Eliminate Bullshit From Your Life With This One Weird Trick

This next chapter on Judgment is so fascinating, it would be worth the price of admission if the price weren't so steep. I don't know if I can give a metaview from my telocopter, but I'll try. 

Before reading this, I probably would have assumed delusions and misbeliefs must be located in the RH. But as a working psychologist, you don't really deal with questions of neurophysiology, rather, only on the phenomenological level of the delusions themselves. 

Nor can you help the patient by informing him that his delusions are just the result of a hyperactive LH or hypoactive RH, the latter due to some kind of damage or dysfunction. Indeed, if this were the case, there would be no progressives.

if the [LH] is not frankly deluded, it is clearly at sea, and the RH is its reliable anchor in reality (McGilchrist).

Again, a week ago I might have imagined otherwise, since I thought of the LH as rather Spock-like, i.e., objective and detached. Was I deluded? No, because it was just ignorance easily rectified by new information. I had no irrational investment in my assumptions. I'm not a progressive.

A summary at the end of the chapter says that

Virtually all delusional syndromes are more commonly the result of [RH] than [LH] dysfunction; the degree to which this is the case is broadly proportional to the bizarre nature of the delusion involved....

Overall, in general it is the judgments on reality made by the right hemisphere that are more reliable.  

Now, we joke about our separated brethren -- i.e., separated from reality -- but what is the source of progressive delusions? Is a delusion a delusion if all the elites believe it, and you're just imitating them for reasons of social status and financial interest? 

Granted, progressives are herd animals, but just because you're more bovine than properly human, it doesn't make you delusional, rather, just an underachiever. 

On the other hand, what to make of people who insist they were "born in the wrong body" and are not the sex which they self-evidently are? 

The chapter has no section on this particular delusion, but surely it must be anchored in the LH. Perhaps we can shed some light on this as we proceed, but having only learned about LH delusions yesterday, I've only been an expert for 24 hours. 

I'm going to paraphrase here, but it is very much as if the RH is grounded in a more primordial reality, whereas the LH spins out abstract models of this reality. McGilchrist cites a paper arguing that

the [LH] is an "interpreter," that misuses reason to confabulate -- make things up -- rather than admit it does not know what it is talking about, whereas the more tentative [RH] sticks to what it knows, and is closer to the truth. 

Moreover, "one of the [RH's] roles in logic seems to be the active searching out of counter-examples," which makes me wonder about those afflicted with climate delusions, since they totally ignore the fact that their LH models do not predict or conform to reality. 

And when the model eclipses empirical reality, it is because the LH is ignoring or bullying the RH. "My model, says the [LH], is better than your reality": 

the [LH] adopts a theory, and then actually denies what doesn't fit the theory. The evidence that this is the case is so extraordinary and compelling that we would not believe it if we had not already seen it. It will swear black is white. 

There's not enough space or time to detail all of the strange ways the LH swears black is white. But these are mostly bizarre clinical syndromes. What about in everyday reality, i.e., in politics, academia, journalism, or in ideology more generally?

Yesterday Z Man's post (https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=29840) was on the Narrative Industrial Complex, and although I've only been an expert since yesterday, I'm now thinking that this "industrial bullshit machine that exists only to crank out new narratives in support of the regime or new tales to promote existing regime narratives" must be an LH phenomenon.

To put it crudely, is there any evidence that the LH is an industrial strength bullshit generator, or is that just Gagdad being Gagdad? 

To put it crudely, the [RH] is our bullshit detector. It is better at avoiding nonsense when asked to believe it...

Conversely, "the [LH's] job is to create a model and maintain it at all costs." 

The [LH] says "you shouldn't be able to see that" -- and, as a result, you actually can't: the [RH] says, "but it is there" -- and so you can. The point is that, despite your being perfectly able to see something, you can't see it because of a theory that the [LH] has about it. 

Right there, he has described the pathologies of political correctness, wokeness, narrative enforcement, and progressive intolerance in general.

"Ah, but what about your delusional belief in imaginary sky gods and flying spaghetti monsters and resurrected bodies? Gotcha!" 

Not so fast. I'm guessing that McGilchrist will have much more to say on the question of religion, but this chapter has a section on Magical Thinking, which seems to cut both ways, and just because there is delusional religiosity, it hardly means all religiosity is delusional. Moreover, 

the layman's grounds for accepting the models propounded by the scientist are often no different from the young African villager's grounds for accepting the models propounded by one of his elders.  

Clearly, it is possible to accept science in an unscientifc way, just as it is possible to be religious in a superstitious way, even if you are practicing an otherwise sound religion. McGilchrist also cites numerous examples of sober, scientistic types who readily fall for magical bullshit.

He says that what we call magical thinking may simply be a version of our innate ability to spot patterns and make connections; and

Living at either extreme means being duped. Too little means you are not only unimaginative and uncreative, but at risk of failing to spot the obvious... too much means you are at risk of delusion.... to be totally "unmagical" is very unhealthy, and reduces one's capacity to appreciate value and to take enjoyment in life. 

That's about it for today.