Tomorrow morning, everyone in the world will gain the ability to read each other's mind

tomorrow morning, everyone in the world will gain the ability to read each other's mind.

They will be able to choose if they want to read someone's mind or not, but there is no way to stop anyone from reading if they want to.

How does society fare?

Each and every country descends into complete anarchy, politicians hang from every lamp post.

Is there any way of telling if your mind is being read?

Everyone dies.
The End.

Kino's Journey had an episode relating to this, where a country of people gained this power. They gradually grew hostile to one another, and were overwhelmed by so many mental voices. They decided to all live outside the range of each others' telepathy, spreading out and minimizing contact for the sake of their sanity and (anti-)social order.

Let me answer your question with another question: Fuck off shitposter.

Society collapses and is rebuilt on new premises now that the basic premises for society has changed. Same thing that would happen if nobody had hands anymore or if everyone lost the ability to read.

>Government now can use special police to read your thoughts.
>You can be thrown in jail for illegal thoughts now.
>Anyone who isn't trained to think of innocuous things 24/7 becomes a social outcast think of people who say 'controversial' stuff on social media, only way worse because everyone is that guy now
>The only safe people are those who isolate themselves.
>Society either collapses or becomes 1984.

>Zuckerberg is now able to use a new Facebook algorithm that advertises products based on your thoughts.

Anarchy.

i.d.k because i go out on a killing spree before i can be lynched

Society collapses and a lot of people die. Eventually a new society would form where everyone is fully aware and accepting of how fucked up everyone really is, a society that would make the decadence of the Eldar just before their fall look tame.

Correct answer

Everyone spends 60-70% of their time probing reasonably attractive strangers on the off-chance that they're thinking about screwing them.

I hang myself in my closet right away.

sure, by reading their mind.

Collapse

time to get real good at counting cards in my head

>How does society fare?
poorly

On the good side, we would know what conspiracies are true if any.

On the other hand, finding out how alien your thoughts are (or are not) from everyone else's would be really terrifying.

I'll go against the grain here and predict that underneath all the surface level gross, dark and embarrassing thoughts that everyone finds out about, people discover how fragile and insecure and needy their fellow person is alongside the simple well wishes that quiet people make. In the long run everyone becomes a little more understanding, more prone to leave people alone when they're in a weird mood, be sociable when welcomed and comfort them when they need it.

Society improves

This.
I imagine a lot of friendships would be broken and made.
Criminals and lawmen would get along a lot more.
A lot of blood will be spilt from politicians. They will have to be genuinely good people.
Warfare would be turned upside down, with either the dissolution of all secrets or more likely the isolation of anyone important.
Possible race war begins as people's secret racist thoughts are made public.

But at the end of the day it will be for the best. No more lies, though we may have to burn much of our society on which it was built.

Chaos Walking trilogy. It's a good read, harsh as hell for a supposed children's book.

Basically, the story starts in a town where there is only a male population, and everyone can hear each other's thoughts all the time. This is called the Noise. Main character comes of age, runs away from the coming-of-age ritual because that's to fucking murder someone with your bare hands. He legs it away, finds a crashed spaceship pod containing the first woman he's ever seen. The first major twist is that women's thoughts cannot be heard, and that it drove the men of the town so crazy that they murdered all the women.

But in this case they can choose whether or not they want to read a mind.

Reading minds would become as taboo as perving on other people pretty fucking quick. Law enforcement will still do it to you, just like they can frisk you, but normal people would treat it like something you only do with your sexual partner.

I suppose learning becomes easier as you can just get the thoughtform of a concept out of someone's head instead of needing to translate it through communication. Speech probably stops being used in a few generations since telepathy is much more efficient.

Sounds like a thinly veiled rant about men and society in literary form.