system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Firefly] Is River Tam actually psychic?
gpt
Yes, but she lacks control. She will pick up random thoughts from everyone. Active thoughts, passing thoughts, things long dismissed but still remembered. The constant flood is almost impossible to sort through, and gets dumped randomly in her own brain. So a thought of someone who knew about Miranda and was hush on it for years would drop into her own long term memory and sit there ignored/forgotten until a trigger reminds her of it, just as if it were her own memory. That's where the madness comes from, she can't tell the memories apart.