This is incredible. As we approach the technological capability of direct brain-to-brain communication, cases like this serve as an example of what is in store for us. Our brains are in some sense already multiple consciousness that communicate and collaborate with one another. It could be that connecting to other minds is more natural than we might realize.
No, this isn't going to work like that; these girls have had incredible levels of plasticity in their brains to be able to accommodate each other's functions in ways that are difficult for anyone but them to comprehend.
Take for example the case of people who have never seen from birth and are given sight through retinal implants; they can see colours and images and patterns but their brains can make no sense of the input - they sense no depth, shapes, relations between words and images, shadows meaning three dimensionality, etc. etc. that we all take for granted. Those neurones have been put to alternative use already and in some ways you really can't teach an old dog new tricks.
I think one of the simplest ways to illustrate this is with sounds. Humans who spend their early years in an environment devoid of certain sounds lose the ability to differentiate those sounds. The classical example that many seem aware of are Japanese speakers who have trouble distinguishing l and r sounds. Every language has some sounds missing, and so any given person should be able to find two sounds they can't distinguish unless they were raised in a multi-lingual household from birth which covered all the sounds.
That is true, however there are some drugs that have been shown to increase plasticity and stimulate neuronal growth. And there's also the possibility of doping the brain with stem cells.
I think the same thing; this seems like the best evidence we have to date that given sufficient technology it should be possible to communicate in thought between two people.
I’d imagine any such system would have a learning curve as each brain figures out the patterns but it seems there isn’t any fundamental difference that makes each person’s thoughts unintelligible.
(Granted, as siblings one could argue their thoughts would naturally tend toward being intelligible but it seems too early to know the answer to that question)
Direct mind-to-mind communication, as hard as that is, will not be the primary challenge. Safety and defensive mechanisms will be far more challenging. We already have invasive techniques that use nothing more than images, sound, text. Direct mind access would make techniques that were far more dangerous and insidious.
Being joined from birth, any and all memories and experiences formed in their brains that could be shared were shared, and so they would have similar associations and mental pathways formed based on them.
While it may be possible to learn and figure out patterns from someone else that you were connected to, I think it would be immensely difficult. You may have to learn the whole world from their point of view from scratch for any mental relations they communicate to have any meaning.
Compare it to communicating between computers, by serializing data structures into some common format (not just xml or json, but particular format or schema within that, with particular semantics). There's a practical matter of requiring a wire format for transmission, but the translation to a coomon form (interface) allows the data structures to differ markedly. In practice, different programs performing a similar task are often written quite similarly - form follows function, and also convetion (e.g. "x,y" for coords). But some parts still differ, especially when the alternatives have comparable efficacy, and more so when the purpose differs. It's an instance of information-hiding, where an API or interface decouples implementation details.
Similarly, we serialize our internal representations into language for - literally - serialization. It's for transmission, but also allows differing internal representations.
I wonder if verbal and written communication will still be preferable as it's less noise. Even if I want to send you a thought, I could get distracted and start thinking things unrelated, or something I'm not supposed to share like IP.
As for 3, I too am curious: the article made it seem like they normally do a 3-1, 1-3 split on limbs but can each do 2-2 if they want. From a control theory standpoint, that make sense -- you have one person focused on arms and one focused on legs, instead of an even split. (Probably not so different from being right or left handed.)
Is this accurate?
Also interesting: the one that controls more arms is the outgoing and high-strung one, while the one that controls more legs is the quieter and relaxed one. It seems unlikely that these facts are uncorrelated, though the causal relationship is anything but clear.
Incredibly, in an article full of pictures, they never actually tell you which twin is which and only address them as a unit of 'twins' in descriptions, which seems incredibly rude and depersonalizing to Krista and Tatiana. (Or, alternatively, never mention that the twins prefer to be spoken of as a unit -- which is itself an incredibly interesting fact.)
Well, in a sample size of 1, it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to discuss correlation -- the two facts both happened, and so have 100% correlation on that sample size. (But this is a basically useless statistic for making any inferences.)
The question was if we expect, given that it happened together here, we'd see it happen together more than random distribution would predict -- that is, that we see personality differences align with a split in limb control.
Since they're both changes in the manner in which one interacts with the world, and my experience of the world changes in subtle ways when I, eg, use my left hand for certain tasks or sit in certain postures, I just find it unlikely that the alignment of limb control and personality are unrelated.
There is not a lot of literature about them, but from what i found their thalami are connected or fused together. Since thalamus is the crossroads for many sensory inputs the senses of one girl can pass on to further brain processing regions of both brains , e.g. their eye signals diverge and reach both girls' visual cortices.
1. Each brain controls more limbs than usual, but brains are plastic and can learn do that. It seems they have separate "personalities" however and they recognize themselves as different persons. So they don't "control" each other's consciousness although they seem to be able to communicate thoughts (not clear how) can control the limbs of the other, and can see what the other sees (e.g. with closed eyes, they can see what the other girl sees). Whats fascinating is how one of them can manage to override the movement signals coming from the other. Surely further examinations during their life will show how action initiation/inhibition happens in their brain.
3) It seems no, they dont control a limb simultaneously. They seem to be able to cancel the signals from the other person, presumably because their personal signals are much stronger (possibly because they have learned over time to do that ) or they have developed some mechanism to inhibit sensory signals from the opposite brain. This may be happening already at the level of thalamus where they are connected. Since their arms can possibly be controlled by both brains through the thalamic connection, i wonder if they can train themselves to use primarily the opposite person's limb, e.g. hand. It might be possible since the wiring is already there - it seems to only require sensorymotor traning.
2) I suppose you mean they have some kind of learning problems. But not really, people can learn and have normal IQ with much much less brain than what they may be allocating to the opposite body. And it's not even clear that they do that. They essentially share a thalamus but not much else , and even so, they dont seem to have less total thalamic mass than they would have separated . Also , thalamus being a relay rather than a decision taking region, it doesnt seem it would affect their intelligence too much.
3) They can control a subset of the other persons limbs.
Seeing out of 3 eyes seems like a much stranger sensory system. It's not going to simply extend to a wider field of view because someone else is controlling the focus.
I'm nearly blind in my left eye (was born with a cataract; lens was removed at an early age before lens transplants were a thing) and I think I perhaps experience something similar.
My vision isn't really integrated between the two eyes. It's hard to explain.
I "think" with my right (good) eye.
But then I also sort of have this auxiliary eye, my left eye. I can just see vague shapes and colors through it. It's just like this... separate camera or something. I can basically pay attention to one eye or the other; they're not really "together."
Now obviously, unlike these twins, I don't have another person controlling it. But, I wonder if their experience is similar to mine. Like they have their "primary" eyes and then also this separate disconnected set of eyes they can pay attention to if needed/wanted.
I have normal vision (with glasses) in both eyes, but I also have strabismus, that is, one eye turns inward a bit; so rather than seeing double, I use one eye at a time, and can switch from one to the other voluntarily. I just get peripheral vision from the "off" eye.
I don't miss the depth perception much, but it does mean I get nothing from 3D glasses. With the modern polarized kind I can at least wear them and watch the movie normally; with the old red/blue kind, the whole movie would be red or blue depending on which eye I was using.
I've experienced something similar. I kind of think that the other eye is still working and providing some depth perception, it's either that or after lifetime of single eye dominance/usage you just adapt and become very good at estimating and judging depth and distance.
In my case never having normal vision, I don't really know what I am missing, if anything.
Yeah! I did some reading and apparently binocular depth perception is the least important kind, and only works out to about six feet anyway; past that there's not enough parallax between your eyes to get any useful info. Judging distance by an object's surroundings is the most common way of doing it even for people with normal vision.
Is there even just a singular focus? Normally, both of a persons eyes are facing a singular direction which makes a large area of shared vision between the eyes (which allows a focus point anywhere in that field of vision). But with eyes which are pointed in a different direction this seems less likely. Does anyone have more info?
I have one normal eye and one eye that has no lens, so I only see vague shapes and colors in that eye.
There's no shared focus, per se. (The bad eye literally can't focus at all)
I don't typically "pay attention" to the bad eye. Usually, they are "separate" and I ignore the bad eye. Sometimes I have really funny lapses in depth perception. Driving at night when the road is wet (and there are lots of weird reflections) is particularly tough. I can't see 3D movies... mostly. Sometimes that magical 3D effect kicks in for a second or two. When it happens, it's pretty cool. Then it goes away. haha.
But, my brain does seem to assemble information from both eyes somehow. I can actually play most sports pretty well. I'm pretty decent at softball and tennis.
I also avoided a serious car accident once thanks to that shitty eye. Was nearly broadsided right in the driver's door by somebody on my "blind" side, but that eye alerted me to an oncoming car (jackass running a red light) approaching at fairly high speed. She sheared my front bumper clean off (instead of plowing into my door, possibly killing me because it was a tiny little sports car with little side impact protection) because I hit the brakes at the last fraction of a second.
I would wager that the conjoined twins' experience may be something like this. (Obviously, with more eyes involved)
I'm flattered! I don't have much of a web presence these days but feel free to use my contact info in my profile or reply here if you have any questions.
As far as I know my experiences are fairly typical for people in my situation though; I'm not sure I have anything unique to say. =)
I often wonder how birda do this (because I have one at home). Their eyes are on the side of their head, pointing in almost completely opposite directions.
Yet they’re able to accurately land on things and generally exhibit behavior that indicates they have pretty good 3D vision. Then again my bird often sticks his foot out to step on my finger when the finger is still an inch away. So maybe not as good at depth perception as humans.
strabismic people develop active mechanisms to inhibit the opposite eye to avoid / reduce double vision. in the end no matter how many eyes, what matters to the brain is to see something useful, so it will try to learn to suppress confusing information.
Fwiw I didn't find the NYT article had a lot more interesting stuff beyond the CBC article. It looks like it was written before they knew as much about the twins.
They have their brains fused together and can still walk and talk? The flexibility of the growing brain never ceases to amaze me. It shows how robust the whole process of growing from a single cell really is. A human can grow in uncountable ways.
Given how the twins share sensory inputs, I wonder how memory and imagination works for them. As they "hear" each other thinking, do they also share common memories? If one remembers a scene, will the other remember it the same way? Or will it have to be narrated between them?
When one reads a book, will the other get the story? I would guess so. But will they share the imagined parts, or will they imagine the scenes individually?
Indeed! The way I see it, identity derives from memory. So to the extent (if any) that they share identical memories they are strictly the same person. Beyond that I would guess there may be some (false) identification with behaviours of the other twin, in a manner redolent of Gazzaniga and Sperry's famous split brain experiment:
That they can "talk" to each other in their minds is very interesting to me. I've always wondered whether as humans our experiences are internally similar or not. Do you see my green as red? And so on. But if these girls can understand each other's thoughts that indicates that thoughts are similar. It means they share the same internal logic. Really this could be a good evidence to support the idea that we all think alike. I hope they grow up and their brains are able to mature normally. They will probably always have to share the body though, sadly.
I wish there was more info on this alleged ability.
It shouldn't be hard to show only Tatiana a picture of a number/person/etc, ask her to think about it, and see whether Krista can tell.
Somehow it doesn't add up with the rest (shared motor abilities through the thalamus), and sounds more like the poetic but bogus claims that many twins make about one another.
it's a little difficult when they can see out of each other's eyes. granted one of them can only see out of one of the other's eyes, it's still difficult and probably so unique/case-by-case that it would be difficult to come to any conclusions
Since each of them has a "non-shared" eye, testing this is kind of straightforward, we can retry the same experiments that have been performed for split-hemisphere patients (where the left-brain personality has access only to the right eye and vice versa).
What's not clear is how they "listen" to each other. Stream-of-thought signals may reach the thalamus, but be suppressed from being uttered as they normally do with all of us. Yet the girls may have developed some connection that allows them to "read" each other.
I'm not sure about that. As I understand it, W's argument against private language is essentially that there is no way for a single person to be sure that they are following rules and that those rules are consistent over time. It also happens that none of the languages we are familiar with use thought as their medium (being signed, spoken, read, etc. instead), but if these twins are indeed using internal dialog (whatever that means) as a medium of communication, it could very well be regulated by rule following in a way that would satisfy W, don't you think?
I think your questions revolve around the rest of us having separate brains and these brains having developed in ways unique to each of us. Theirs is intertwined to the point that it's one big brain. Perhaps each girl's own part has individuality, but their development would overlap or inform the other in such a way that they can share thoughts.
My point: I don't believe you can extrapolate from "these girls can share thoughts" to "all human thought share the same protocol/mechanism." That said, we all have human brains, and maybe human brains share the same protocol/mechanism for thought.
>Really this could be a good evidence to support the idea that we all think alike.
Our ability to think is extremely adaptable. I doubt we all think alike (apart from the general mechanism and macro structures).
One old experiment was to completely flip someone's vision upside down (with mirrors in goggles). It generally took people a week or two to adapt, but then their brains could once again link their visual input with other sensory input. They clearly didn't have the same internal logic as others (since their brains had to reverse the image), but because they received constant feedback on the results of their logic, their brains made them understand the world the same way everyone else does.
I love telling people about that study. It's so cool. And when they removed the glasses, in roughly the same span of time their vision returned to normal. Really makes you wonder about the potential negative impact of certain sensory augmentation during adolescent development, such as glasses or hearing aids, and how we could possibly avoid such negative effects.
I don't know why other similar sensory studies haven't been done. For example, trying to rewire the nervous stimulus system, such as trying to make a peripheral touch stimulus on one part of the body register with your proprioceptive system as a different part of the body, or inverting the inferred location of a sound with special headphones and feedback.
>For example, trying to rewire the nervous stimulus system, such as trying to make a peripheral touch stimulus on one part of the body register with your proprioceptive system as a different part of the body.
Oh wow. This could be huge for prosthetics, especially the robotic ones controled by muscle movements. I wonder if it's already been attempted.
The principle of mirror therapy (MT) is the use of a mirror to create a reflective illusion of an affected limb in order to trick the brain into thinking movement has occurred without pain. It involves placing the affected limb behind a mirror, which is sited so the reflection of the opposing limb appears in place of the hidden limb [1].
In deep learning it is possible to align languages to a common vector space. Any word in any language maps to the same space. So I don't see why it would be hard to map human thoughts from person to person.
They have a "read"-access to each others thoughts. Also, they have a "write"-access to each others motor areas. The question I cannot stop thinking about is whether they have a "write"-access to each other thoughts???
Can one of them MAKE THINK the other of something different the other being thinking of?
The "self" by Damassio was a self-as-process plus a self-as-object... How can one of them think of herself, if another one is thinking by her mind about something different at that moment.... hmm. No I am lost. Anyway, what would be a "self" in their case?
I actually find articles like this fairly upsetting to see. Presumably, it hits some nerve for me in terms of wanting to have a full and "normal" life in spite of my genetic disorder. In some sense, I can pass for normal in a way that conjoined twins cannot. In another sense, no, I will never be normal. The degree of social friction I face over that fact is more problematic in some ways than the physical limitations.
Conjoined twins are so obviously and undeniably different that I just cringe at the idea of the social impact. It very much strikes me as "Hell is other people." I hope their social experience is more positive and supportive than I imagine.
A couple of dead comments suggest conjoined twins cannot have a sex life. So, I will just post this here:
Determined to live as normal a life they could, Chang and Eng settled on their small plantation and bought slaves to do the work they could not do themselves. Using their adopted name "Bunker", they married local women on April 13, 1843. Chang wed Adelaide Yates (1823-1917), while Eng married her sister, Sarah Anne (1822-1892). The twins also became naturalized American citizens.
The couples shared a bed built for four in their Traphill home. Chang and Adelaide would become the parents of twelve children. Eng and Sarah had ten. However, Chichester disputes this number of children, stating Eng had 11.[11] After a number of years, the sisters began to dislike each other[12] and separate households were set up west of Mount Airy, North Carolina in the town of White Plains. The brothers would alternately spend three days at each home.
A couple of dead comments suggest conjoined twins cannot have a sex life.
My wife and I were discussing that aspect just this morning as we discuss the young ladies in this article, what with Chang and Eng not letting it slow them down much. Given the age of the girls I find it a bit creepy to contemplate, but I’m curious what other pieces of anatomy are wired to both brains.
Hopefully they work it out, and I suspect they will. I’m confident that the lives of Chang and Eng were not roses and unicorns, but if a couple of Asian guys can make a life for themselves in North Carolina in the 1800s, and conjoined twins to boot, I thinks these girls have a good shot.
As a side note, “Siamese Twins” might be out of favor, but the term originates with Chang and Eng, who were from Thailand, formerly known as Siam.
There are BDSM groups. There are people into polyamory. There are fetish groups.
Given how many "normal" people are into "weird" sex, the idea that a handicapped person is somehow less entitled to a sexuality looks to me like pure prejudice.
Yes, but logistical considerations weren't really my point.
It's debatable whether these girls are one girl or two girls, from a personality / sense-of-self perspective.
I personally could see myself being in a relationship with someone that had a conjoined twin. The only barriers are awkwardness and how much time I get to spend with them if the other twin has it's own SO/social life/etc.
Conjoined at the brain is totally different. Are they two individuals? Are they one with different personalities? Are they the same personality with two different physical manifestations? I feel like it would just be so hard with our culture's concept of love and self.
Does she love me? Do they love me? Does half of her hate me? It's just so mind-numbingly complicated.
> It's debatable whether these girls are one girl or two girls, from a personality / sense-of-self perspective.
No it's not. They have externally distinguishable personalities, and they refer to themselves as separate people. I don't see any reason not to take their word for it.
And even if they were one and a half people, I don't see the issue as long as all one-and-a-half of them are into it. And if they're not, it's not as if having conflicted feelings about someone is alien to normal human experience. It would certainly be an odd situation, but hardly insurmountable.
People who have had their corpus callosum (the connection between the left and right hemispheres of the brain) are shown to have actions which contradict themselves (the left hand, controlled by the right hemisphere) will pick things up, and the right hand (controlled by the left hemisphere) will knock it down or choose something different from what the left brain wanted.
I have a lot of personal issues, including being medically handicapped. One of the things I have learned in life: whatever I might dislike about myself and see as a bug, someone somewhere sees as a feature.
Things like BDSM are pretty objectionable to some people. But it is something that can be hidden while someone passes for normal most of the time.
Your justification of your position is exactly what I have in mind when I say that the social experience of conjoined twins must be a case of "Hell is other people. "
Insert the term "man" in place of "conjoined twin" and follow it with a homophobic rant and see how you feel about your position in that light. Or "Black woman" or "Asian woman" followed by a justification of racism and laws forbidding interracial marriage.
From a general ai perspective, these girls show us the possibility of having multiple self-iterating recursive identities share the same physical and mental resources.
From a philosophical perspective I applaud Mother Nature for spitting on our idea of limited identity in such a compellingly materialistic way. The Ship of Theseus is a good wikipedia search for a thinker's first thoughts about identity.
And from a human perspective, these girls will show us the struggles and triumphs of two individuals pioneering so far from the central finite curve of human experience, and with such a supportive mother like that, I believe they will do it in spades.
> far from the central finite curve of human experience
Do you mean anything in particular for this, or are you appropriating a TV show phrase to mean "unusual"?
(Just pointing out that the 'central finite curve' is something that has meaning to Ricks but isn't really a stand in for 'usual' in any meaningful sense in the context of the TV show -- I'd hate for what's potentially a cool sci-fi idea to turn into a euphemism for "the shell of a high dimensional normal distribution".)
I don't know about the OP specifically, but I generally dislike that sort of writing. It uses underspecified concepts in an attempt to sound smart, but all it does is fail to convey much meaning.
Whenever I come across it, I think "this person wanted to say something smarter than they could, so they dressed it up in smart-speak".
> It uses underspecified concepts in an attempt to sound smart, but all it does is fail to convey much meaning.
That sounds like it conveyed the meaning perfectly: they wanted to present an idea that struck you as smart, but which you didn't understand -- we're meant to see the show as Morty, not Rick. So we just get a Rick-ism that clearly has some structure to how the Ricks are organized (which the Ricks understand), but which doesn't immediately mean anything more to us. Rick and Morty isn't a science lecture -- we should expect narrative language, not scientific language.
It suggests that the Ricks are organized around some central, finite core of Rick-ness that we don't know about (notice that they have worse lives as they acquire letter variations on their curve numbers, eg TV personalities on the citadel). That's the point -- they don't want to get into a detail physics argument about it, but frame a (later revealed) structure among the Ricks.
I just don't think we should assume that structure is the shell of a normal distribution instead of something Fry-esque (ie, I'm-my-own-grandfather shit) -- we should leave them the room to insert whatever structure fits narrative-wise when we get to the point that makes sense in the story.
My point is that retard Rick could be the "central finite curve", and the other Ricks just hate the fact so much they made up a euphemism for him but don't kill him out of a fear of destabilizing the system of Ricks.
We don't really know what it is at the core, and so these girls could very well be the human "central finite curve", and not "off" it in any sense.
I was suggesting we not project our biases onto things like "central finite curve", eg that it's a curve which embodies "normalcy", until we see what role they actually play in the story.
> I applaud Mother Nature for spitting on our idea of limited identity
The true mother nature's plan was probably killing the mother and both girls at birth time. I would thank the obstetrician at charge and his/her team instead.
By that logic all technology is "natural" and there is no distinction between the inventions of man and the creations of nature/god. Such logic sidelines self reflection, leading to horrible places.
No, it just means that self reflection must be based on something other than an arbitrary and meaningless distinction between things that existed before humanity and things that existed after humanity.
If we see ourselves as part of nature, but with a unique ability to impact more of nature than most other forces within nature, I think we would have a greater imperative to rectify mistakes we have made, vs seeing issues like climate change as mostly impact “others.”
It's a philosophical work about leavers and takers and what is the nature of both nature and humans, as well as their role in it. It's told from the perspective of a man taking instruction from a speaking ape.
It is something I've read many times and get something new every time I read it. Given the context of this thread, I'm not sure I could recommend a more salient book.
All evidence and theories point to climate change being caused by humans. This interpretation does nothing to change that conclusion. My view is that it is an entirely useless distinction to make. If climate change were instead caused by natural sources of carbon dioxide, it would be no less a crisis, and would require no less of an intervention.
Only if you derive your morals in a nature good/synthetic bad frame, which is terribly naive. Nature is filled with awful things and awful acts.
Self-reflexion is the ultimate unnatural act which is (almost if not) completely unique to our species, and it's not to hard to argue not entirely ubiquitous within us.
If this is the thread where we express our desires for their future, I myself would like to see them make movies or write books. Neurology would be good too, though!
in the video it was interesting how they found it more difficult to see through eachothers eyes than to sense touch, and futhermore some kinds of seeing were easier than others: they found it easier to identify colours than shapes. Is this because only certain data is transmitted across, or because they're not conscious of some information ?
I’m fascinated by the idea that they can apparently communicate using their connection- maybe that’s the mechanism by which they can share limited visual information. I want to know more about their shared inner dialogue.
Do they share the same dreams? Can one be awake while the other is asleep, and if so, can she experience the dream, or parts of it, while being fully conscious?
I wonder why they are considered two different persons at this point. I am not entirely sure the justification of separate identity here should be the two obvious separate "bodies" (gastrointestinal tracts, limbs, etc)!
All that matters for the same identity to me is the brain. If one can read the thoughts of the other so easily, in my book it is the same person.
Disclaimer: am resident in Neurology with a background in Anatomy
> If one can read the thoughts of the other so easily, in my book it is the same person.
I can also read your thoughts. Are we the same person? The only difference is you need to put them in text, and she does it via electrical impulses.
Their thoughts are not integrated into a single entity, but rather they are able to communicate via a channel you don't posses. As evidence, when they need to share thoughts it takes them extra time, to me that means communication, not single entity.
Another way to put it: They can distinguish their own thoughts from those of their sister.
> am resident in Neurology
Then you should know that even a regular brain is really multiple independent "thinkers" that are wired to give the illusion of a single entity. Disrupt that wiring and the different "minds" will do their own thing, separately from the others (alien hand syndrome for example).
And I know that that sounds like an argument against what I'm saying.
It's basically the question of consciousness: Who is the "I" that is speaking. That alien hand has no consciousness. These conjoined sisters have two, because each can perceive itself as distinct.
It would appear that they perceive themselves as separate. They don't simply share a brain; there seems to be two of most structures. The brains are, however, highly intertwined.
That's the interesting part, did the people raising them condition them to think they were two people? If they had treated then as one person, would they behave like one person? The brain is amazing and super weird.
Would you have thought you were two people, if the people raising you conditioned you to think you were two people? If they had treated you as two persons, would you (two) behave like two persons?
Also something to ponder.
And heck, as disturbing: what about two (regular) twins raised as one person...
Persons with Split Brain (to the Corpus callosum) can perceive their right part of their body different from the left. Schizophrenic and other highly psychotic patients can have multiple personalities.
They still seem to have ONE thalamus and that says a lot about their ability to perceive each other side.
I could be reading it wrong, but the article seems to indicate that there are two thalamuses (thalami?), but they are connected by a bridge. What this means in a practical sense, well that is above my level of expertise.
> I wonder why they are considered two different persons at this point.
Because the system isn't well-defined in this case, which happens less than 1 in a million times, so isn't worth trying to fix explicitly.
The simplest solution is to give them two identities and move on with life having a little oddity -- as a pragmatic solution, it seems like the one that would end in the least litigation, as it confers an advantage not a disadvantage on the person(s) in question and can't possibly disenfranchise anyone.
It's not like you can't already create extra 'selves' (in most senses; eg voting is different) legally at the cost of $200 a pop -- what does it really matter if less than 1 in a million people happens to have two for what is otherwise going to be a very hard and likely short life?
That said -- I agree with you that it's not really well-defined here, because our notion of 'identity' is already highly problematic.
Edit:
This is a strange thought: what is the impact on someone with multiple personalities if you allow each personality to incorporate an LLC, all owned by a parent LLC (obviously, all legally owned by the 'person') -- ie, create an external legal framework that parallels the structure of the internal mental one, that all of the personalities should be able to view?
I'm honestly not sure if that's helpful for providing a lens to see the interaction play out or harmful for legitimizing the split. (And to some degree, all of us possess such multiple personalities -- we're rarely entirely the same person at work as at home or church or... whatever. I'd just argue that 'healthy' adults understand the interaction better.)
The way I understood the situation it's two brains fused together, not one brain in control of two bodies. The twins were described as having different personalities.
The same can happen to schizophrenic patients. They are still one person (from a juridical point of view). Neuroanatomically, what I see here in this situation is a highly intermingled brain, so intermixed that it is impossible to separate without killing both personalities and their bodies as well.
I believe you're referring to Dissociative identity disorder (DID), or multiple personality disorder (MPD), not Schizophrenia, and a friend who's a psychiatrist told me that in quite a few decades of practicing, he hasn't encountered even once such a diagnosis so he doubts it even exists outside of Hollywood movies.
As far as I'm concerned what matters is how many entities exist who display a behavior of a separate entity (at least to the degree that we acknowledge as being separate) - i.e display different personalities each with a cohesive structure and integrity. It really doesn't matter how many physical brains they share.
Your friend is wrong, there are persons who are delusional to the point of losing grip with their own bounds of personality, but of course Hollywood creates a dramatic picture of them all.
Schizophrenia has to do with some degree of failure to separate reality and delusion. It's got nothing to do with multiple personalities. Are you talking about dissosiative identity disorder, instead?
Wow what an incredibly difficult way to live, even stranger that the person you share a brain with you will never physically see with your own eyes, because of the join angle. Hopefully one day scientists figure out a safe way to separate them.
Why separate them? It sounds like they're so deeply interconnected that it would be a destructive as separating your own arm from your body or having a lobotomy.
All humans have difficulty living. We have to walk and eat and sleep and can't ever stop breathing or we'll die. These girls just have it different. Maybe harder but since they haven't experienced any different, they're probably not too fussed, just as we don't hope to avoid having to breathe all day long.
How are you equating breathing to be as difficult as being physically connected to another person 24/7 exactly? Additionally because of the join angle, you can never hold your head straight, meaning your view of the world is constantly from a 45 angle.
The world is not designed with you in mind - you cannot drive, likely not able to sit comfortably on an airplane, or even walk up stairs or go through single doors without turning to the side. Try putting food in your mouth from an angle or even having a drink. What about just sitting in a chair? And how will you have relationships with other people? Equating all this to breathing is a serious lacking of empathy on your part.
> you can never hold your head straight, meaning your view of the world is constantly from a 45 angle.
This is completely irrelevant. Even adult brain can adjust to seeing the world upside down pretty quickly. With 45 deg angle they could have better depth perception of horizontal objects (not to mention seeing out of 3 or 4 eyes).
> The world is not designed with you in mind
That's the real problem although people without legs, arms or sight have worse and they manage.
> not able to sit comfortably on an airplane
Nobody can do THAT. Also epilepsy and diabetes probably is more inconvenient.
> Try putting food in your mouth from an angle or even having a drink.
I think you severly underestimate brain adaptability. One of them can use 3 legs and you wory about eating and drinking at an angle like nobody is muching and drinking through a straw lying on the side on the couch in front of the TV.
>What about just sitting in a chair
I think in public most chairs are in rows and at home you can put two side by side or sit on a couch.
> And how will you have relationships with other people?
I think that's the real problem and the diabetes and epilepsy and possibly increased chance of some circluatory problems in their brains.
All they know is the angle, so their mind probably adjusts. There were experiments with a helmet that flipped your world upside down, and it turns out the brain adjusts quickly and presents things right side up.
Furthermore, these girls can see out 3 or 4 eyes, depending on the girl, so you are the one stuck in a limited view of the world, not them.
Regarding other limitations, yes, they are also bothersome, but if you've known nothing else, it probably isn't so bad. We all have limitations that others would find a cause for despair.
Jeez, You're the one with a serious lack of empathy. People with physical disabilities aren't worthless vegetables.
These twins have only experienced life this way thus it's their version of normal. Conjoined twins who live into adulthood don't have a particularly poor quality of life simply from being conjoined (rather than the health effects). They can usually learn to do most of the same things as singletons. If you ask them, many say they prefer being conjoined.[1] It's definitely personal for everyone involved.
I'm reminded of the study that found quadriplegics and lottery winners having basically the same level of happiness one year later.
I'm sure there are many, many challenges for them but pointing to them saying "your life is terrible, you have to drink from an angle" shows a profound lack of empathy and full and complete inability to see anything from a perspective outside your own and is quite shocking.
>And how will you have relationships with other people?
Like everyone else, just a little different. The famous conjoined twins known as "The Siamese Twins" that traveled with PT Barnum both married and both had double digit children each. Conjoined twins may also not feel quite as much of a need to seek out romantic relationships as singletons since they already have a life partner attached.
Yeah, the world is also not designed for people with no legs, or people with no arms, etc. Yet people with those handicaps demonstrate amazing abilities to adapt and with the help of technology, they can overcome their limitations even better.
in and of itself their condition is tragically limiting.
making matters worse, people measure their condition relative to others, and it will dawn on them as they get old what a terrible hand they've been dealt.
In my experience of talking with people with physical and learning differences it is unusual for them to take the "terrible hand" stance; this is much more common for people who suffer from emotional differences and mental health problems. People who are blind or wheelchair bound tend to say things like "yes it's hard for me to do some things but I've found a way to be happy which is more than a lot of people".
I've had my life enriched by contact with people like that, so assigning them "a negative value" would be something that I would hotly dispute.
We all have limitations imposed on us, sometimes by the time of our birth - no one on Hacker News today will ever travel to another star, or (I believe) speak to general AI, but perhaps our decedents will. Other limitations are economic, I am not a billionaire and will never climb Everest, or just talent based - my daughter plays the Cello, I've tried to learn it but I can't make it go like she does.
If it were practical to separate them, it should really be up to them, once they're adults, but if I were in that position, I could see wanting to be separated for physical safety, if nothing else.
Two bodies connected only at the skull seems extremely dangerous to me. For example, if one of them trips and falls, it seems like that could easily break the neck of the other.
I doubt it will ever be possible separate them. Their neural networks are intertwined. Presumably, so are their vascular networks. Even if they could be separated without killing them, they'd both likely end up with severe brain damage.
"Direct" eye contact with a mirror is good enough.
Maybe you are confusing looking at someone's face and eyes with a posture that faces the other person: it is normally an important element of body language, but if it's impossible it ceases to be meaningful.
WOW This is incredible! How come this isn't on every main media site? I have so many questions! Are both vertebrae connected to the same brain? They have to be. How can they have different personalities?
Who knows what it really 'means'. (And meaning, at least as represented by posters here, seems to vary a fair bit based on oxen ownership.)
It seems to indicate that both concepts are more fluid than feels comfortable. To some extent, it feels related to bandwidth/latency/maybe the direct linkage and chemical interaction between brains - as that increases, the boundaries become blurrier.
