Mind reading

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When I read in Tony Atwood's book that NTs have the ability to read other people's minds, my jaw literally dropped open. No way!, I thought. And I continue to have my doubts. Maybe it's because I never have the slightest idea what others are thinking unless they tell me, but I also wonder about something I have often observed:

An NT friend or relative who in some situation claims to know what someone else is thinking or motivated by, but I have information that they are not correct in their appraisal. Yet they are very certain about what they feel or see. Sometimes the person who they are knowing the thoughts of is me, and since I at least have access to my own mind, I know how often they can be wrong.

Can't a lot of this mind reading business be chalked up to good old projection? Or simple arrogant assumption?

Although I show very little emotion, they always get it right. Confusing.

NTs don't actually have the ability to read minds, but they can make guesses as to a person's emotional state and feelings by interpreting their verbal and non-verbal communication. It's not always perfect though, and people make mistakes more than you think. Perhaps they aren't guessing correctly what you're thinking as your body language/tone of voice/posture etc. seem to be conveying a message to them as unintentional. I know a lot of aspies who display verbal and non-verbal communication that isn't really refelective of their true emotional state, and this can be confusing for myself (as I can read it well) and others that they know. You may be sending them mixed messages.

It's intuition, not telepathy.

In my opinion, it's extremely arrogant to call it mind reading because it is not. What bothers me is that people will really begin to think they can read others' minds and claim to know what I'm thinking when I'm not thinking anything near what they assume and that they will completely discount my account of my own mind.

It's a figure of speech. It isn't meant to be taken as literal telepathy. It just means using a "best guess" modeling system based on previous experience. Sometimes it works to great accuracy. Sometimes it is partly right and partly wrong. Sometimes it is completely wrong.

In the thread about irony you gave a good example of it going wrong. You spoke to a wine clerk and made what he assumed was an ironic statement and he responded as though it was an ironic statement. His "best guess" modeling system took two pieces of information- the context and his knowledge of irony- and put them together to give him an incorrect "reading" of your mind.

Think of various measuring instruments you use. You take a "reading" of a particular measure using the instrument. Most of the time this reading is accurate. But sometimes there are confounding factors that will mess up the reading and make it innacurate. It's still a reading but it's wrong. That's the sense you should think of mind "reading" here. Not the telepathic sense.

If NTs could read minds, there wouldn't be so many books about people with superpowers who could read minds.
And my mom keeps asking me what I'm thinking, which I hate since it breaks up my thoughts.

No one can read minds. This term needs to disappear from the scientific literature. It's ridiculous to see it in scholarly publications.

This mind reading stuff - yes, sometimes people can intuit what another person is feeling or even occasionally thinking but...

It's like cold reading - where the guesses that are right are remembered and the guesses that are wrong are not.

Plus guesses that might be right but aren't are remembered as right - people love to convince themselves they are right.

I had a wife once who used to assume/guess what I was feeling. When I disagreed with her guess she had one of two tactics

You're wrong (WTF!)

or

Well, you should be feeling what I am saying

They read a mind through different things like your facial expressions, your body language and maybe some other things. I think its easy to read them back too if they are overt with their emotions or for that matter you can read Aspies too if their faces showed more emotions

the mind reading isn't litteral.
they do know what is going on in someones mind, on a basic level, but realy reading, nah, far from it.

with training, it is possible to learn a rudimentary version of this skill yourself, and/or learn how to avoid it; i myself can misderect an NTs mindreading if i want to, to prevent them from bothering me if i'm upset about something, i can 'project' an 'all clear'

I can mind read. In fact, my mum says I'm ''too good''. When people hint tiny little clues of something, I can make a good guess, and 95 percent of the time it's always right. So my mum's either got to tell me something straight, or if she doesn't want me to know something, won't say it at all, and just hope for the best that I won't ask . I don't know how someone like me has got the ability to do this. My mum also says that I should stop reading between the lines and should just concentrate on the logic part of the conversation.

Is this really going to turn into another “you can’t prove telepathy doesn’t exist!” topic?

No one can truly read minds, just like no one can truly multi task but when people say those words, they don't literally mean it.

What they mean by mind reading is they read your body language to know what your motives are. I suppose reading between the lines is also mind reading. Like I get on the bus with my baby in his stroller and the bus driver tells my husband and I "The baby needs to come out" and I know we are to take him out and close the stroller. Though she didn't say it but why would she want the baby out and not have the stroller folded? I was going to fold it anyway since it takes up room. But one day I got on the bus and I see a stroller on there that wasn't folded but the baby was out. I guess she really did mean "baby needs to come out" and nothing else. So next time I come on, I will take my baby out and leave the stroller unfolded to see if the bus driver tells me to collapse it.


Funny when I try and mind read, I do it wrong. I wonder if this is another AS issue? I can imagine NTs are horrible with this too when it comes to aspies because we're different than them and communicate different and have different body language. But with each other, they're usually right.