Re-Bicameralization of the Mind: AI-Human Cybernetic Loops (Julian Jaynes)

Support my work on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/cw/thepast33yrs Or, become a Channel Member on Youtube. In his 1976 book, “The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind,” Julian Jaynes put forth a controversial and tantalizing hypothesis: unlike us, ancient man was not conscious—instead, he merely received instructions from hallucinated voices that originated in the right hemisphere of his brain. This was the so-called bicameral mind—or split-brain—hypothesis: the holistic and perceptive right-hemisphere—after taking in and processing vast troves of sensory data—would subsequently generate auditorially hallucinated commands that would be received by the dominant, driver-seat hemisphere of the left. Upon receiving these hallucinated commands, the human would respond and adhere to the command in a non-volitional sense and human action would follow. In other words, a stimulus-response or a reflexive automata model. These hallucinated voices, then, were like gods, and ancient bicameral man was, more or less, a mere automaton: a stimulus-response machine…merely following the orders from the voices in his head. Now, of course, such a hypothesis or model is more or less unprovable—short of time traveling to the past with fMRI machines and PET scanners, we will never know for sure. But, it makes for a fascinating model. And, in this video, we will not only explore the hypothetical model of the bicameral mind, but also project it onto our hyper-technical modern society: one of algorithms, auto-suggestion, and, increasingly, a new kind of interaction space—the cybernetic space of human-AI interactions. As more people lose their attention spans, stop reading and stop writing—or, perhaps, for Gen Alpha, never learn to really read or write in the first place—in the future, more and more people will merely be interacting with and receiving instructions from AI entities. And, we could imagine, these AI systems will merely and increasingly “tell” a person what to do, what to think, and how to behave—just like that so-called voice of a god that instructed Achilles to not strike King Agamemnon when the latter had absconded with the former’s mistress. This may sound far-fetched to you, or it may not. But, for the time being, we are still free and able to conceptualize and hypothesize. And, in this video, we explore this hypothetical model: one where many humans, effectively, undergo an AI-mediated, re-bicameralization. #bicameralmind, #julianjaynes, #hypnosis, #automata, #psychology, #philosophy, #AI, #futurism, #iainmcgilchrist, #iliad SOURCES: Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind, 1976/1990, Mariner Books Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary, 2009/2018, Yale University Press Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory, 1969, George Brazilier Inc. Vilfredo Pareto, The Mind & Society, 1935 (English Translation), Harcourt, Brace & Co. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, 1962 (French), 1965 (English), Vintage Books/Random House European Commission, Fractured Reality, 04/09/2026, JRC144603, (https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC144603) Hideo Kojima, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001) IMAGES: Wiki Commons, User: AimNature, ‘PES for Water Molecule,’ CC BY-SA 3.0, Modified to remove text, add dots & arrow, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_energy_surface#/media/File:Potential_Energy_Surface_for_Water.png)