Ok. Finally going to sit down and deal with this:
You don't have to take that agrument; so Byron et al were projecting the actual pilots sensory input of a fighter pilot ... so what? That does not prove in anyway shape or form that they could have done anything more.
Ok. Telepathy in babylon 5 is not like spells in D&D, where the ability to cast one spell does not have any predictive power with respect to the ability to cast others. Telepathy encompasses a broad range of skills and abilities, the ability to do one of those things is predictive of the ability to do others. Doing a harder thing predicts the ability to do easier things etc. If they can receive sensory impressions over a distance without line of sight, surely they can project sensory input without line of sight over distance. That makes sense right? Those sensory inputs could be pain signals, just to toss out an example. They can also be full on hallucinations which may cause someone to behave oddly--or dangerously.
The point I have been trying to make with Degan for a while, is that mundanes have absolutely no defense against these attacks. At least unless they are specifically trained and even then the defenses they can throw up are of limited use, mantras, reciting poems over and over again etc. They can block a casual surface scan that way, but not a deep scan or attack probes.
Which is my rebuttal to Degan. Telepaths do not, cannot, have not at all been demonstrated to use telapthy to "ride in" to someone elses mind. That is what his claim that they can only do horrible things at range to other telepaths requires. It makes no sense.
If you have a weapon of some sort--say something the destructive power of which degrades with range like a laser or gun--will you have an easier time damaging an armored or unarmored target near the edge of your effective range? Obviously, the unarmored target. A mundane is a soft target.
This is a logical argument. The inference is reasonable based upon everything we know about telepaths and how they function in the B5 universe. We know from Bester Ascendant that when playing Cops and Blips six year old telepath children use the accidentally projected thoughts of telepaths to track their targets and also to evade capture. The children get made fun of for"blooping" their thoughts and learn how to shield their thoughts behind blocks and walls early in life. Even if they could a mundane has no such training, no such experience. They have no defense and as a result should be vulnerable at the same or even longer ranges than a telepath. Frankly, that vulnerability as at the same range is the Null Hypothesis that needs to be tested.
It stands to reason, unless shown otherwise that if a telepath can do their mojo at range against an enemy telepath, they can do so at range against a mundane.
Now, we know the telepaths can attack the minds of Shadow Battlecrabs which did not have a telepathic CPU, and even if they did the telepathic mind can defend itself.
To Degan: If telepaths can only attack a telepathic mind at range, why the fuck were the shadows worried enough to secure human telepaths as CPUs?
The telepaths did not do anything via viewscreens on either Whitestars or Sharlins.
What Rock were you under during Walkabout? Initially Lyta was looking through an external window on the bridge, but those are only in the front. When attempting to disable the second Battlecrab she was unable to harm it because she was exhausted, but did not have line of sight with the Mk 1 eye. She was facing the front of the bridge while they were retreating with the shadow vessel behind them. Unless she was using the projector she had no LOS.
The minbari telepaths were apparently in the sleeping quarters of the Sharlin, which if they are anything like those on the whitestar have no external windows, so the only way they were doing it was from a viewscreen, or
not looking at their targets at all.
Then again, how is this relevant to the issue before the bar?
It deals with the claim that the shadow ships are telepaths, and also with yours that they can only engage at space combat ranges with other telepaths.
Then how is it that the Shadow vessel proved vulnerable to telepathic interference?
Because those defenses are not perfect, they are inferior to an actual telepath. Lyta also reacted as she would to a mind which was Horrifying. She also has to propagate whatever is the carrier for telepathy across a considerable distance, which is why she was unable to do anything to the second battlecrab.
A pilot onboard would have been affected, but the ship in that circumstance would have continued along its vector, albeit uncontrolled.
If the crabs obeyed the laws of physics that should have happened regardless of the mechanism of the telepathic attack, whether it (the crab) is telepathic or not. That it did not just means that there is a strange relationship between the ships drive system and Sir. Isaac Newton. A relationship which is somewhat strained.
Or, Byron was projecting into Bo's mind the memory of his own experiences as a Black Omega pilot, with his imagination of the current enemy filling in the details of the combat.
You are violating parsimony. Particularly because the context was clearly otherwise.
It speaks directly to the issue of range, since they were not able to affect Bester until he came right into the corridor where they were gathered.
It does not when there are confounding factors such as the need to be able to penetrate his blocks, even his subconscious ones. They also had to do it in such a way that when they started and finished would be seamlessly integrated into his memory.
Yes an existential threat, or one that could be taken as one, especially after planet killers began to be deployed in the war. But yet we see no Jason Ironheart.
Not that you would see him if he were watching... But no. Not an existential threat to the entire galaxy. It was bad, but if he did care, I imagine he kept an eye on things. If they got out of hand, he may well have intervened. In the event of an ISD which is invulnerable to the actual weapons of the younger races... well...
She could be surprised whenever she is not focussing, and it's not possible to keep focus on every person in a room, for example.
Except that she has done exactly that. To mundanes. Telepaths are harder, they can defend themselves. If I had a sword, I would find it much easier to kill everyone in a room if those people were unarmed and not moving than I would if they so much as tried to run around and hit me with sticks....
I outlined how a stardestroyer crew could compile charts for navigation in unfamiliar territory the last time a subject like this one came up (then being a lone ISD in the Star Trek universe): by first finding the key landmarks (black holes, pulsars) as a basis for triangulation and a basic grid coordinate system, then using probe data as well as sensor readings and communications intercepts to identify population centres, spacelanes, military command centres, and in the case of the B5 territories the jumpgates, and I did touch upon some of these points in my first posting in this thread. From that, it would be quite feasible to construct usable charts for the navicomps and single out targets of opportunity.
Possibly, that would however take time. It also assumes that they have the capacity to intercept B5 FTL comms which IIRC go through hyperspace. I would not grant that ability.
it is not a world indicated as holding a populated settlement. It does not have space traffic going toward or from it, nor is there any comm-traffic focussed upon it or eminating from it.
That depends entirely on A) Time Period and B) Their intel. At how distant a range can they detect ship traffic? They have no reasonable way of intercepting FTL comms. It will take them a considerable amount of time even with FTL sensors to sweep the galaxy for all of the relevant map bits they need.
The question is not whether anybody would "hold back", the question is whether they would even get the time to do anything at all before the stardestroyer flattened every major and most of the minor worlds of the B5 civilsations. Their pace of travel is days/weeks, which determines the pace of their warfare, and now they're up against an enemy that can traverse their spaces in hours. That's the problem they face.
Indeed. Though specific worlds will be stumbling blocks unless they either do not attack them, or attack them first. They would have little to no knowledge of the Psi Corps for example because their intel with what they can do, unless they land on and interrogate planets, which exposes them to problems of infiltration if they do it often enough, will be shit. This is where Angurius' prior post comes in.
One wonders where these legions of mind-fuck-capable Psi Cops were during the Earth-Minbari War. Or where the strong, patriotic and fiercly self-serving Centauri telepaths were when they were being bombed by the Narn and Drazi. We could go on.
Caught by surprise, not enough of them to do much given the number of ships, spread out serving their near feudal overlords. Centauri telepaths are basically pawns of the noblemen. Any number of reasons.
As for the Minbari war, Teep vs Teep is a stalemate. Bester may not have wanted his telepaths on the front lines, but if you dont think they got used when earth was facing bombardment I have a peat bog in siberia to sell you.
For example, a P5 reading a persons mind, does not automatically translate to a P5 being able to subvert a persons will, which is what they would have actually needed to do to make this trick anywhere near combat applicable.
Causing a hallucination would work, no need for subversion. A P5 cannot do that anyway, not without close contact. A P5 is weak enough that they need to be within 25 meters or so for a surface Scan, and to avoid undue strain need close proximity or physical contact for a deep scan. Higher level telepaths (and as I said, it appears as if the scale is logarithmic) they have no such problems.
Here's another riddle; if the Vorlons are the Uber-Teeps, why and how were Shadow ships able to engage and destroy them in Coriana 6?
The mind boggles at the frankly outstanding leaps of capability that is being assigned the the B5 teeps.
It is an inconsistency yes. On the other hand, the Vorlons did engineer human telepaths. It is possible that their abilities are weak, or just more limited, compared to the upper levels of Younger Race telepaths. Otherwise they would not have engineered them in the first place.
It may not be true telepathy either. They are energy beings, it is possible that rather than use telepathy they literally project themselves, which would explain why when a vorlon touches a mind it leaves a fragment as it did in Sheriden.
It's not like the shadows would have only recently been vulnerable to this particular exploit. Frankly the idea that they wouldn't have developed a countermeasure tens of thousands of years ago is absurd.
Agreed with an stipulation:
Humans were among the initial crop of humanoids the vorlons experimented with. They basically combined the genetic templates of all available species and then integrated those with a gene for telepathy they found in a sub-sentient. True telepathy cannot, it seems in that universe, evolve on its own in a sentient race. The Nephilim are the results of that experimentation (the vorlons used homo-erectus for the human part of the template). They they went around introducing it into populations of the younger races, maybe just before the last war, perhaps in other cycles. Who knows.
Perhaps the shadows do have a counter measure, but it is just not perfect?
