
Mr. Jaynes’ Wild Ride (2013) - gbear605
https://meltingasphalt.com/mr-jaynes-wild-ride/
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_nemo_
I was intrigued by the reputation of this book (The Origins of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind), thinking that it would be "crazy but
just might be true". After reading it I'm just baffled by reviews like these,
it's as if other people had read a completely different book: it wasn't even
really about the nature of consciousness or anything like that, the book's
main thesis instead is a very bizarre claim that - and I'm quoting the book
here - "according to our theory, we could say that before the second
millennium B.C., everyone was schizophrenic.". Literally schizophrenic. And
then the writer tries to explain every cultural phenomena of the Bronze Age
with hallucinations in a way that is reminiscent of the 'alien astronauts'
books of Erich von Däniken. I have a longer review here:
[https://mzntrp.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-bicameral-mind-
how-i...](https://mzntrp.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-bicameral-mind-how-is-this-
still.html)

~~~
joe_the_user
I think you're viewing the book's thesis through a very limited, modern lens.

True or false, I'd frame the hypothesis as "first came language, then came
consciousness". Language was shared, something "arose" when people were
together. So "the gods" were to point of origin of language.

The reason that kind of hypothesis is appealing is that consciousness and
modern thinking had to arise _somehow_. Going from animals with no language to
a modern human with self-consciousness and language is a _big_ , a huge step.
We need an intermediate step between these. An "everyone is generating
language but _not self-consciously_ " period is such a hypothetical step.

None of this is to claim Jaynes' thesis is true. But it's a reason it's
appealing and generally not put on the level of Erich von Däniken. The way
that pseudo-scientists like von Däniken fail is they explain simple phenomena
with more complex, more unexplained phenomena. Jaynes, whatever his faults, is
_trying_ not to do that.

~~~
_nemo_
My impression was very different: to me it seems that the modern fans of the
book close their eyes to the blatantly silly parts that make up the vast
majority of the book and pretend that it's only really about the
'consciousness as a software' idea that makes up a tiny fraction of it. This
quote from Daniel Dennett is very revealing: "Now you might think that if you
throw out his account of hallucinations you haven’t got much left of Jaynes
theory, but in fact I think you would, although he would probably resist
throwing that part away" If you throw out the hallucinations part and the
stuff built on top of that then 90% of the book is gone, and he kind of admits
this. This is like saying that I want to build on Darwin's work from the
Origin of Species, but throwing out his account of natural selection.

The Däniken comparison comes from the way in which the writer shows you some
ancient painting or statue and then claims that it "obviously" depicts how the
king or his servants were controlled by hallucinations. I was having
flashbacks to when Däniken was doing the same thing with similar artifacts
from the same era saying that it must depict "aliens". And I would argue that
the theory of a society where everybody is schizophrenic and sharing a
collective hallucination of the king while the king is controlled by a
hallucination of the previous king, is more complex and creates more
unexplained questions than what it's trying to explain - just like saying "the
aliens did it".

~~~
joe_the_user
Basically, you're really still only arguing from "that's ridiculous".

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giardini
Ahhh, yet another article about the 20th century book having the most
captivating title ever - "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the
Bicameral Mind"!

In all honesty I must admit to a brief period in my early life when I severely
doubted that my father exhibited true human consciousness. While never fully
resolved, that question opened my mind to the possibility of Jaynes'
hypotheses. And so I read the book but found it of little use.

In my middle years copies of "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of
the Bicameral Mind" became commonly available in used bookstores at the lowest
of prices. I bought every copy I found merely for the beautifully-displayed
and elegant title and with the growing awareness that perhaps it might serve
yet another purpose than display someday.

These days I use the book mostly as a tool, an impediment of sorts, with which
I burden the back and mind of unwelcome and overly-inquisitive visitors to my
workplace. I feel no qualms in giving them a copy of the book, charging them
with the responsibility of giving me a full and detailed review before or upon
returning again. To my great delight no one sent away with Jaynes' tour-de-
force in hand has reported back!

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ncmncm
In "The Master and His Emissary", a (usually described as deeply flawed but
fascinating) book by Iain McGilchrist about brain organization, the author had
an alternative interpretation to address the essential timing problem of JJ's
notion, where events around the Iliad are several thousand years too late for
the process he describes.

The fascination with JJ's idea is not about his theory, it is about the
problem he tried to solve, and that we still have not solved. He offered one
idea, and supported it as well as he could with what he had, but discarding
his idea takes you no closer to a solution.

Note that the events of the Iliad are around the beginning of the Iron Age,
near the time of what historians call The Catastrophe, of c. 1190 BC when all
the coastal cities around the Mediterranean (except in Egypt) were sacked, and
written records dry up for four centuries. The Iliad was written down sometime
after the end of this period, coincidentally around the time coins were first
minted. Civilization had already existed for 2000+ years, and had money all
along, just no actual currency. The Great Pyramids were already ancient, but
still much more impressive-looking than today, because their white facing had
not yet been stripped off to build mosques of. But I Digress.

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mattnewport
Jaynes' book is cited as a major influence on Snow Crash. This article
reminded me of the mental note I made to read it when I heard that.

