Left brain vs whole brain in Battlestar Galactica
Why it's important that we properly attend to reality.
I recently finished watching the great show Battlestar Galactica and found amazing parallels with what McGilchrist writes about with left brained bias vs full attention to reality.
The show is a masterpiece for many reasons, not just this. It's a must watch in this day and age to understand society and gauge where we are headed.
As you know, I believe that attention, the kind of attention we choose to pay, and indeed whether we attend at all, wholly alters what we discover in the world we come to know - which is of course all that any of us can know. Attention is, then, a creative (or destructive) act and therefore necessarily a moral act. Pure attention has been likened by Louis Lavelle and Simon Weil to love itself.
-Iain McGilchrist
First we see a left brained calculating mind that sees things as collections of objects, lacking the ability to see the big picture. This is similar to how “experts” in our society see reality.
He's an AI called number 1 that acts as an executive level manager. He's concerned with the war against the humans and this clip shows how obsessive he's with the need for more and more data of a single event as if that would help him learn something, while ignoring the plight of his colleagues and the ship he's on.
Boo hoo, I couldn’t see the supernova in 8K double 3D hologram smell-o-vision!
Doesn't he sound like Elon Musk or any other so called expert? V N Alexander explains the issue here, also citing Iain McGilchrist.
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On the other side of the situation is the whole brain reality based view. The left brain processes the data and the right brain sees the big picture. Both sides are important for survival because together they help one see reality as it is, not as one wants it to be.
These are called hybrids. They're humans (male or female) that are plugged into the ship computer and help coordinate everything and everyone on the ship for operations. Life support, navigation, camera inputs, sound inputs, weapons, shields, and many other things are known to this hybrid. They essentially sense and feel everything going on.
Dealing with what they have, they coordinate the ship to figure out the most efficient way of doing things. They have big picture awareness of survival.
Why does society look up to and follow the limited view of number 1 over the big picture view of the hybrid? Why is number 1 in command?
That reminds me of something.
The other day I was watching a David Eagleman podcast and his guest mentioned how when he started in the 1990s, neuroscience didn’t care to study consciousness. Yes, only 3 decades ago. Hmm, what kind of thinking made them not care about consciousness? Perhaps a lack of it themselves? Who knows… but at least we are in the right direction now with neuroscience!
"The mistake that is made by many traditional philosophers, he (Bergson) suggests, is to believe that freeing one’s attention up in this way necessitates turning one’s back on practical life, rather than, in fact, embracing it. ‘One should act like a man of thought’, he wrote, in a memorable formulation, ‘and think like a man of action. "
-Ian McGilchrist from The Matter with Things
From chapter 4 of Ian McGilchrist 's book The Matter with Things:
"One related difference between right and left prefrontal cortex activation is that the left dominates where belief bias points to the correct conclusion, and, by contrast, the right dominates where it does not. Belief bias is in fact generally associated with the left hemisphere, not with the right hemisphere."
"To put it crudely, the right hemisphere is our bullshit detector. It is better at avoiding nonsense when asked to believe it, but it is also better at avoiding falling prey to local prejudice and just dismissing rational argument because the argument does not happen to agree with that prejudice"
Thanks Rob some great points, I listened recently to the Iain McGilchrist, Mattias Desmet conversation. There were some great points that relate directly to your article. One on belief bias that struck me was, "The left brain is looking out for something it already knows it wants and what it is." and "The left hemisphere creates a map a diagram a theoretical structure, thin, sparse devoid of complexity, of anything that makes it live. The right hemisphere is seeing the whole complex picture."
"As soon as you start to think of the universe to be one big machine one big mechanical system, which can be understood, manipulated and controlled in a rational way. As soon as you consider the world to be a machine the logical ultimate consequence is that this big machine has to be led by technical experts. We will become totalitarian if we do not change our world view."
Interesting. Love listening to McGilchrist and though I've never seen the series - it's now on my list.
"Why does society look up to and follow the limited view of number 1 over the big picture view of the hybrid? Why is number 1 in command?"
We've been pushed into that culturally - emphasis on the sciences, facts and stuff we can quantify while casting doubt on intuitive even imaginative - all that.
Think we're getting ready though, to see big changes there. Thanks.