The Surgery That Proved There Is No Free Will
3.5M views · 26 Aug 2024
Comments · 18K
@Godsbane · 2 years ago
I once had a migraine whilst walking through a shopping mall. I didn't experience any pain, but one of the strangest experiences of my life occurred. The mall on my left side was completely unoccupied - or so I thought - until suddenly someone appeared in the center of my vision and crossed over to my right hand side. Then it happened again. People were appearing out of nothing, out of this empty mall, and those who crossed from my right side to my left vanished. My brain was mapping out my surroundings. It filled in the missing mall that I maybe couldn't see because of my migraine's aura. But it couldn't map out the moving people until I saw them on my right hand side. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life and I was worried that maybe I was having a stroke. I pretty much immediately saw a doctor and she said that it was much more likely to be a migraine. I get migraines, but I had never had that happen to me before, and it has never happened again (it happened about 20 years ago). After the shock and worry wore off, I just thought, the brain is an amazing thing. And practically everything could be an illusion or hallucination of a brain telling you that everything is completely normal.
33K
@AnomalyINC · 2 years ago
For those who, like me, just wanted to get to the point of how any of this disproves free will:<br>It doesn't disprove free will, the title is clickbait to get views, and it works.<br>It's still interesting stuff, well worth watching, but don't expect the elusive truth of consciousness to finally be revealed in a YouTube video.
10K
@davidbock2863 · 2 years ago
When my son was about 6 and got into some trouble he said "My brain made me do it". Thanks for bringing back this memory.
13K
@6SpaceShake9 · 9 months ago (edited)
imagine you're doing something and your left hand goes "bro that's not how you do it, do it like this" and it draws a bicycle
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@seasquawker · 1 year ago (edited)
I like the part of the story when after they had been cutting people's brains in half... for quite a while... 20 years, they then thought, "you know, we should research the effects of this?"
1.8K
@PatchworkUrso · 2 years ago
There is a saying I will paraphrase roughly from the original language into English: "Thoughts are like birds, we can't choose if they land on our head but we decide whether we let them build a nest in our hair"
6.3K
@nbvehbectw5640 · 2 years ago (edited)
Imagine being the right half of the brain after the surgery. Suddenly you are unable to talk, but you hear your mouth saying you're fine, and you don't have any control over it. You try to communicate using the left hand, which you do have control over, by messing with the right hand. But your silent screams are simply brushed off by saying "huh, that's interesting" and other justifications. Must be super scary.
3.5K
@PositiveThinkTankSama · 8 months ago
Kinda comforting to think everything I do is a 'team effort'. If no-one else got me, I got me. <br><br>High five brain.
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@hippopotamusman · 2 years ago
I once heard a quote that stuck with me: "If the voice in your head is you... then who's listening?"
3.2K
@TheNeatwork · 2 years ago
I don't know why but I got a little emotional when he said the left hand started trying to help the right hand do something it was struggling with. Like sometimes our unified brain has a hard time showing compassion for ourselves, and this split brain still found it somehow.
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@jerrik-415 · 2 years ago (edited)
Oh hey, it's me! But mine was not from an injury or surgery, my corpus callosum just doesn't work, and never did. I'm a bifurcated personality, and my hemispheres communicate through other areas of my brain. It's like I'm two people in the one driver seat. Like having an/two imaginary friends but I'm actually both people. We literally talk out everything I do. <br><br>Thought I was normal until people talked about their inner dialog and I was like "yeah I hate it when we can't agree on if we like a food, but it's great being able to teach each other stuff" and everyone else was like "wat?"<br><br>I hear the word of the things I see, which makes loud environments more difficult to see, unless the loud is music. But I can learn two different subjects at once, which made university rather trivial. I have more poems about bookkeeping than the world really needs...and yes, getting dressed is a real chore sometimes...
4.8K
@mrsa4824 · 8 months ago (edited)
The chicken shovel reminds me of how I make up logic in my dreams that make no sense yet are completely believable
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