Chapter 5: The Next Week

Saturday, November 22 to Friday, November 28, 2003

None of the next few days at school were as surprising as the first, but they were still interesting.

With practice, we got continually better at mentally coordinating ourselves. We discovered various techniques for different circumstances: for playing Minesweeper, doing math, reading textbooks, socializing at lunchtime, and many others. We got better at identifying the key aspects of situations to help us decide how to best split our attention. In Minesweeper, for example, each mind did the same task in different areas of the board. Whereas when socializing, usually #2 listened and spoke in the pre-merge manner, while #1 observed and thought about the social interactions, and we internally discussed our thoughts whenever one of us had something worth sharing.

Sometimes we invented strange techniques. I could halve the time required to do some of my homework assignments by doing two at once. When I had an assignment that needed very little or very easy writing - such as writing a single number or answering a multi-choice handout - I'd allocate writing those answers to my left hand (I'm right handed) while my right hand would be working on something else that needed more writing. Each mind working on its assignment independent of the other, to the extent that I was sometimes writing with both hands at the same time. Needless to say, I only did this in my bedroom with the door shut!

To my happy surprise, I rapidly became skillful at writing with my left hand. After only a few days, I was so good at left-handed writing that I was fully ambidextrous at it.

I'd already found out that independent control didn't work on my eyeballs, but did work on ordinary limb movements such as raising or lowering arms. Those controls were consistent with the situation pre-merge, unlike my new writing ability. I'd heard stories about how the lefties of an earlier generation had hated being forced to write right-handed, and how many years it'd taken them to learn to do it, so my learning to write with my other hand so quickly was not consistent or normal. Obviously being able to write with both hands simultaneously was unusual too, but that was 'just' because I had two minds. What I didn't understand was how I was able to improve my left hand's writing ability so quickly.

I also noticed that I was less clumsy these days. Putting that together with my new ambidexterity made me decide that I'd somehow gained increased physical coordination. I knew I had two conscious minds, so maybe two subconscious minds as well, and therefore twice as much coordination of my single body.

I needed to test my physical coordination, ideally with tests I could do in my bedroom. I used a rolled up pair of socks as a hacky-sack, trying to keep it in the air for as many kicks as possible. I expected to achieve only two or three kicks, but I sometimes got up to five or even six. Not exactly impressive, but better than I thought I would have been pre-merge.

Next I grabbed a few more pairs of socks to try juggling. I'd been no good at it before, but this time I improved rapidly and soon had three 'balls' going reliably. I tried four, but that was much harder.

Then I had the idea of having each mind follow alternate balls, and taking turns controlling our hands as each mind needed them. After a little practice to get the timing right, I got that working quite well. Each mind had to keep track of and juggle only two balls, which was easy. It had to juggle them fast enough that the hands were available for the other mind's use, but it actually took quite a long time for the balls to complete a quarter-circuit, so it wasn't all that difficult.

I thought that with more practice I could get very good at juggling, but I stopped anyway. I couldn't imagine girls throwing themselves at me if I juggled at school, and I could very easily imagine getting beaten up by a bully looking for an excuse.

Because I'd juggled four balls in a very different way than I had tried pre-merge, it wasn't really a good test for whether my physical coordination had improved, but the three balls test had been considerably better than I'd achieved pre-merge, so I was reasonably confident that my hypothesis had been proved.

Another development of the next few days was that I seemed to get even smarter. As best as I could judge, I was better at comprehending the teachers' points than I had been on my first day at school. The improvement still wasn't huge, or even medium, and I even doubted it at times - usually in English classes - but if real, it was very nice.

The minor aspects out of the way, it's time to mention a biggie: my observance of social interactions opened my eyes to something I found horrific. At first I thought I was overly sensitive to the issue, but as I saw more examples of it, I understood that I was seeing reality. People were hurting each other everywhere I looked! Not just deliberately saying hurtful things to someone - although there was certainly no shortage of that - but in many other ways too.

A simple example would be a group where an idea had just been suggested and everyone's opinion was being sought. People would take turns speaking until it got to a Person V (for "Victim"). Rather than letting V speak, the next person would immediately give his opinion, cutting V out.

In any group there were often individuals who were ignored. They weren't talked to, listened to, or even looked at. Everybody else was so busy talking among themselves that they simply didn't notice the non-participant(s). It wasn't that the person was too quiet. I saw several examples of Person V suggesting the group do something, and everyone either ignored the suggestion or rejected it out of hand. Yet when Person A (for "Anyone else") suggested exactly the same thing a minute later, everyone seemed to genuinely think that it was a marvelous suggestion, and they often happily rushed off to do it; every time with apparently no notion of the absurdity of what they'd just done. V was often visibly hurt, but I was the only person who noticed. I was astonished at how often illogical group behavior like that happened.

Another common bizarre behavior was when Person V suggested a good idea to Person A. A would answer, but to B rather than V, as if B had suggested the idea. A and B would excitedly discuss the idea between the two of them, often ending in one of them congratulating the other for the idea. The congratulations would even be accepted! V would occasionally protest, "Hey, that was my idea," but this would always be ignored, dismissed or even punished with a scathing comment or a thump.

I couldn't believe it when I first noticed the more extreme illogical behaviors. How could A sincerely congratulate B for an idea V suggested not one minute earlier? My first thought was that it was some sort of trick being played on V, but I had to discard that idea as these types of behaviors happened all over the school, involving unrelated groups of people. I never saw the perpetrators' expressions, such as them rolling their eyes when V wasn't looking, give them away. It was bizarre, especially as it was apparently unintended and unnoticed!

Over time I worked out some explanations. Take the simplest possible example, an unpopular person not speaking up. If anyone did notice that Person V was quiet, the last thing they'd want to do would be to encourage V to speak. At any time, most people can't wait to talk. They'll interrupt, talk over each other, or use scorn or some other intrusive method to shut the current speaker up so they can get start talking themselves. Being able to speak, and being listened to, are tangible indications of status and are therefore valued; so the chance of someone wanting to give their turn to someone else is very low. The chance of them giving their turn to an unpopular person is vanishingly remote because it implies the giver is of lower status than the pathetic loser.

What were much harder for me to understand were the many bizarre, reality-bending, behaviors. How could several people honestly congratulate one of their number for having a great idea, when they'd all booed Person V down for suggesting the exact same idea a minute earlier?

I realized that people truly don't notice the vast majority of what goes on around them, ESPECIALLY when it's an unpopular person making a suggestion. An unpopular person's suggestion goes in one ear and out the other. While it's between ears the listener might give a pertinent comment about why it's a stupid idea, and then immediately forget the idea ever existed. And when someone more popular later suggests the same idea, it gets reacted to as if heard for the first time.

I'm simplifying the case when I say that people don't notice Person V's comments. In reality they often do notice, but with only part of their brain, just enough of it to coordinate a sneering response, and then they forget it.

The other side of the same coin is that people will leap at the chance to agree to the same idea from Mr. Popular. Those responses are also not the result of a conscious evaluation. When an unpopular person suggests something, people 'naturally' dislike his idea because they dislike him. But when a popular guy suggests the same idea, it is 'naturally' liked. Clearly his ideas are good ones, that's why he's already so popular and so worth sucking up to. For both the unpopular and popular guys, it wasn't about their ideas per se, but the status of the person suggesting them, and the responders' need to acquire status for themselves by showing scorn or by sucking up. The suggestion might logically have been identical, but none of the listeners' brains thought of them that way because their emotional reactions to the two originators were so different.

Not only did people not notice a great deal of what was happening around them socially, but what little they did notice was HIGHLY distorted by their prejudices, status seeking, ego, etc. I could say a great deal more because there were countless examples of this appalling reality, but I'll restrain myself. I WANT to say more about how truly astonishing and appalling this phenomenon is, in large part because I was a Person V, so one reason I saw many examples of these behaviors was because I was so often on the receiving end of them.

What it boils down to though, is that there is an INCREDIBLE amount of accidental cruelty inflicted on people in social interactions.

Which brings me to deliberate cruelty. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how deliberately cruel kids can be. The horrific thing is that even when they're being deliberately cruel, they don't notice that they're causing even more hurt than they intend. When Person V talks and the guy standing next to him wants to speak himself, no problem: he just yells, "Stupid!" and punches V very hard in the arm. V will shut up (maybe moan and complain, but that's ignorable), letting the aggressor take over the conversation. The aggressor doesn't notice how hurt V is because the aggressor is too busy being the center of attention and talking to everyone else. People truly don't notice how cruel they are.