The confabulation to justify picking out related images that the left brain never observed (chicken and snow shovel in the article) reminds me profoundly of the confident slop produced by LLMs. Make you wonder if llms might be one half of the "brain" of a true AGI
All of this is way above my paygrade, however..
There exists this work by Julian Jaynes called The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind:
<a href="https://ia802907.us.archive.org/32/items/The_Origin_Of_Consciousness_In_The_Breakdown_Of_The_Bicameral_Mind_Julian_Jaynes_1976.pdf/The%20Origin%20of%20Consciousness%20in%20the%20Breakdown%20of%20the%20Bicameral%20Mind_%20Julian%20Jaynes_%201976.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://ia802907.us.archive.org/32/items/The_Origin_Of_Consc...</a><p>Seems pertinent, and now I will try to read it again. Perhaps it will be useful for reference by others.
The fact that the explaining part of the brain fills in any blanks in a creative manner (you need the shovel to clean the chicken shed), reminds me to some replies of LLMs.<p>I once provided an LLM the riddle of the goat, cabbage and wolf, and changed the rules a bit. I prompted that the wolf was allergic to goats (and hence would not eat them). Still the llm insisted on not leaving them together on the same river bank, because the wolf would otherwise sneeze and scare the goat away.<p>My conclusion was that the llm solved the riddle using prior knowledge plus creativity, instead of clever reasoning.
I always thought it was interesting that the human brain grew relatively quickly in evolutionary history. 3 million years ago, our ancestors had a 400 cc brain. 2.5 million years later, it was 1,400 ccs--more than 3 times larger.<p>That implies to me that a larger brain immediately benefited our ancestors. That is, going from 400 to 410 ccs had evolutionary advantage and so did 410 to 420, etc.<p>That implies that once the brain architecture was set, you could increase intelligence through scale.<p>I bet there are some parallels to current AI there.
Related: <i>You Are Two</i> by GCP Grey: <<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYbgdo8e-8</a>>
>Miller’s study uses a test called the “trait-judgment task”: A trait like happy or sad flashes on a screen, and research subjects indicate whether the trait describes them. Miller has slightly modified this task for his split-brain patients—in his experiments, he flashes the trait on a screen straight in front of the subject’s gaze, so that both the left and right hemispheres process the information. Then, he quickly flashes the words “me” and “not me” to one side of the subject’s gaze—so that they’re processed only by one hemisphere—and the subject is instructed to point at the trait on the screen when Miller flashes the appropriate descriptor.<p>Seems to me (not a neuroscientist) like there's a flaw in that experiment: how would the right hemisphere understand the meaning of the words, if language is only processed by the left? I also recall reading that the more "primitive" parts of our brains don't have a concept of negation.<p>But maybe they have been considering this and it's no issue?
If one is interested in hemisphere theory, including psychological and philosophical implications, make sure to check out the work of Ian McGilchrist:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V3_Y_FuMYk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V3_Y_FuMYk</a>
Cool, and terrifying. This makes me consider that there is some sort of consciousness in the non-lingual side of split-brain patients.<p>Which also makes me consider: Is there some sort of consciousness in my own brain I'm not aware of? Sure, my brain does a lot I'm not conscious of—but is there a quiet, thinking awareness that exists in my skull, that I, the mind writing this, do not know of?
i haven't had any split brain operation done or anything but my personal experience as someone with dissociative identity disorder is that i can usually tell which parts are more left or right brained based on how they react to everyday events<p>for our particular brain , the logical ones usually have immediate reactions that suck (like borderline personality disorder) and the emotional ones tend to have mish mash wordses feelings<p>(idk how to write that it's like words-es, the s at the end is very gender for emotional feelings words so all of them tend to have it)
I disagree with Steven Pinker’s claim that consciousness arises from the brain.<p>This perspective fails to establish that the brain produces consciousness, as it relies on the mistaken assumption that "mind" and "consciousness" are interchangeable. While brain activity may influence the mind, consciousness itself could be a more fundamental aspect of reality. Rather than generating consciousness, the brain might function like a radio, merely receiving and processing information from an all-pervasive field of consciousness.<p>In this view, a split-brain condition would not create two separate consciousnesses but instead allow access to two distinct streams of an already-existing, universal consciousness.