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Comment by beagle3 | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat relevant: Julian Jaynes theory of the bicameral mind. The TL;DR of it is that we have multiple selves that are cooperating and competing for control, and that we mostly learn to suppress all but one as we age. Those other "voices" are still there for kids (imaginary friends) and schizophrenics, as well as "normal" people (apparently, 7% or so report hearing voices) and are Jaynes explanation for all kind of oracles and "god spoke to me" historical descriptions.

I don't know that it's really testable or really applicable to anything, but it is very interesting. I recommend reading even if you know you'll disagree (I'm not sure yet what my position is).

[0] https://www.julianjaynes.org/bicameralmind.php

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>I don't know that it's really testable or really applicable to anything

I haven't yet read the book and I'm not sure if it applies, but I found these papers interesting:

* "The case for mental duality" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00007755)

* "The case against mental duality" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686749)

From the abstract, these seem to refer to the physical duality (left hemisphere vs right hemisphere) which Jaynes does postulate. Personally, I look at his philosophy at a more abstract level - I think it's less important to pinpoint the spatial location (and more prone to be wrong given his 1975-era knowledge, although he was IIUC more right than wrong with his predictions that later became testable); rather, the idea that there's more than one "self".

This was taken, in some ways ad absurdum, by Tony Wright in "Left in the Dark" / "Return to the brain of Eden" - which is also an interesting read, though I can't decide if it's science or science fiction.

If you want more than the abstract, the friendly Russian site is now at .se ;) Pinpointing the spatial location of separate "selves" makes the hypoteses more testable (by examining split-brain patients or temporarily disabling one hemisphere od healthy ones). Actually, the second paper concludes that while the view that each human has two concurrent consciousnesses is most likely wrong, the reality might be even weirder (multiple intermingling "selves").

More testable, but potentially too detailed thus leading one astray. My impression is that the intermingling selves are indeed more likely.

Which is what I was thinking as well. Wikipedia has a brief summary, and it has been submitted to HN on multiple occasions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameralism_(psychology)

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