If you could control people’s minds to get whatever you wanted in life, would you do it, or would you rather things be judged on your own merit?
I hate to admit it, but I would go the easy route. I’d probably be a completely different person, a tyrant even. Good thing I can’t control minds, huh?
I can’t think of anything worse you could possibly do to someone.
That would be the ultimate violation
For some things, like monetary wealth and getting myself out of dangerous situations, I’d have no scruples and use my abilities to their utmost but for interpersonal relations, I’d try my hardest not to use it. I’d prefer to have no friends than people who I know (instead of just suspect) would rather spend their time watching paint peel than associate with me.
So if you were getting raped by someone, you wouldn’t use this ability to change their mind about it and make them stop? You see someone that isn’t paying attention, you wouldn’t use your power to correct their course and save them from a potentially lethal crash?
Mind control sounds fun, but the power to make people soil themselves is even better. Nobody’s gonna beat you up if they have a load in their pants 
I bet many people would start out ‘using their power for good’ but they would probably end up being a tyrant.
For one thing if you started stopping crime then sooner or later all criminals would want to kill you.
So you change all of their minds.
This is like when you finally break down and start using the cheat codes in a game. It always ruins the game.
A good-guy mind-controller would be fascinating to play in a supers role-playing game.
Unfortunately, due to the aforementioend possiblity of rampant abuse, I’m guessing that the point-buy for that power would be astronomical, and you wouldn’t be able to get any back-up powers, and, as a good guy, you wouldn’t want to use it except in situations like Incubus described, so you’d be damn near useless in combat. It could work in a dark, non-combat-oriented campaign, though.
life will be pretty boring if everybody behaves as you expect them to.
Which means you have to work on your imagination.
I love it when people use nonsensical extremes to illustrate hypothetical points and force people to agree with them. :rolleyes:
Sometimes something that is wrong… Is wrong ALL the time.
Um. No. Forcing someone to stop raping you by whatever means necessary is not wrong, whether it be hypothetical mind control or even murder if it comes to that.
You don’t need to see his identification.
We don’t need to see his identification.
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.
These aren’t the droids we’re looking for.
He can go on about his business.
You can go on about your business.
Move along.
Move along! Move along!
IMHO, it would still be “wrong”, but “justified”. My vocabulary lacks words to differentiate between “morally wrong - should not be done” and “morally wrong, but necessary”.
During the job interview process, I’d influence my interviewers to think I’d done really well.
I’d influence the hiring manager to give me a large salary.
I’d influence whoever necessary to convince them that we needed more staff, so I could kick back on the job.
So I’d pretty much do what I do now, except I’d be better at it. 
I wouldn’t use it at all in my personal life; that would be unpleasant.
I might also be tempted to use it to make the the US president to be a bit more environmentally responsible. Getting him to sign the Kyoto Accord would be a service to all mankind.
Okay, I’d just use it all the time and be evil, I admit.
Can you use it on yourself?
Cause I would seriously mind control myself into being less inhibited, less shy, more outgoing, more confident, excersice regularly, eat well, sing more, call my family more even if I can’t stand them, be neater, work harder, learn new things more often…
Etc. You get the idea. I would use it to make myself a better person.
I second. But I would have to be Charles Xavier to make myself a better person.
How deep does this mind controll go?
Do you just change someone’s mind for a little bit? Thirty minutes later, they are like “hey, those were my nachos!”
Or can I say look at a woman and make her fall in love with me and she will be in love with me for the rest of her life? Or until I change her mind.
I don’t think I would do it. There are lots of morally grey things I could be doing now to make my life easier, but I don’t do them out of a sense of integrity.
I’d try to only use it on people who pissed me off.
Luckily, I’m generally an easy-going guy. Mostly.
BTW, what kind of range are we talking about, here? Would I have to be staring someone in the face to use the power, or could I do it on groups of people from hundreds of feet away?
Charles Xavier is an… uhm… BLEEEEEEP, since we’re not in the Pit. If you were Charles Xavier, you would have it very easy to be a better person.
every time he makes a speech in public, mutant-hate goes up.
“a world where mutant and human can live together and in peace”. Dude, that implies mutants ain’t human. The scary part about mutants, or about anybody with any kind of fancyschmatzy powers, is that we know they are humans… they get angry, they get hurt… some of them are petty, some would balk at nothing to get what they want. For someone who reads minds, he sure don’t know jack about how to influence them.
might does not mean right, except if it’s His Xaviery Lordship doin’ it. HE is allowed to break all the rules which he’d like others to follow. I know quite a few people like this irl, for example lots of politicians who have done their best to rob their countries blind (but oh, let nobody else put is hand in the honey pot).
/pseudohijack
Would the “mind control” come with “mind reading”? As in “you can do some superficial reading without having to enter the person’s mind, sort of like when you read their facial expressions.”
I would feel sorely tempted to use it to get Mom to leave my house after only 2x the time for which she was officialy coming. She’s been known to spend 3 weeks when she came for one, 10 days coming for 3, etc. But I would try to restrain myself.
If I could read her mind, I might be able to learn what is it I need to say so she’ll go, while not offending her, and once I knew it I wouldn’t have to look again. Wouldn’t want to “go in” to her mind of anybody else’s… I’m sure I’d be running into TMI pretty fast and I’m a very private person myself so I respect other’s privacy.
Hell, I just wish I was better at reading people :dubious:
I’d take it, and use it. Quite a bit, in fact.
First step would probably be to convince someone to hire me as an at-home consultant with no duties in particular and a very large salary. A lot of my other uses would probably involve setting up a mild zone of stress and fear around me, so that anyone coming around to bother me would start feeling like maybe they should just go somewhere else.