🧵 View Thread
🧵 Thread (18 tweets)
After watching this engaging convo between JP & IM about the latter's work on the @divided_brain, I have the sense that my top personal learning priority is shifting my internal locus to my right hemisphere. Suggestions for how to train this? https://t.co/9wZTW6ywE8
IM has a different model than the classic rational-left / emotional-right brain divide, where each hemisphere specializes not in different things but in different perspectives. The left ignores any info that doesn't fit its model; the right integrates unknowns. (👈oversimplified) https://t.co/3NxS7QVoo3
Relevant RH capacities: 🎭improvising 👁diffuse attention ⚛nonlinear thinking 🌏big picture thinking ❓embracing uncertainty 😍orienting to what's meaningful 👥seeing people as experiencers & carers (not objects) 🕸seeing world as flowing complex systems (not static concepts)
But I'm not holding these as separate skills to train—my right hemisphere is actually quite good at all of these already! That's its job—and I've trained many of these too. The thing is that these capacities have been restricted by my left hemisphere's dominance.
Most of the corpus callosum (L & R hemisphere connection) is inhibitory connections. I keep going on about internal conflict & I suspect that L↔R interaction represents a lot of that conflict. https://t.co/9DgeXxEqAE
It seems to me, based on McGilchrist's work and a ton of my own experience, that shifting one's locus from L to R will produce a major shift in how that conflict shows up, because of the nature of the asymmetry. R can make sense of L perspective WAY better than vice versa.
No doubt I'll write more on that as I read/watch more of McGilchrist's work and integrate it with #PCT (Perceptual Control Theory) and other models. For now: I would love to hear the extent to which you personally resonate with any of this, or how you've worked with it. 🗨 👇
@Malcolm_Ocean Is this true though? In my experience, ppl embodying the qualities of the LH do a better job of learning the RH way than the reverseBut maybe that's just a motivation thing: alienating LHers know they're missing smth, whereas RHers tend 2b more content w their way of being
@TylerAlterman my impression is that people who are all vibes have a bunch of left hemisphere stuckness too, they're just running a shittier (than rationalism) LH operating system that's reifying statements like "everything is love" and taking them weirdly literally
Btw, @KevinSimler, I just re-read one of your Jaynes summary posts (https://t.co/g7Yvq7tCp7; Neurons Gone Wild is an all-time fav) and I found myself thinking that you'd get a ton out of checking out Iain McGilchrist's work. Mind-blowing like Jaynes but more neurological data.🧠
His theory suggests that the phenomena Jaynes describes are occurring for exactly the opposite of the reason Jaynes' posits—not a meeting of previously separate hemispheres, but an alienation between the hemispheres, which produces a self-consciousness towards the voices.
That is, previously the two hemispheres had been more integrated, but with increasing capacity for each in their own way to stand back more, suddenly the thoughts of the right hemisphere were heard by the left not as thoughts but as foreign voices.
The implications of this for effective thinking in our (post)modern world that overemphasizes left-hemisphere thinking are enormous—each person's LH needs to learn to trust their RH. Turns out this basically feels like surrendering to god, since RH is incomprehensible to LH
One great place to start is this @metalearn1 podcast that @context_ing linked me to: https://t.co/LSjHNdaYct
And if you like audio/video, Iain has a ton of links on his site. I quite enjoy seeing & hearing him—his presence is quite unique and telling. https://t.co/Ek12tN0kEE
But you'd probably dig the whole book, as it goes into a lot more of the neuroscience, psychiatry, and history/anthropology - eg these pages I linked you to a few days ago: https://t.co/boeYXu1YN1
@KevinSimler @AndrewSshi I had a hunch this might be related to developments in the relationship between brain hemispheres (LH became dominant as empire progressed, & prefers simple symbols over realistic images) & found these pages in McGilchrist... but they're talking about BC not AD, so timing is off. https://t.co/A8sfBUlfPm
Just came across a snippet about schizophrenia & art & magic that seemed worth adding to this thread: https://t.co/SDCRO2PHF1
