YHK - yet another hacker news clone

The forebrain is the main processor. It does all the stuff you think of from OS to application, and has some ability to monitor and even interfere in the system management co-processor.

Whether either of these things have interesting internal structure and functional decomposition is left unaddressed. This observation about the progenitor cells is a bit like seeing the BOM that says they come from different suppliers.

I think it's also a bit of guesswork to try to reason out the evolutionary history. I.e. was either unit "in the market" longer and useful on its own, versus essentially complementary parts that just happen to have a divided supply chain! Intuition about evolutionary processes and life makes it really easy to assume the hindbrain is an older, legacy system that existed independently or with other long-lost companion units.

(Perhaps the updated title is less objectionable?)

...in a specific region, in a specific time period, immediately before the economic and then societal crash of the eastern Mediterranean that changed culture in the region forever.

The hypothesis breaks down pretty hard when you realize he just kind of handwaves away people in the rest of the world not having any kind of abrupt cut-over in the styles of recorded literature that forms the backbone of his arguments.

The thing you are referencing is actually describing the alleged Holy Spirit entering the world:

(With a little help from AI, don’t kill me)

In Christian pneumatology (the study of the Holy Spirit), there is a similar paradigm shift between the ancient world and the New Testament. In the Old Covenant, God's presence was primarily external (pillars of fire, the Ark of the Covenant, stone tablets). With Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, God's presence moves inside human believers ("a new heart... and a new spirit within you," Ezekiel 36:26; 1 Corinthians 6:19).

Development of Conscience: The transition from external command-driven behavior to an internal moral compass echoes the New Testament promise that God's law would be written directly onto human hearts and minds (Jeremiah 31:33).

—-

The change Julian Jaynes observes was actually divinely promised, interesting that it can be measured.

Further, the original study that sees the merging of the two parts of the brain would also fit the Holy Spirit providing reconciliation of how your brain is even wired after it was imparted onto the world. This was all promised , if you believe Christ. It’s even more reassuring that that this biological reconciliation happened around when Christ died , plus or minus a thousand years.

Also, that study is extremely dubious/barring on fan-fiction.

Homer (if he was even a person) recited oral epic poetry (that we've lost most of) and we've written down an extremely lossy version of it.

Why should we take any of the mythical character's interactions with mythical gods as any insight for the brains of real humans???

It'd be like year 4000 historians citing World of Warcraft claiming the Lich King is a very obvious example that humans lack an internal monologue because he was not able to distinguish his own motives/actions between Ner'zhul/Arthas (both spiritual entities inhabiting the "Lich King" body).

That means whatever the change was would have to had occur simultaneously in separate populations all over the world within almost no time at all.

- Jaynes used the term “reminiscence” in a way very different from Ballard and claimed no animal is capable of reminiscence. That was a very odd claim overall.

- Then he claimed that if we ever create a language that can express everything, metaphors won’t be possible. Which is, I think, almost obviously false, because many metaphors are constructed artistically, despite having exact terms.

- And he talks about spatialization as a primitive aspect of consciousness, but he seems to talk about relations/connectedness at best.

And so on - I misplaced my notes somewhere and only recovered a few random bits. Still, interesting reading, fun (albeit really questionable) core idea, but those papercuts were kinda off-putting for me.

The research in the new research paper is about a split between front and back of the brain. So something entirely different. That split is an old idea. Jaynes would most likely have known about it. But it wasnt part of his theory.

It also could be one of the most terrifying talks I’ve ever heard, but since it is eight years old, I am going to just pretend all of the research he mentions fell through and I have nothing worry about.