What would the world be like if everyone could read minds?

[mathew101281]

Lying would become really hard to do, so I guess we’d live in a more honest world.
Espionage would be a lot more difficult as well. Would relationships be impossible if our spouses were privy to every stray thought we had? Or would this ability breed a more understanding world were we realize that we all have similiar stray thoughts? The idea of thought police would become a more literal thing though.

[BeastieRunner]

Is it active or passive?

And I assume some people would learn how to block/subvert it.

[DrNewGod]

I think the world would consist of two kinds of people:

• Heartless Narcissists
• The Deeply Depressed

[wjowski]

Anti-telepathy drugs and technology would be a massive industry.

[Hiromi]

It'd be really awkward

[Duskman]

There is an anime called Kino's Journey made back in the early 2000s. The first episode is called "The Land of Visible Pain". A society creates a tech-based telepathy system, thinking it will bring their country together in perfect harmony. Instead, everyone is privy to everyone else's thoughts, and the tendency of human nature to focus on the negative overall and misinterpret things from their own bias means their society eventually collapses from outrage and insanity. In that story, the telepathy is limited to only a mile or so, and their society is advanced enough that robots do almost all the necessary labor to keep a post-modern society running, and so they at least were able to keep surviving by living alone in spread out properties.

I imagine it goes much like that, except we don't really have that latter option, so we either have to find some way to block the telepathy, create a regulated system of use, adapt to a hive mind, or devolve into chaos.