Comment by gipp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gipp | Hacker News Reader

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There's no need to be so confrontational about this. Everyone agrees it is speculation; I think we need to have room for people to speculate and discuss speculation without being ridiculed about the fact that it's not fact (which of course everybody already knows).

Herodotus, Plutarch, and Aurelius all lived thousands of years after the period discussed by the book.

And a considerable portion of the book is devoted to exploring the possibility of consciousness being something very different from what we imagine it to be, yes; something not necessarily required for civilization or law. Calling that "useless sophistry" isn't really proof otherwise, it's just dismissing the idea out of hand.

Hinduism is made of a large array of different traditions evolving together over thousands of years. The early texts do not have that "obsession with consciousness" (and this, also, is discussed extensively in the book). Buddhism, also, post-dates his proposed "bicameral" period by millenia.

Nobody thinks this explanation is true, just extremely interesting and worthy of discussion.

>I think we need to have room for people to speculate and discuss speculation without being ridiculed about the fact that it's not fact (which of course everybody already knows).

Why? What you're saying amounts to "nobody should ever ridicule anyone else". To be fair, you haven't qualified what kinds of things you want to speculate over, but some ideas are dangerous and their discussion/spread should be avoided/ridiculed/marginalized - e.g. spreading/discussing/propagating the idea that vaccination is harmful to children without applying any scientific rigor.

In general, I would say that you cannot concede that the point you're making is pure speculation and then also be offended at someone dismissing the idea !!! Lots of things are interesting to lots of people and it is normal behavior to dismiss ideas that one does not find interesting - especially given their speculative nature. :-)

The difference is that it's a fact that vaccination is not harmful, while consciousness is more of an open problem.

>Herodotus, Plutarch, and Aurelius all lived thousands of years after the period discussed by the book.

The article cites him citing the Iliad as evidence of his theory. That's a 1200BC story. Homer lived around 800BC.

Jaynes uses the Odyssey as a post bicameralism work. The Odyssey was written well before any of those people were alive.

Article:

So he decides to read early texts, including The Iliad and The Odyssey, to look for signs of people who aren’t capable of introspection—people who are all sea, no rime. And he believes he sees that in The Iliad. He writes that the characters in The Iliad do not look inward, and they take no independent initiative. They only do what is suggested by the gods.

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The Iliad is from 1200BC story, so that means he calling a good chunk of written history and those civilizations (Egypt, early Greece, Mesopotamia) as having this ridiculous pre-modern consciousness.

> So he decides to read early texts, including The Iliad and The Odyssey, to look for signs of people who aren’t capable of introspection—people who are all sea, no rime. And he believes he sees that in The Iliad.

Right, not in the Odyssey. And I've read the book; he specifically contrasts the Iliad with the Odyssey.

>The Iliad is from 1200BC story, so that means he calling a good chunk of written history and those civilizations (Egypt, early Greece, Mesopotamia) as having this ridiculous pre-modern consciousness.

Yes, that is correct. But not the people who you listed.

The article itself criticizes Jaynes' use of The Iliad as an example; he handwaved these criticisms away by saying that "consciousness" was added at a later date. The article is candidly critical of Jaynes and so are all the quoted scientists.

A lot of people here seem to think this article is promoting Jaynes' arguments or hypothesis but it's not. I'm not surprised though, most hacker news posts on controversial topics are usually advocating for or against an idea; the faster you can write off the argument as bunk the more time you save for other worthy content.

This article is a discussion of speculative science, not an argument. How does it contribute and how does it fail? What does it mean that we choose to speculate or apply the scientific method? It gives perspective on how we research questions now and the role of religions and myths in the past.

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