Jaynes' ideas are facially wacky it's true, but they're still extremely interesting. I recommend anyone who is curious about the human condition to read The Ori

Jaynes' ideas are facially wacky it's true, but they're still extremely interesting. I recommend anyone who is curious about the human condition to read The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. I'm not saying he gets everything (or even anything) right, but it's indisputably a really fascinating thesis. And let's bear in mind that plenty of other obviously absurd theories actually hold up really well, relativity and quantum electrodynamics being two of the obvious big ones. Obviously the science of human consciousness is much more intractable, but even so.