The bicameral world : in one room, the city dump. In the other room, the starred restaurant. Do these talk to each other ? Read on to find out!
Her Oh and re that bicameral mind thing - I remember you telling me about it before, tho I don't remember the context. Anyway it's a pretty intersting theory, but some of the guy's support for it doesn't make much sense, which may in truth be a reflection of the poor quality of the wiki article, 'cause how would they necessarily know how to form a good argument. So Ima prolly read moar. (One issue for instance is how article notes that Iliad has no self consciousness but Odyssey does; even granting the whole Homeric question as probably healthy skepticism, the pieces afaik are more or less acceptably 8th century BCE, so what, the change occurred within the span of 100 years, being super generous?! And if that was a "support" for his theory, why does it later suggest that mass migrations in 2nd century BCE lead to the change -- if it was demonstrated six centuries earlier?!)
Me No they aren't ? The Iliad is a more or less faithful notation of matter that had been circulated by as much as 1k years at that point. The Odyssey is more or less Homer's own material trying to follow up.
Her So this would suggest the change was even older? The mass migrations of the second millennium BC, caused by Mediterranean-wide earthquakes, created a rash of unexpected situations and stresses that required ancient minds to become more flexible and creative. Self-awareness, or consciousness, was the culturally evolved solution to this problem. Why is that being posited if change already occurred to the degree it's present in literature several centuries beforehand?
Me But you realise such a change would be gradual ?
Her Yes but how gradual; before it was six centuries, now it's as much as 16 centuries.
Me Let me make a model for it shall I ?
Her By all means.
Me Ok. At some point illo tempore, the chimps moving around started hearing voices. This is the deep reason some people insist there must have been an outside influence to civilisation (UFOs, god, w/e) : because to the chimps themselves it appeared that way.
Her Wait.
Me These voices were in fact not external, as it subjectively seemed, but internal : the brain had developed emergent organised permanent errors.
Her (Sorry didnt mean to interrupt.)
Me Now, the deep reasons for this particular set of OPE is not well understood, but it is a point of fact that sufficiently complex systems can develop these. The most accessible example is the computer virus. In the particular way it worked for humans, what happened was that structures in the brain emerged in one "zone", and needed to talk to the active zone, which is to say the part of brain that controlled the body and behaviour. Lacking sufficient bandwidth (because neuron bandwidth, ie axons, are an on-demand and kind-of slow application) the data ended up being routed around through a more distant node, which was well connected. That node happened to be speech. And so the chimps ended up with what the brain interpreted as "someone" speaking, merely because in brain-terms this'd actually be what'd happen. It's not so much unlike calling a cake "the French cake" because it came to you with the French post. Notwithstanding they got it from China. As coincidence would have it, this mutationi was also [mostly] beneficial, allowing for much more complex behaviours, at which point humanity split once again : those whose mutations worked fine were the new people ; those whose mutations didn't quite work were the schizophrenics. This is coherent with the emergence of schizophrenia in the later life (onset is usually 30 to 40, and the earlier it emerges the more hopeless the prognostic) and it also unifies and explains beautifully an otherwise ununderstood and incomprehensible set of perhaps unrelated issues. (Generally this is true, as onthogenesis follows filogenesis, disease appears at failed twists in the road, as it were.)
Her Aha! Well modeled this way it seems much stronger. Except for one part
Me Now, since this mutation happened to use speech as its route...
Her Oh sorry. Fuck.
Me ...it had the incredible and never before seen ability TO INFECT, which is indeed rare for such a thing. Because it could well hijack the auditory processes of uninfected people, to expose them to THE VOICE, which in some cases perhaps organised the volitive zone in such a way that it started to hear (or demand to hear!) the other zone. Regardless how or why, it did spread, over perhaps as many as 10 or 20 thousand years, achieving (through populational pressure and negative selection for the ex-"healthy") pretty much unanimity (or perhaps a strong majority) cca 3k bce. AT THIS POINT the routing problem started to be resolved in some people, allowing direct communication bypassing the hearing pretense in some select individuals. Also at this point we believe there were a lot of sudden stressors, such as perhaps earthquakes. These two are probably coincidental, even if the former is perhaps denuding the human experience for a more deep and anxious experience of the latter. Nevertheless, the impression created in the "fixed" minds was that of abandonment : not only were the voices now silent, but also look at all the trouble! This pretty much explains the Jewish sacred texts and their many copy-pasted versions hence, as the journal of some people some time ago. A shared journal, and rather primitive in notation, but nevertheless. This also created a strong demand among these for a retelling of the world, such as it was. Homer fulfilled this need, by collecting together and reshaping in an non-audible-ready format all sorts of previous grunts and stupidities. The shape of the Iliad pre Homer doesn't exist not because the events depicted did not exist and were not known having been invented by him, but because their previous expression is of a completely different nature. The difference being of the kind of Joe grunts atop Jane vs "and then Joe grunted atop Jane". Joe's experience of Jane is not literary, nor vice-versa, and they wouldn't necessarily describe it as I have. This met with extreme success, being exactly what was needed. But eventually Homer ran out of material and wanted to make new material. Which he did make, and which was equally successful, but it was substantially different. For this was not a description of Joe and Jane, but an imagination of Joe and Jane, and you can tell this difference analysing the two texts. All the beauty of this theory aside, the support is indeed weak and will likely remain so. ~Fin~
Her I'm not even gonna put the question to the one bit that seemed weird early on right now, I'd rather sit with the whole thing.
Me Good habit.
Her If it was intriguing before it's miraculous now. TYVM for the model.
Me Usually takes a little explaining for people to realise wtf the guy wanted to say. I guess i should publish this.
Her Well your presentation is (shock of shocks!) about infinitytimes better than the disorganized pancake on the wiki page.
Me Lol. Who could have believed that a city dump run on communist principles is not quite equal to a starred restaurant run by an actual chef.
Her That's funny until I try to answer it honestly ;/
- Not used here as the genetics term of art, but for its plain and ordinary meaning. [↩]
