Paul Buchheit: Left brain, Right brain, and the other half of the story | Hacker News Reader

Paul Buchheit: Left brain, Right brain, and the other half of the story

paulbuchheit.blogspot.com

54 pointspaul12 comments

He's basing his knowledge on Jill Bolte's TED talk. NOOOOOooooo. That TED Talk was full of misinformation when it came out, and obviously still is.

The left brain is NOT a "serial processor", and the right brain is not a "parallel processor". Those are bullshit analogies.

What the main difference is, is the left-brain is usually specialized for fast, categorical processing using a smaller field of information, wheras the right-brain is usually specialized for broader, global processing.

The whole brain uses parallel processing. Also, kids who have huge sections of their left brain removed (due to epilepsy) are still able to develop language abilities in their right brain. Language processing can be done on both sides of the brain.

You can test for hemispherical differences in people by either the left or right part of their visual field. The left hemisphere processes the right visual field, the right hemisphere processes the left visual field. The right side of the brain actually processes language faster\better in some instances, like getting jokes. This is because you need to activate a wider field of connections to pick up that such a grouping of letters (the word) can have multiple semantic meanings.

The difference isn't serial vs. parallel. That's bullshit. The whole brain is parallel everywhere. The difference is in the field of focus. How much data do you look at to draw a conclusion. Left-brain: smaller field of information, "local" processing, can categorize faster. Right-brain: broader dataset, "global" processing, categorize slower.

As a cognitive science student I wanted to clear that up. Also, intelligence is extremely varied people are not either "left brain" or "right brain", there are lots of different processing heuristics that might be occurring that different emphasize over others.

You are right all brain processing is parallel, but the author doesn't base anything on serial vs parallel processing and in fact never even mentions these. He obviously uses the left/right brain thing as a metaphor for the emotional vs logical mental processes, not as neuroscientific down-to-the-hardware fact.

I watched the Jill Bolte TED talk and was pretty interested in the story of her stroke but I couldn't get past all of the "we're all made of energy" rhetoric. I was interested in her experience but not the conclusions she drew from them.

I was also somewhat surprised the TED crowd stood up at the end. My theory is that they will do that for anyone who tells an emotional tale instead of a cerebral one.

This made me realize why I prefer watching a movie before going to bed, instead of having a late night coding session. After keeping my mind occupied for a while with lots of left-brain thinking, I can't just flip a switch and see life in a holistic, right-brain way. I'm usually laying on the bed, sleepless, thinking about every little problem in my life in excruciating detail. It's only after I make some conscious effort to switch to right-brain thinking that I finally relax and fall asleep.

I face the same issue when I drive home from work, too. It's usually when I see my daughter's face that I can power-down the left brain and start seeing the big picture.

This has been used for some time in sales training. The idea is that people want something because of emotion, but make their buying decision based on logic. They call it ERBN (Emotional Reasons to Buy Now) and LRBN (Logical Reasons to Buy Now).

Without ERBN, there is not enough reason to proceed. But you must also provide the buyer with enough data to flip his LRBN.

This site has a better explanation and a graphic:

http://www.deankennedy.com/blog/copy-tip-26-persuasive-sales...

There are some great points here but I'm not entirely sold on the 'Right Brain Optimistic' , 'Left Brain Pessimistic' part. I'd say the Right Brain is often great early warning mechanism for a lot of people (i.e. that gut feeling that something isn't right). If taken too far it would most likely be the source of phobias. It's like a 'black box probability engine'. Very powerful but difficult to debug.

From what I've read the Left Brain is the 'communicator' as well as the 'logician'. I suspect this is the reason why discussion of probabilities, risk and 'expected returns' are often fraught with confusion - because the Left Brain doesn't really know how to process these things. The Left Brain prefers to round probabilities to 0%, 100% or 'unknown/50%'. It seems like many of the science/policy debates in the world (and on HN) are caused by people having different rounding criteria and starting probabilities.

Yeah - people tend to overestimate some risks - like car theft, flying airplains etc. - this is why insurance companies can make some money. This is in conflict with that hypothesis - the left-brain dominant would not do that because left brain is calculating, right-brain dominant would not do that because it is optimistic.

"When we imagine the kind of person who believes things that are obviously false, falls for scams, ends up joining a cult, etc, we probably picture a stereotypically right-brain person."

I don't think this is because right brained people aren't thinking logically. I think it's right brained people are more apt to realize that large chunks of the human experience can't be conveyed through language, and that the scientific method is unfortunately broken for these areas of the human experience. (Because without language you can't define phenomena, have multiple people test stuff, etc.) Thus they realize that they can't discover the truth on many issues without taking the experiences of others at face value, even if it means getting snowed once in a while.

If you don't believe me then there are many substances that can make one temporarily more right brained, so you can see for yourself. :-)

Ideally one could "realize that large chunks of the human experience can't be conveyed through language", etc without getting scammed and joining a cult, which is why it's good to you both parts of the brain :)

> My theory is that both halves of our brain are useful

I have the opposite theory.

Wasn't this the entire plot to Pi?

The external plot was people accosting Max for the number in his head. The internal plot, I interpreted, was that when Max stared into the sun as a little boy, it merged his left and right brain functionality. When he took a drill to that growth on the side of his head, he was breaking that connection.

I think that's the ultimate goal when dealing with yourself: creating peace between both halves of your brain. Max found enlightenment by staring into the sun, and wasn't ready for the power it wields, and went crazy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com