[CGP grey] You Are Two

Right brain doesnt say shit and is freaked out what right hand is doing.

E: I just realized that before the cutting right brain might actually say something... meh, Ill leave it.

Which arm would stop doing the cutting while in the middle of cutting?

But my bodddyyyyyyyyy

Acutally, right brain says "..."

left brain says no, but right brain doesn't seem to object

wants to say kptup

Gonna need an ambien walrus up in hyea

Image

Mobile

Title: Surgery

Title-text: Damn. Not only did he not install it, he sutured a 'Vista-Ready' sticker onto my arm.

Comic Explanation

Stats: This comic has been referenced 69 times, representing 0.0612% of referenced xkcds.

---

^{xkcd.com | xkcd sub | Problems/Bugs? | Statistics | Stop Replying | Delete}

I always think that with enough "training" you could actually make use of such an implant..now I actually wanna do it tho.

This is confusing me. How does he do tasks like move a box with both hands, if the hemispheres of his brain can't communicate at all? How to both hemispheres cooperate on an action if there is no connection between them?

Is information storage in both halves or just one? I'd assume if you showed him a completely new word, his left brain would be able to at least read it out loud but the right wouldn't be able to represent it?

The signals sent from the individual eyes are split, not one eye going to one side and the other to the other. Left side of both eyes goes to right brain and right side of both eyes goes to left brain. Supposedly

Also if you covered his right eye he wouldn't be able to recognize any of his family or friends? Then uncover it and he would instantly recognize them. This stuff is very interesting.

Further, if the left brain entirely controls speech, surely the right brain controls some other sensory input entirely?

woah, not THAT experiment Jerry!

I'd venture to say that the video's comments have been disabled for this very Freudian slip.

I heard that as well, made me giggle

Why does it bother you?

If you want more fun things to disturb you, read about blind sight (wiki)/(article), or prosopagnosia (wiki)/(article), which apparently Steve Wozniak has!

I'd take the video with a grain of salt.

A single example of a patient is no proof of anything. He might be, consciously or not, displaying the behaviour that is expected of him/produces positive reactions. The whole thing reeks of a complete lack of scientific rigor.

yeah, can he like say loud, "how are you?"

And does he get an answer.

Or ask the right brain if i feels trapped.

The mute side would think of an answer but not say anything. The other you who does speak would be none the wiser and also not say anything.

I think he said it has no verbal capabilities not language as a whole.

I may be wrong.

Left is dominant for speech, but right also has language centres, is my understanding.

Can both brains generate thoughts? Can both brains read those thoughts in my head?

I guess you cannot say definitely for one half, one half supposedly has no capabilities for language so how could it form thoughts and sentences.

"Ya sunava bitch, why I outta!"

Well I believe they stopped the "cutting brain in half" epilepsy treatment a while ago, so most patients who got that treatment are likely dying off.

He's basically raping himself. Poor fella.

Or rock-paper-scissors?

Alan Alda

It caught me offguard, I bursted out laughing.

"By putting information on his dicks."

Most likely done by him for the video, considering how eyes work.

Yes they can

They're really of two minds about this.

The line must be drawn here!

Really? You thought you might be the only one who has seen TNG?

THAT VIDEO IS FUCKING STUPID AND I'LL GUARANTEE YOU IT'S WRONG ABOUT MANY OF THE CLAIMS IT MAKES. YOU WILL NEVER HEAR A NEUROLOGIST MAKE SUCH ABSOLUTE CLAIMS OF CAUSAL TRUTH.

the German guy from Kurzgesagt

He's actually British: http://www.voice-pool.com/en/english-voice-over/taylor.html

The name is German the guy is not.

Close enough for funk.

MIT.edu

http://imgur.com/I146sl4

It's plugged in to an advanced voice synthesis program.

I actually thought it was an awesome little nod at the ideas in both videos... On CGP's video, it makes you think that K's fade-in is his "other brain" chiming in with a new thought... Whereas on K's video, it suggests that perhaps humanity is really just one large organism with a collective hive mind despite dissenting opinions within that organism... and that CGP Grey and Kurs are just grouped collections of cells inside a much larger being.

Paranormal is just the right brain playing tricks on the left. A lot of it and Ouija boards are all to do with the subconscious.

This sounds dumb, but I'm just now realizing why Pacific Rim had two pilots for the mechs.

It seems like they are only missing a little bit of information each sometimes that makes the co-operation perfect. Otherwise they've been working together so long that they basically work like one without communicating. Now imagine switching a hemisphere with another person.

I want to see the chaos!... I seriously wonder what would happen. Would they be helpless?

If somebody else hands you a rubik's cube and you're asked, "Why did they hand you that cube," you might respond, "I can't know for sure... perhaps they want me to solve it for them?"

After your corpus callosum has been severed, when your left hand gives you a rubik's cube you would expect your left hemisphere to adopt a similar outlook. You would expect it to say, "I'm not sure why this was done, but I can fathom a guess."

I didn't actually catch this, but it makes a lot of sense for the video and the rest of your explanation. Thank you for pointing this out!

I guess the fact that the only way they can demonstrate the differences a collosum-less person has is through these very specific tests is a testament to how little difference it makes to sever your brain in half.

I love how science has basically been confirming what Buddhism has been teaching for centuries just based on first hand experience. That there is no central self.

I'm not a Buddhist(and I don't want this to sound analogous to, "SCIENCE CONFIRMS EXISTENCE OF GOD," type claims because it isn't) but I do think Buddhism has made a lot of important insights into the way the mind works. Especially from the first hand point of view. Apparently it's actually possible to dissolve your feeling of, "self," or your ego through meditation. Also commonly happens on psychedelics.

Meh I'm unconcerned by this. Anyone who's taken biology has conceptualized parts of their body in terms of that part's utilitarian contribution to the body. Even the brain was divided up into neat little sections of usefulness.

Remove a finger? The rest of the hand still works. You can even attach that finger to someone else's hand and it'll work. Now remove a section of the brain. Okay, sure, depending on the section it might kill you. I'm not trying to argue that there aren't more important parts of the body. The lungs, for example, outweigh the finger in importance. But if you remove the part that handles sight, you go blind. The parts responsible are removed but the piece left behind works fine.

This situation seems similar. By removing a connection line between the two hemispheres we find that a key function, what some would call consciousness, is, like many other functions, composed of a collection of other functions working in tandem. Removing one piece doesn't make the consciousness collapse, we're just left with two slightly lesser collections of functions that can still function.

---

That's my first point. To continue:

My question is do they change over time? Since they're interpreting the world differently and can't share info they must be drawing different conclusions about the world. If the difference in conclusions were significant enough they might become different people.

This, again, doesn't concern me philosophically. I'm totally fine with the notion of divisible consciousness.

Now, tell me that they don't change and the two hemispheres remain largely the same in personality and we've got a slightly more interesting argument.

Even with your corpus callosum cut, both halves of your brain act together to create what you continue to perceive as yourself. That hasn't changed.

Hasn't it though? I know at times i walk into rooms or do something and forget why it was i chose to do that, but based on the experiments, it seems pretty clear that the patient has no understanding of what is happening on the "other side" so to say.

At times i'm sure both entities are acting to achieve a common goal, but you can set up a scenario by which you disagree with yourself. And only one of those choices do you consider "yours". Wouldn't this mean that the other half of the brain did not act together? One you identified as you, and the other, as .. something else.

This is what is surprising. You would expect a great deal of confusion from a person who has had their corpus callosum severed. You would expect that being split from one consciousness into two would be majorly disorienting.

I think this has to do with the fact that humans, after a certain age, anyway, have a theory of mind. We know that other people have their own reasons for doing things that are hidden from us. People don't develop a theory of mind about themselves, though. So when you do something and you can't explain why your brain generates a justification for it.

The brain always makes up something to make sense of things, not just in this scenario. It's how a lot of image illusions work, the mind fills up the gaps (the dress is gold because the pic is blueish due to shadows for example, even though your mind doesn't actually know if it's right)

Maybe this is what makes humans... human, we are two entities, not one.

Okay but in a normal brain, if I grab something with my left hand I do realize what I'm doing. My right hemisphere is cooperating. It doesn't have a separate will.

I'm a little late to the discussion but I have a few points to add as well. I'm pretty pumped to see a discussion as interesting as this that I can contribute to.

Firstly the right and left brain see the left and right fields of vision on the left and right sides of each eye which wasn't specified in the video. This is important because of my next point.

There have been studies done in cats in which the optic chiasma was cut so that each eye was confined to one hemisphere instead of split fields of each eye going to both hemispheres. Through this experiment it was found that only simple learning acquired through one eye was actually transferred to the other hemisphere of the brain. Crazy I know.

Reason would suggest that this isn't all that surprising given the insane amount of information processing going on in the brain. The corpus callosum, relative to the rest of the brain, is an insufficient amount of nerve fibers to share 100% of both hemispheres activity. So everyone's brain is split to one degree or another as suggested in the video.

As for the "Self" I think all of this heavily suggests that the self is an illusion. A feeling that we all have through all sorts of mental states. For instance imagine if we could attach two separate brains with an artificial corpus callosum. What would this person feel like? Probably like one person. A self with the memories and feelings of both people involved. Split them apart again and they will likely both feel that they were that one self and still are. Which one is right?

Consciousness isn't dependent on its contents but it can apparently be split with a knife.

jfc you just blew my mind

Or maybe...

Maybe...

Splitting the corpus callosum does result in two consciousnesses. But since the right brain is mute, it can never tell anyone.

However minute the change is, there IS a change in the self when that major connecting pathway is severed. And I hear that the corpus collosum is NOT the only connection, just the most major. This could explain why a state of total disorientation doesn't occur.

I agree with the notion that the mind is made up of systems that are more autonomous than people think, but I do not believe that each system is an individual mind. Just that that is a helpful metaphor.

even though it can't possibly have that information

It can't have the information, but it's saying it was supposed to have it. Brains always compensate for small holes, and most of the time they seem to correctly calculate the missing information no problems. I think that what we're seeing here is the left brain being given assurance that it got the information, but then replacing the data with blank signals. Its compensation mechanism seems to just expand because "hey, I got some confirmation that the info is there."

Even with your corpus callosum cut, both halves of your brain act together to create what you continue to perceive as yourself

Sure, but not rally. Your expression of yourself through abstract language will always be limited by your left brain's experiences and conclusions, not your right's if your brain is severed. Much of what you are, who you are, your preferences, ... etc., will never be expressed in the most common venue of expression. The part you listen to all the time won't have the full story. It's like saying that two computers with rudimentary, low bandwidth communication are more or less the same as a supercomputer acting as a single unit. They're not.

A lot of 4 year olds think this way. Is their other brain half just not as developed yet?

Why would it freak out, it is still doing what it always has, just has less help from the other side now. Not very different from being sleepy or inebrieted or drugged or senile. From outside, it is easy to see the deterioration, from inside, it is still doing the best it can, so its harder to see the issue or notice it.

The real issue with these kind of 'popular' edu-media is that there is an inherent conflict of interest (although guys like CGP-G try to keep it under wraps mostly). Unlike say a secure professor in school who (hopefully) has little interest in trying to make something more interesting than it is just for interest sake, people making these videos etc are more like our 'media' in that they need to make things as interesting and dramatic as they can so they can rake up the views and keep audience engaged.

So just like the media over time gets slowly but surely more dramatic, popular edu-media also invariably gets pulled by the same forces towards trying to make their material more and more 'interesting' and 'thought-provoking' and dramatic, and sadly, sometimes at the cost of complete accuracy, or at the cost of glossing over the non-so-dramatic alternatives that might actually be much more accurate.

It sucks, but the reality is if you make educational material compete for clicks and views, you often get the education compromised by the need to be click-baity and headline grabbing. Nothing against CGP-G as he is doing great, but it just an inevitable evolving force for the entire field. It is essential for anybody trying to actually acquire accurate knowledge from these popular media outlets to be aware of these inherent conflicts so they can keep their grains of salt handly and critical thinking scepticism on standby like /u/Privatdozent is doing, rather than passively taking what is presented at face value (and sometimes immediately jump into defending your fav presenters with ad-hoc rationalizations as being shown by posters throughout this thread!)

ONLY when the connection is severed. When the connection is not severed the "self" brain has the information, so it doesn't need to make sense of it.

In this experiment one side of the brain is literally denied information that the other side has. How does that point to the idea that the "self" sense brain is only a rationalizer, a story weaver of what the true brain already knows? How can we literally physically divorce the "two" minds and then use that to justify their being two "entities" where one is less in tune with reality? Without a knife to cut the cord, they work in tandem to form the self. From my perspective the self includes what one cannot perceive of the self.

This is why clinical depression is so difficult to deal with. I get depressed first, and then my brain is looking for reasons and I start to trick myself into self-hate. I screwed up, I'm awful, everyone hates me, etc. It alters my perception of reality and snowballs.

You could make that argument for any set of nerves/neurons in the brain.

The brain hemispheres are a gestalt. Working together to do what the brain does. When you separate them, they become independant of each other. I hypothesized this years ago when I read about alien hand syndrome.(which is what is shown when he's trying to pick up a chocolate bar and the one hand knocks it out of the other hand). Alien hand syndrome is a condition that can occur when the corpus callosum is severed either by surgery or it's affected by brain damage.

If someone was left handed (just for the muscle memory) could right brain write a message to left brain?

When you look into how vision works it's surprising to find out you don't see as much as you think you do. The brain actually fills in all the missing data so you think you are seeing everything when in reality there are missing parts and mostly blurry outside of what you are directly looking at.

The same thing is probably happening here, the left brain is trying to fill in the missing information and ends up creating a story that will satisfy it.

We do things all the time without thinking about it, like driving, when something happens that requires action faster then you can 'think' instincts take over and does things based on experience and hopefully does the right thing

Yeah, perhaps one being rational and one more instinctual. We've trained ourselves to obey the rational side, and the other follows along for the most part, as things have been going pretty well and this situation doesn't seem like it's going to be a life-or-death type of decision. Kind of like having the reasonable older brother on a hike, and following along as everything makes sense. When the connection is severed, both sides keep on trucking, as the other side dropping everything because the communication has been lost is counter to survival, which is the goal, whether thinking rationally or instinctually.

May also explain why our sixth sense seems so weird to us, being that it's this message we're receiving, that it doesn't seem 100% rational, but it feels like someone is screaming at us voicelessly to fight or flight when something is amiss.

True

Which side of the brain is responsible for anthropomorphizing itself?

Watch some videos of people with split brains. They do not look broken to me. No one knows what consciousness is. Do not be sure there can only be a single consciousness in our brains. We are only aware of one but there may be many.

If the "two brains" do not agree, which one of them will be in charge? I would find research about this fascinating. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't be (or grow to be) two different persons, who have their own opinions how things should be reacted to. While they have different capabilities, how much overlap is there and who will decide in conflict?

I claim no knowledge in this area, but your reasoning is circuitous. Those hemispheres aren't individual because they are supposed to be connected; therefore, they aren't individual.

The concept of one side using speech while the other can not, same with face recognition or logic. They are specialized observation of types of information.

Broken person? Yeah of course, however the idea that identity is formed very heavily by incoming information infers that different types of information not being communicated to other sides of the brain could create a fractured self.

Lol they both share a central nervous system. It's not as though severed individuals can't walk or find trouble regulating their bonfire functionality as the brain stem, spinal chord and PNS are tasked with doing.

Do you believe that is by definition true, or is there any possible empirical evidence that would change your mind?

1. What if we take out 1/3rd of someone's brain? Is that still a person?
2. What about a person with only half a brain – is that still a person? Is it still one consciousness? Would you call it half a conscious being?
   
3. What if we managed to put the other half in another body, do we have two entities now? Has the status of the first half changed because the other half is also functioning in a separate body?

But your interpretation is not any more based on fact than his is. You're looking back from your set belief on how it 'should' function and explaining the data from that point of view. Nothing in the data itself leads inductively to what you are saying. We are in our infancy of understanding consciousness, it is a mistake to go in with a set assumption on how it 'should' work, one which, suspiciously, also happens to line up with your world view.

I think you need to reconsider your understanding of the term "anthropomorphic". This is a HUMAN brain we're discussing, the source of consciousness, you're grossly over simplifying a complex organ that we still know surprisingly little about.

You're wrong, there are indeed other physical connections between the two hemispheres besides the corpus callosum, the callosum is just the primary connection between the two. Grey was very misleading by disregarding this point.

Everything is affected by everything, except where you literally remove a major highway. Our intuitive selves are influenced by our deliberate selves, and vice versa. All of the systems are responsible for different things, but they all also prop each other up by performing the tasks they are "designed" to perform.

This unlanguage brain that CGP grey describes is not a complete consciousness. It is one system among many others all coming together to form one consciousness. This is all in talking about a neurotypical person.

I'm...really not all that surprised.

[deleted]

"What is porn may never die"

I really should have known.

So is it any good? Because I'm gonna have to download it now.

[deleted]

By Patreon patron count, yes; however, Sakimichan has the highest monthly revenue.

OMG, I actually know that game! IMO, it is "meh" at best.

Of course

Oh.

I weep silent tears for humanity.

I thought no. 1 was sakimi chan because she can potentially get paid twice a month at 28k

Well how about that... I always wanted to be a farmer.

Haha people are weird

At 30K a month I know what type of video games I'm going into

some of these people earn a shitton of money though o_O.

With the amount cgp "gets" (i know he does not get out the money shown) i would have to make 2 videos per year and still earn more than i do with a fulltime job xD

33k per month?

Jesus Christ.

Of course it is. And it has like 3k more supporters than the second most popular Ppatreon

Wow.

this.... might be my fetish....

I researched the game a bit (wife likea Stardew Valley and hentai so it might be a good gag gift) but holy fuck. I thought you fucked your little waifus in gamw or whatever, but you fuck furry versions of the farm animals too. And just regular animals? And kid versions of the animals?? And DEMONS?! What the fuck is this game?

Easy Allies pulls in more monthly than The Breeding Season though. How do they determine #1?

Actually it is Sakimi chan at $28,198.80 twice a month. Personally I find the art rather... eh, but some people like it a lot.

I uh, know someone who was gonna be a VA for that.

And number 14 is a furry fetish flash game. Internet's gonna internet.

Isn't that the sort of thing that would usually use kickstarter? why patreon it?

... Huh. I wonder why they get a massive dropoff in patrons at the start of every month?

OH MY

Simgirls isn't even on the list

Shame

They're #1? Neat!

Oh my god, that's terrible! Where would people even buy stuff like that?

Where?

I cannot believe that Amanda fucking Palmer is number 2 on patreon. She is the most vapid, self obsessed, narcissistic cunt alive. She turned me off of This American Life for over a year after her self indulgent bullshit about "Falling into the crowd".

Of course it is the weebs shelling out top $$$ for cartoon child porn. The guy getting all that cash deserves it.

Woah, didn't realise the Kinda Funny guys were that popular. Good for them.

And they're actually number 1 by quite a margin if you combine Kinda Funny/Kinda Funny Games.

I read the first line and was wondering what CGP Grey was doing on the Breeding Season Team.

Neil Gaiman is worth $18 million, why does Amanda Palmer need a Patreon?
Never mind

I've never heard of the top 4, is this odd?

33 grand a month. Livin the life.

Follow me, horny nerds! I will make your fapasies come true!

Someone's been following their progress closely. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Or, as is the case with CGP Grey, a payment per project.

Jesus, that's crazy.

I remember watching his all early videos like the ones on Voting systems and the United Kingdom but kind of lost touch with his work and only revisit his new videos sporadically now.

It's just nuts to see that he's apparently making a a few million a year now after looking more closely at his numbers.

Is it actually a monthly thing or only when Grey releases a video? The $ amount per patron/video stat is confusing me.

Exactly - Grey is running a business. That number represents his revenue from it, not his own income or profit.

[deleted]

[deleted]

What are his podcasts?

he also has two podcasts he makes money on.

Plus ad/sponsor revenue and merchandise.

The fact that he can make a living at all off this stuff is pretty amazing. Maybe it's not rock star money but hey, you're not starving and you do what you love.

Well he gets at least $50k per year only from YouTube ads.

I would guess he still makes like $70k though which aint bad. he described his humans need not apply video as costing "thousands and thousands of dollars" but the way he said it made it seem like that was not the norm. even if every video was a few thousand dollars he would still make a decent amount i think

which is all tax exempt

Also, doubt he has to spend 9-5 everyday of the year creating 6 videos too.

To be fair, that number isn't his income. It's the revenue from patreon before patreon fees, paying his animator (on videos that use one), paying for music and stock photo licenses, paying rent on his office, etc.

oh wow, it doesn't list it by amount of money per month? What does it list it by then?

Lets take us back to history when the firstmankind discover how to weight.

But when is.......here? And how much.......(long dramatic pause)....does it weigh?

- /u/AnotherPoshBrit said, quizzaciously.

If Jean stands exactly one nautical mile away from Lord Scotland, how tall is Imhotep?

Isn't there a video with this? I think I remember seeing something with this before.

That sounds so fucking retarded when reading it myself.

like a smooth talking fortune teller that moonlights as a sax player in a jazz band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q_47b507vg