News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Is Information in the Brain Represented in Continuous or ... by dopu on Tuesday May 22, 2018 @11:53AM (#17126858)
> Why not both? Left neocortex hemisphere handles discrete, right handles continuous. Iain McGilchrist makes a convincing argument for that in his book The Master and His Emissary.

I haven't read the book, but this sounds totally absurd. What kind of evidence is there for this?

Re:Is Information in the Brain Represented in Continuous or ... by no_identd on Wednesday May 23, 2018 @12:27PM (#17135439)
That question has a very complex and complicated answer, hence why McGilchrist devoted the entire first half of the book to it, I can hardly summarize it here. You might want to watch the RSA Animated talk by McGilchrist:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI

If this reminds you of Julian Jaynes, then yes, there exists some similarity, but, to quote Wikipedia:

"McGilchrist, while accepting Jayne's intention, felt that Jayne's hypothesis was "the precise inverse of what happened" and that rather than a shift from bicameralism there evolved a separation of the hemispheres."

In my opinion, it seems like a better question to ask then consists of asking if what McGilchrist describes holds 'all the way down', and I lack an answer to that.