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The Surgery That Proved There Is No Free Will

Joe Scott

3,476,690 views

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Starting in the 1940s, a new surgery was being explored to help people with severe epilepsy which involved severing communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. It worked, but caused some very strange side effects. As researchers began to study these side effects, it led to an entirely new understanding of the brain; including the surprising fact that we really don’t have control over our decisions.

Read more about split-brain experiments in Dr. Michael Gazzaniga’s fascinating book, Who’s In Charge?

https://a.co/d/atzdmH4

Here’s a speech Dr. Gazzaniga gave at the University of Edinburgh in 2009:

Michael Gazzaniga - What We Are

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LINKS LINKS LINKS
Men in Black (1997) - The Galaxy Is on Ori...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_W...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
https://www.britannica.com/science/op...
https://www.epsyhealth.com/seizure-ep...

TIMESTAMPS
0:00 - What Made You Click?
1:35 - Who's In Charge?
3:39 - Split-Brain Surgery
7:37 - The Two Hemispheres
12:00 - The Differences In The Hemispheres
20:12 - The Question of Free Will and Emergence Theory
26:00 - Sponsor - Henson Shaving

20 Comments

@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.

@AnomalyINC 2 years ago

For those who, like me, just wanted to get to the point of how any of this disproves free will:
It doesn't disprove free will, the title is clickbait to get views, and it works.
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.

@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?"

@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

@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.

@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"

@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.

@PositiveThinkTankSama 8 months ago

Kinda comforting to think everything I do is a 'team effort'. If no-one else got me, I got me.

High five brain.

@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.

@Amm6ie 2 years ago (edited)

"my ideas arent my identity & it's a lot easier to change your mind on something if it isn't tied to your identity" i absolutely love that (edit bc i cant spell lol)

@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?"

@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

@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.

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?"

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...

@hilerm2 2 years ago

“But WHY did you click the video?”

The chair spin, Joe, the chair spin.

@H3artsl0b 8 months ago

My dads close friend got split brain surgery in the 80s and he was COMPLETELY different after. Like everything he lived for before the surgery was the complete opposite. He went from being a closed up introvert to hosting big parties etc. super weird hah

@queen-patches233 2 years ago

"my ideas aren't my identity" hits hard

@arsdigitorum 2 years ago

As someone who has OCD and PTSD that plague me with intrusive thoughts, this is also very freeing. It reminds me that I am not my thoughts and I can more easily dismiss the horrible ones and get on with my day without ruining it.

@martinhowser4094 8 months ago

1:50.. But DID you decide to do the video?

@ScoutReaper-zn1rz 2 years ago

One thing that always frustrates me is not being able to hold onto a thought while walking through different rooms/thresholds. I'll be in my room and think of something I want/need to do and as soon as I leave the room that the original thought occurred in, it becomes absent from my mind. It isn't until I return to the room the thought took place in that it comes back to me.

@FunnCubes 1 year ago

0:19 Incorrect. I added it to my watch later playlist about 3 weeks ago. The decision was made so long ago, that I don't even remember clicking the video, therfore it's predestined fate.