Jaynes' work is wonderful anthropological scifi, and I recommend it to anyone for that purpose. And I'm not being snarky there; I think it's really enjoyable as

Jaynes' work is wonderful anthropological scifi, and I recommend it to anyone for that purpose. And I'm not being snarky there; I think it's really enjoyable as something to stimulate the imagination. As actual science, the book should set every cherrypicking alarm bell ringing. For example, he talks a lot about right vs. left positioning of religious imagery, which is a key part of his theory. The problem with that is that if you come up with any theory based on right/left, you can expect about 50% of the evidence to support you, even if you're wrong. And the whole book is like that. Lots of enthralling examples, with speculation about how they connect to his theory, but very little systematic analysis of evidence.