I guess it's not really on most people's radar. There's little professional incentive in arguing against some old quasi-folk theory that is not believed by any of your peers.
The incentive could exist for scientists who want to write books and be more public facing. However, I think most neuroscientists want to write something that relates to their professional work and is more interesting to them. Triune brain theory just isn't on radar.
Moreover, popular neuroscience is really really hard to do well. You need to find the overlap between the narrow controlled experiments of neuroscience and the messy realm of observable human behavior and experience. Things are that are known in the former are seldom known in the latter. Careful scientists know this and often feel alarmed when asked to talk about things outside the lab.
This leaves much of the writing, by default, to people who aren't concerned about being exact and who are happy to use technical terms as loose metaphors. Many of these aren't neuroscientists, but people who want a little neuro terminology to make their work seem cooler. Accurate neuroscience is not all that important to success in punditry and publishing. For example, psychiatrist Louann Brizendine's books on gender and the brain and economist Paul Zak's oxytocin book The Moral Molecule seem to me to write egregious neurobabble.
(There are certainly modules in the brain -- contemporary work statistically identifies which areas are active at the same time. There's a large cool literature on the default mode network, which is a pretty central concept in neuroscience: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_network ).
They absolutely aren't!
Mammals are Synapsids, reptiles and birds are Sauropsida.
They branched before most of brain development in both groups took place and since then we don't share ancestors.
How is it a widely-held theory? It hasn't stood up to scrutiny, at least any well documented tests.
It is sorta misleading, in fact, because a lot of good authors and speakers assume it as a well known fact and add their leaps of imagination to it. It is OK at best as a pop culture thing, maybe a poetic spin off.
Why does it have no place on Hacker ... oh, you know what, scratch that. No point entering that debate. Thanks.
It's not so much about whether the stance is true or not and whether we should debate that. It's that articles that discredit something as trivially untrue by way of a trivially small statement. In the extreme it would be like discrediting [insert pseudoscience topic] by simply mentioning a copy of Nature. There's some degree here, sure. But tabloid-style takedowns, regardless of whether they are right, seem almost out of place.
I am wrong to say this has no place, though, which is in itself a pretty big claim with no substance behind it.
I disagree actually. It's obviously not a legitimate scientific hypothesis, and shouldn't be presented as such, but it's still a really useful way to think about procrastination.
As a hard core atheist, it is good for me to see really religious guys like Larry Wall which are so laid back that they can make fun of their own opinions.
For the record, I have met a few.
A little bit like when, as an Emacs user, I see a post on a really informative blog about their Vi configuration. Or at a conference when the speaker connects the computer -- "wtf, he use Windows!?" :-)
(And as a metal fan I mostly avoid the lyrics, it might destroy the music if they are too stupid. But I'm a wimp which listen mostly to technical death.)
Completely offtopic, but there are some black(ish) metal bands with great lyrics.
Being a nerd, I am for example very partial to Vintersorg's album Cosmic Genesis (check out the song Algol ! [1]). (The singer, Andreas Hedlund, is actually a primary school teacher)
See (and hear) also the Irish band Primordial, who have great songs about Ireland. I've got goosebumps everytime I hear the chorus of "The Coffin Ships" [2] or the ending poem of "Death of the Gods" [3].
I could go on forever, but I'll mention three more bands, Vulture Industries for their very theatrical lyrics [4] and Solefald for the crazy and philosophical stuff [5]. And finally, a personal favorite of mine, Behemoth's "The Youth Manifesto" [6]. (Nergal, the lead singer and guitarist, is a fantastic lyricist and an incredible person)
Meshuggah, Nile, Dillinger Escape Plan, etc. Not the extreme stuff (when Darkthrone's "Blaze in the northern sky" gave me a headache; then I knew I was at my limit :-) ).
Disclaimer: I do like lots of whining singer-songwriters and folk music (including Irish like Altan etc) too. Even Mary Gauthier!
Within the bounds of that article, the author's points are fairly valid. I mean he hasn't emphasized piggybacking as the one ring to rule them all.
For a new startup these are good lessons to learn from. Of course, there is always a danger in building your business atop a competitor platform but if your timing and execution is such that the parent platform can't outdo you right away you can do a decent amount of business.
