Here’s the sitch:
Let’s say that unpickled bastard Fabulous Creature finally manages to conquer the Earth. Instead of using flying monkeys or trained bees or 1920s-style death rays, though, he uses an orbital mind controlling device. A group of brave Dopers, (rendered impervious to FC’s tech by years of rolling their eyes at his anti-Peter Jackson rants), manages to storm his headquarters, defeat his minions, and destroy the device. However, the exposure to the mind control gizmo has the side effect of turning one-tenth of 1 percent of the people of Earth into telepaths. The new telepaths are evenly distributed throughout the world’s population; no nation or ethnic group has more or fewer of them than random chance would indicate. The power can be inherited, but the gene that carries it is recessive.
The new telepaths are distributed as follows:
45% have powers like Deanna Troi. They can sense emotions from a distance–up to, say, half a mile away–but they can neither transmit to nor read the thoughts of others, except when dealing with other telepaths.
Antother 45% have powers like Mr. Spock. They can read the thoughts of telepaths and non-telepaths alike, as well as probe the memories of others, change their memories, establish psychic rapports, and so forth–but doing any of this requires extreme concentration and physical touch. They can only receive over a distance if the signal in question is coming from a more powerful telepath or someone they’ve previously established a link with. They find probing memories of other people very disturbing, however, and generally tend to avoid it.
9.999% have powers like Lwaxana Troi. They can do anything anybody in the first category can do, and also read and broadcast thoughts, within a distance of about 1 mile. They can also duplicate the feats of anybody in category 2, also requiring physical contact to do so. People in this category can read the minds of no more than 5 people at a time, and likewise transmit to no more than 5 at a time. Nobody gets any other ESP–no precognition, clairvoyance, telekinesis, nothing.
0.001% have all the abilities of persons in the first 3 categories, only more so–a range of between 5 and 50 miles, say, and a the ability to simultanously broadcast to a maximum of 20 to 100 people, depending on individual talent and strength of will.
You’re a category 4, and you happen to have the trust of your nation’s government both before and after the change. Consequently you get asked to chair a committee writing ethical guidelines for telepaths.
What do you recommend?