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I don’t know why but the veracity of Jaynes’ hypothesis was never important to me. It’s such a creative and extraordinary leap. It challenged me to think critic

I don’t know why but the veracity of Jaynes’ hypothesis was never important to me. It’s such a creative and extraordinary leap. It challenged me to think critically about assumptions I might make about our humanity and its history, kinda like a great sci-fi novel.

defrost 4y ago
It was recommended reading in my undergraduate mathematics class in 1980, we had a lot of serious math texts on the core list and a wealth of periphiral material that pushed various edges. The rationale was that "this is probably bullshit, but it's exactly the kind of BS that you need to read closely and argue for or against various aspects". At the time, of course, fractals were vogue, AI was just around the corner, and we had exercises on robotic algorithms, speech recognition, distributed text searching and indexing, read on neural nets and so on. It was a great read - I never bought the 'recent' evolutionary arguments but I enjoyed the discussions of what constituted 'intelligence', a section still worth reading today.
- alisonkisk 4y ago
ghaff 4y ago
And the Westworld TV series adopted it to some degree. I don't know either the theory or remember its use in the TV series well enough to seriously comment but it was brought in at one point.
helpfulclippy 4y ago
It's true. I've enjoyed reading ancient sources a LOT more since reading Jaynes. I don't think he's right, but that book really uncovered a lot of unchecked assumptions of mine about how people think. One of my favorites. I need to give it a re-read sometime.
kimi 4y ago
I believe you are right: read this as a great sci-fi (in the literal, not Asimovian sense) book, and then you'll get some ideas. YMMV, but you won't mind the time spent reading it.
rspencer 4y ago
If you want to read a sci-fi drawing from it, I'm surprised to see no-one yet mention Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Without spoiling too much, it asks what would happen if the bicameral mind could be reconstructed.
- varjag 4y ago
  Also Blindsight/Echopraxia by Peter Watts.

defrost 4y ago

It was recommended reading in my undergraduate mathematics class in 1980, we had a lot of serious math texts on the core list and a wealth of periphiral material that pushed various edges. The rationale was that "this is probably bullshit, but it's exactly the kind of BS that you need to read closely and argue for or against various aspects". At the time, of course, fractals were vogue, AI was just around the corner, and we had exercises on robotic algorithms, speech recognition, distributed text searching and indexing, read on neural nets and so on. It was a great read - I never bought the 'recent' evolutionary arguments but I enjoyed the discussions of what constituted 'intelligence', a section still worth reading today.

alisonkisk 4y ago

ghaff 4y ago

And the Westworld TV series adopted it to some degree. I don't know either the theory or remember its use in the TV series well enough to seriously comment but it was brought in at one point.

helpfulclippy 4y ago

It's true. I've enjoyed reading ancient sources a LOT more since reading Jaynes. I don't think he's right, but that book really uncovered a lot of unchecked assumptions of mine about how people think. One of my favorites. I need to give it a re-read sometime.

kimi 4y ago

I believe you are right: read this as a great sci-fi (in the literal, not Asimovian sense) book, and then you'll get some ideas. YMMV, but you won't mind the time spent reading it.

rspencer 4y ago

If you want to read a sci-fi drawing from it, I'm surprised to see no-one yet mention Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. Without spoiling too much, it asks what would happen if the bicameral mind could be reconstructed.

varjag 4y ago
Also Blindsight/Echopraxia by Peter Watts.