Implications of the theory of dual brain processing on relations between the sexes

If you have not read the full essay by Gaius Baltar regarding what I am labelling his theory of dual brain processing, it is here.

Hi article is fairly long, detailed, and brilliant.

What I will do here instead is summarise it and then begin to address some astonishing and important consequences of his theory that I believe follow from it.

These are not speculations but observations that fit perfectly with my own lived experience of studying the human mind and brain for about 20 or 25 years with my usual obsessive curiosity on topics that interest me.

I have been a clinical hypnotist for now 20 years but my interest in the mind and brain predates that by several years. The testing, study, practical application and observations I gathered in that time are solid things that have been observed in a variety of contexts, from my life-long practice of martial arts to my work in the construction industry.

The point is that Baltar’s theory has been like a key that finally addresses things I have noticed for decades —and to which there seemed to be no clear answer or solution— and turns that lock with a frictionless precision that opens a veritable vault of answers that all suddenly bridge gaps of understanding in a cascading avalanche of awesomeness.

It will probably take me weeks and months to even address all of these things to any degree, but more importantly, I think my approach to humans and humanity as a whole is forever affected by this dual brain processing theory of his.

The implications of it are so far-reaching in almost every aspect of human communication and thinking capacity that it affects literally everything. In this post I want to address (however briefly and superficially for now) the implications relating to communication between the sexes and why it seems to have degraded so badly over the last few decades, but more importantly, how this theory can be used to address it and improve it.

First a brief summary of his theory.

You need to grasp at least the basics of the dual brain processing theory of mind (I made this name up as Mr. Baltar seems to have not given his theory an official name, and I will henceforth refer to it as such) if you are to be able to use it in your life.

In a nutshell the dual brain processing theory of mind (DBTM) is that your left brain hemisphere processes things logically, analytically, linearly, precisely or mathematically and mostly consciously, while your right hemisphere processes them inductively, statistically, probabilistically, intuitively and mostly unconsciously.

This is not new and has been known for some time and various experiments have proven the difference in the aspects of brain hemispheres for decades and even more than a century now.

What Baltar’s idea did however, is point out that the ability of one hemisphere can be superior to the other (which —given brain plasticity— is something that almost certainly can be guided from early childhood depending on what experiences one is subjected to).

Intelligence is measured mostly by IQ tests and these are very valid as we have mountains of data on them now, since they too have been administered for many, many, years to now literally billions of people; and regardless of how many people may be upset by the fact that IQ is a valid measurement of intelligence that has consistent predictability regarding abilities of humans at various levels of intelligence, it remains true nonetheless.

It is also known that IQ can be very high in one regard but not as high in others. A good example of this is Vox Day. He has an admittedly high intelligence in certain aspects of data processing of information, but by his own admission he is functionally retarded when it comes to spatial reasoning. He told me he literally cannot do children’s three dimension puzzles, and I think he stated also his wife has banned him from using power tools. Understandable, since I imagine if he ever used a chainsaw, the headline would be horrific.

I also noticed a pattern in women with above average intelligence that was difficult to reconcile until I read Baltar’s theory, and it was this: highly intelligent women, who clearly had a quick mind and a capacity for seeing things I might have missed or correlations that were interesting, creative and valid in certain contexts would seem to (still!) be almost incapable of thinking logically.

Though undoubtedly apparently smart, they would be as absolutely solipsistic as ever. They would ignore blindingly obvious logic that indicated they were in error in other aspects that affected their lives in not insignificant ways.

I am not the only one to have noticed this by any means. All men throughout history have come up with some version of this and various theories have been presented as to why this is.

The emotionality, lack of logical processing power and egotistical solipsism (bordering on rampant narcissism at times) of women has long been known and observed and even more so in recent years.

My take on it for decades, which is still valid in the context of Baltar’s theory, is that these differences are biological and due to the different survival pressures women have been subjected to when compared to men (see Caveman Theory or my TMOS series).

While it is pretty certain that their different biology is the cause of the difference in behaviour, and as such I had (like most men) tried to make my peace with it as best I could, there is still an element of free will and agency in the behaviour of women, of course, and my tendency has been to judge them on the basis that if I have the presence of mind and self-restraint to not murder everyone that pisses me off, despite the hormone of testosterone that courses through my veins and brain, then, surely, women can exercise a minimum of logic to not behave like self-absorbed narcissists throughout their day.

Obviously I am exaggerating for the sake of effect, but you know what I am trying to put into evidence here. And yet… very often, the apparent disregard for anyone and everyone displayed by women remained mostly a rather disappointing and bitter pill to swallow.

One only needs to notice how women behave at checkout tills, underground barriers, ATM machines and so on, when compared to men, to see that women act far more than men as if the procedure that is about to take place (paying, tapping your pass on the reader, getting your bank card into the machine) is a complete surprise no one could have anticipated at all, so we must now all wait while she rummages through her bag to find the card she uses 50 times a day but never knows exactly where it is in her bag/wallet/pocket, etc.

In my youth this aspect of female behaviour resulted in endless arguments.

Later I made my peace with their inability to do logic. Later still I discovered the IQ gap and realised that what I had thought bridgeable was in fact a chasm that could not be crossed. (Which applies to men and women equally, perhaps even more so to men, since there is no sexual interest in them as far as I am concerned, to possibly alleviate the distance).

I never really gave much thought to my 155 or so IQ. Mostly I assumed it just meant I figured out things faster than most but I was never of the idea it made me “superior” in some overarching way. It made me faster and more effective, but when I was young, in my teens, I was under the delusion that anyone could do what I did if I just explained it to them. Maybe slower, but it was just a matter of speed.

By my twenties I had realised that some brains just could never do certain things.

Nathaniel, a store keeper working in my father’s construction firm, was simply incapable of grasping the concept of square meters. I spent a week patiently trying to explain it to him with examples, exercises, measurements on site, drawing it out, sketching it… but it was all to no avail.

He wanted to understand too. He just couldn’t.

He was also the most honest human being I ever met. So we made him store keeper of the electrical goods because they all came in linear lengths or countable units of material and he did not have to deal with square meters of anything.

Once I learnt that a 30 point IQ gap is essentially unbridgeable, it also shed light on my failed relationships. My first wife is one of the most loyal and kind people I know, and we remain very good friends, but the gap in IQ meant we were simply not suited at all to be husband and wife. Despite genuine affection, we simply could not communicate effectively. And while maybe some men can happily exist with a woman where they have that IQ gap, I am not one of them.

However, even when a woman had an IQ that was in the right general range of about 125+ (and they are not so common) the solipsism didn’t really lessen. And in some cases (wife n. 2 comes to mind) it was actual full blown narcissism (which naïvely I didn’t believe in, much as I don’t believe in werewolves. It’s quite the shock when you discover how wrong you are about such things. And I’d still prefer werewolves over the alternative).

There was some other barrier to communication that i could sense on some level MUST be something that can be figured out objectively. I don’t mean that one can necessarily resolve the issue. But I was sure there was a reason and understanding that reason would also explain if the issue even was resolvable, or under what circumstances it might be. I sensed this was the case on some level, because we live in an objective universe and while we might not always figure things out, everything has a way that it can be understood. Maybe not by me. Maybe not this century, but somehow, somewhere there was a reason. That would be my left logical brain hemisphere concluding it. But the sense of it existing was my right brain hemisphere giving me the sensation but not quite enough information for my left brain to figure it out (until I read Balter’s post. Then it all clicked!)

The best I could come up with was simply that women’s brains functioned differently because of biology, survival pressure differences from men over millions of years, and a bit of toxic feminism all mixed together.

Nor was I wrong. The female brain is also structurally different, they have more white matter, less grey matter, and a thicker corpus callosum. All biological differences that meant they operate at a less logical and abstract level of thinking, but have a better connection between the hemispheres. The effect is that there is indeed something to the cliché of “female intuition”.

Using Balter’s model, the average woman processes life more as generic probabilistic set of vague beliefs and concepts (right hemisphere) that she would probably struggle to articulate with precision, and instead would likely rationalise (that is justify to herself and others) at whatever level her logic function (left hemisphere) operates at.

Since in general terms the left hemisphere of the brain is less developed in women than men (yes, yes, you are the special exception, but we don’t care dear, we’re dealing with large statistical models here) their “explanations” of why they believe x, y, or z, will tend to seem like dishonest nonsense to a man who has a well developed logic function.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that women tendentially will also actively lie and make shit up consciously to justify their actions, but there are two very important points to keep in mind here too:

1. Her explanations/rationalisations may be nonsensical not because she is trying to deceive but because she literally does not have the computing power in the left hemisphere to make correct logical analysis of the probabilistic (fuzzy and not precise but nevertheless useful) processes happening in the right hemisphere.

2. The probabilistic notions of her right hemisphere can be and are affected by life experiences that have significant emotional content.

This can result in things like a woman that has been abused or neglected by a man or her father in her formative years to at some instinctual, unconscious level, assume all men are bad. Because she is not as able to see the internal process of her own right hemisphere (using the left one to analyse it) she will then use easy to find “information” fed to her by the Clown World narrative, and “conclude” how evil men all are, and as a result justify her internal process (which is valid but applies to a specific man, not all men) with a completely flawed “logical” mechanism that most five year olds can see is bad logic. She may herself feel a vague unease at this that makes her unhappy but the “belief” is almost unshakable, because she cannot access her own right hemisphere process due to her limited logical capacity of the left hemisphere.

And this is before we add in any other context like ego, pride, actual selfishness, conscious intent to deceive etc etc.

Another example might be that a woman senses her partner is cheating even if she has no clear idea how she knows. Her right hemisphere has processed millions of microcues and data points unconsciously that tell a story, but the right hemisphere has no words so can’t translate the information to the left hemisphere other than as a feeling or sensation, and her left hemisphere simply cannot see the pattern in the millions of tiny data points. So she is right but can’t really prove it to anyone else, yet her love and sense of loyalty experience a crash of betrayal.

And of course, there is also the tragic process where the woman intuits something about her partner, and labels it as X (say cheating) when in fact it is Y (maybe he secretly took up smoking, or is stressed about the bills, or has cancer and doesn’t know how to tell her) and then acts on it as if X when really it is Y.

This kind of response is unfortunately common between women and men on the spectrum. Their atypical (but not nefarious) modes of internal processing produce microcues that are wildly different from neurotypical people. This is often interpreted in a fear mode by a woman because anything “other” is generally scary to begin with, and the zeitgeist is in any case weird=dangerous. This is not to say women should not trust their internal alarms. Always do. Especially with strangers. However, before imploding your 20 year marriage because you have a “bad feeling” maybe take some time to figure out what that feeling actually comes from.

So much of the behaviour that causes problems between men and women can be understood far better than it ever was before if you consider this model of the mind.

For example, the ability of men to sacrifice for ideals in cold blood is due to having a good logical ability and recognising our objective value when considered in a greater context.

The ability of women to stay in a situation that is horrifying to most people simply because their own emotions are catered to well, or for example to sacrifice themselves for a serial killer —actions that are totally irrational from a logical perspective— suddenly make sense when you understand that her right brain has for whatever reason (usually childhood trauma) latched on to some aspect of the serial killer that literally locks her brain into a “good feeling” and her left brain is incapable of overriding that sensation because her logic functions simply don’t operate at the same level of intensity. Feelings are far stronger in the right aide of the brain and the cold logic of facts is a poor substitute for a genuine hormonal response.

A feminine woman that is being honest and caring, can still appear as deceptive and selfish to a masculine man that processes mostly in the left hemisphere. And such a man, even if honest and caring, can still appear as an inflexible psychopath without human empathy to a woman that processes mostly in the right hemisphere.

And that is BEFORE we add in all the normal and actual human failings we all have in varying degrees.

Despite this difficulty, both sides can still have a sense, inexplicably, that the other person can’t be all bad. They sense there is more to them than their apparent incompatibility (and as far as they are both concerned, the stumbling block is both real and immutable) and without the comprehension of how their brains process in such radically different ways, those stumbling blocks are indeed pretty permanent.

With the realisation and understanding of this theory of mind, however, if you are the type able to do logic well, pretty much all the irritating and immutable habits of the other person now become understood.

Not by some partial theory of the differences being due to biology (they are, but understanding this detail removes the veil that masks it all as mere survival pressure and animalistic traits), but by being able to understand the right brain perspective a woman may be operating under.

A silly example (extreme for the sake of clarity) should help to show the benefits of being aware of this theory.

For the sake of simplicity, we will also assume no one is intentionally trying to deceive anyone or being otherwise “evil”.

Given the above conditions, as you will see from the hypotheticals below, the behaviour of a woman that previously appeared self-absorbed, distant, inattentive, selfish or lazy, is transformed.

Her self-absorption may well be her trying to rationalise why she is still staying in a bad situation when she feels bad yet also feels there is more to it. This would naturally exhaust her, which would mean she is inattentive and tired. A man that is not actually an abusive asshole may still come across as being one to her because he gets upset at the fact that she invariably leaves the toothpaste cap off the toothpaste every morning.

He loses his shit after ten years of the toothpaste cap being left off, after years of reminding his wife of it and her “ignoring it”.

Divorce ensues. Irreconcilable differences. Etcetera.

From his perspective, his wife cared so little about him that she could not be bothered to remember a simple small kindness of putting the cap back on after use.

From her perspective, he loved her less than he did having a neat toothpaste tube.

Both are wrong and both probably genuinely love each other. However…

The man processes left side heavily (say he’s on the spectrum) and has many logical reasons why closing the toothpaste tube matters (flies don’t land on the open toothpaste and contaminate it with excrement from the toilet brush, or whatever). To him, that apparently insignificant action is important. And he can’t understand why anyone who genuinely cared about another person would not do it. Especially since he has explained at length his reasons.

The woman, with all the best of intensions and love for her husband, processes heavily on the right side. Unconsciously, she associates not being criticised for stupid little things as being the only proof of real love. Something she never got from her let’s say abusive father. She honestly does NOT mean to leave the toothpaste cap off. And in fact, every day that she does, and an argument ensues and she feels bad about herself, questions her life choices, assumes her husband doesn’t love her and she herself does not feel loved and so on. It all leads to heartache, arguments and divorce.

So what is the solution?

From the woman’s point of view there simply isn’t one. Eventually she will be worn down and leave. Which explains why 80% of divorces are initiated by women. If asked to explain why she wants to divorce, she will not be able to articulate it beyond “I’m not happy.” Which sounds tragically shallow, and makes most men think women have the heart and humanity of feral and rabid ferrets.

But the truth is she simply cannot figure out logically (left side) the internal processes that are happening inside her. All she knows is that she does NOT feel loved, she IS unhappy, the arguments are endless and she simply cannot remember the cap, and at times even if she does she is so upset by the whole thing she says “fuck it!” And leaves it off on purpose. And at a deep and unconscious level she not only feels unloved, but she has the “proof” of it! (She is being berated for what is in her mind inconsequential stuff just like her abusive father used to do. Proof!) She now KNOWS she is not loved, so what’s the point? And sad, depressed and angry she files for divorce.

The husband is shocked, hurt and depressed too, and her filing for divorce now confirms to him what logic has already “confirmed” to him. She never loved him to begin with. She was always after the house or whatever, because only an egomaniac would divorce rather than simply putting the toothpaste cap back on after use.

The solution, for the most part, lies necessarily with the man, or the rare woman that can do decent logic.

Armed with this understanding of left and right brain processing, the ingrained bad habits and issues that cause friction can be seen not as we FEEL them, but as they are.

The right brain is affected by significant emotional events much more than the left brain and is distributed in this respect throughout the body. It’s why generally we can’t “force” ourselves to feel a certain way, at least not unless you trained to some extreme degrees to do so (special ops people, extreme persons, and some aspects of what is mislabelled as sociopathy or psychopathy).

The right brain processes in “likelihoods” shaped by emotions over time.

If the husband in the above example understands this he has several options to fix this. For example:

1. He might get up with his wife and ensure he brushes his teeth right after she does so he can replace the cap each time. If he does this without ever mentioning the issue however, he may end up resenting her over time.

2. As above but he tells her lovingly how as a germophobe he hates the cap being off the toothpaste after use but he doesn’t want to stress her about it, so he will do it each day by using it immediately after she does. This could work if the woman appreciates it. If she also demonstrably shows it by being affectionate to her husband, giving him a little kiss each morning for tidying up after her, it could even become a source of pleasant quirkiness between them. Her feeling cared for can result in an increase of good connection between them.

3. As above but if the woman does not appreciate it she can instead feel “oppressed” by the “controlling” behaviour of her husband. If he in turn does not realise this and she hides it, her eventual watershed moment will come out of the blue for him and be crushing. If she does mention it, the husband can adapt again. But needs to do so in a way that gives the wife a good sensation. And asking her what that might be can be almost pointless because her own unconscious process is just as opaque to her. At this point she may have already unconsciously “concluded” that her husband is a control freak who can never make her happy, and if her husband doesn’t understand this process the relationship is probably doomed. If he half-understands it and “goes along” in order to try to salvage things but really is not happy about it, she will in any case lose respect for him because at some unconscious level she feels he is letting her dictate to him things he does not like, and no woman likes to have a doormat for a husband. At this point the man who does grasp this theory really only has two options left: leave or evolve. In some cases the evolving might not be possible. In the case of a toothpaste cap, the smart thing is to evolve, genuinely get over the germophobia, (using logic, a diverse biome of gut bacteria is healthier, say) love his wife regardless of what she does with the cap, and be happy anyway. Paradoxically, IF he honestly does this, his wife may well spontaneously begin putting the cap back on. Her unconscious, picking up her husband’s genuine love despite the cap, reassures her brain he IS the One! So her unconscious eventually relaxes, satisfied the trauma from her abusive father is healed, and lovingly, she begins to take care of the husband’s needs (because her emotions were engaged positively and truly, and thus made a significant change in her psyche towards her husband too). Of course if the issue is not a toothpaste cap, but the “need” to “transition” your 5 year old boy into a girl… well… leaving (with the boy in your sole custody!) is the only real option left.

I know the example is simplistic, but the point is to show the principle.

A LOT of what appears to men to be solipsism driven by selfishness, ego, lack of empathy and so on, is not necessarily that, but is actually due to processing that is inductive, opaque, probabilistic, and not logical in the strict sense of the word, but is still valid and CAN be understood by USING logic to contextualise it.

I believe taking note of this theory and applying it can change the dynamic that has been creating an increasing distance between the sexes and bring about a reversal, so that men and women once again come closer to each other in a truly complementary way.

In the next post I also want to address the example above of the toothpaste cap a little more from the woman’s perspective and also as if SHE is going to be the “fixer” of it (rarer because of the more right brained way to process things).

But for now this is long enough and I want to get an initial feedback on whether you, the reader find this helpful.

So leave a comment.