind-controlling the Sejm (parliament). So illegal doesn't really matter. Besides even if it were illegal, why'd would any faction care if they can just take over the country? In any case, this is done by an invading foreign faction. Oh also, it's not a masquerade, it's the first-time use of the technology that nobody knew existed except for the faction wielding it. So it's like getting hit by a nuke the first time.
If we presume every 10 people allows you to mind control 1 more person per day, then to take over the entire government of around 600 people, it'd take (after some summation series calculation) 46.8 days.
edited 3rd May '11 7:53:48 PM by breadloaf
Okay in the Tarus Space setting there is the state called the Commonwealth.
Historically its main enemy is a bunch of rag tag barbarian hordes roaming about the Galactic Rim, which they defeat with their much more organised military. This has been working for centuries so they see no reason why to stop doing it.
But during the course of the plot, while the Crusaders are off celebrating victories crushing a bunch of barbarian demon hordes there are enemies hiding on their capital world. This one particular demon tribe had just acquired the technology of mind control. This technology allows him to completely and fully (and permanently) mind control one person per day.
Every ten people he mind controls increases the number of people he can mind control per day by one (because he has more labour force to work the very complicated machinery).
The size of the government is around 600 people but he doesn't actually need to mind control everybody, just enough to screw over the state. So I'm estimating around a month gets him quite a lot of people due to the exponential growth of it. He takes key positions and then wreaks havoc.

Once you introduce mind control into a story setting it opens up such a can of worms. So basically I wanted to open a discussion of how you think mind control affects a setting.