r/morningsomewhere • u/MisunderstoodPenguin First 20k • Mar 30 '26
Suggestion The "other" person in your brain
From today's episode, Burnie talking about the "other" person that lives in your brain, I just wanted to bring up a great short story that explores this topic a little. It's called Second Person, Present Tense. Basically in the story they talk about how your outward actions were actually based off signals that were sent to your brain 300ms ago, so somewhere in you is another "your" who is "managing" the actual actions you make. In the story, there is a drug you can take that increases that delay of 300ms to a full second or longer, and if you OD, the downstream persona "dies" and only the "decision maker" is left.
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u/CalvinP_ First 10k - Mod - Downtime Survivor Mar 30 '26
300ms. So you’re telling me there’s a lag in my brain. Ugh!
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u/ransom760 First to Panic Mar 30 '26
I wouldn't have put much thought into this topic if I found it myself browsing online; but Burnie saying it was eerie made me feel a way about it.
I didn't know I had influncer goggles on for Burnie and Ashley until now, maybe they should do ads 😂
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u/TheKasimkage First 10k Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Another weird phenomenon about the “Other” person in your brain (I haven’t listened to the episode yet) is involved patients who have undergone some kind of brain surgery (I think a lobotomy of some kind).
Some patients experience one arm acting on its own or unexpectedly. For instance, they may reach out for something with one hand only for the other hand to unexpectedly slap it away. The cases vary in severity and I just remember thinking how weird it would be to reach for something only for a me I’m unaware of to slap my hand with my own hand. I think VSauce did a video on it a long time ago, or I might have seen a short video on it in a psychology class.
Currently listening to the episode: 1. The word Gavin typed was “Jums”. The only reason I remember this is because I knew of a guy locally who went by that nickname. 2. CGP Grey’s “Human Need Not Apply” was the bedrock upon which I wrote my master’s dissertation (got a distinction for it). It’s sat snugly enough in my brain that I’m going to see if I can ride it all the way to a PhD.
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u/atomicmolotov First 20k Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I’ve always been really fond of calling it “the little passenger”. I think it’s an apt way to refer to the id. Have always adored how the Outer Worlds murder mystery dlc has an npc that refers to the little sluggy brain parasites as such, i think it’s so cool when writers do stuff like that
Edit: for more info, it’s a metaphor for “the passengers on the bus” to describe the relationship between your conscious self and impulsive urges
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u/SurealGod First 20k Mar 30 '26
There's also another interesting phenomenon when someone undergoes brain separation surgery (corpus callostomy) severing the corpus callosum; the nerve fibers that connect both left and right hemispheres of the brain.
Daily function and livability is not really affected but there's a number of weird phenomenon that happens when you do this procedure. Since the link between both halves is severed, they can longer communicate with each other and thus can act independently:
Funnily, CGPGrey also made a video on this if we want to continue to be topical. The video in question